Since I think just in pictures it's sort of hard to think about abstract concepts so I have to have visual images like for example when I was a child… - Temple Grandin

Mother prepared me to live in the world, but she didn't try to make me into a social being just so I could hang out with other teenagers at the lake, or have pajama parties with other girls. Her eyes were on a bigger prize - giving me the skills and nurturing the talents that would allow me to graduate from school, attend college, find a satisfying job and live independently.

(What do you like to read or watch for entertainment?) I like Arthur C. Clark and David Brinn. I loved the movies Avatar and Gravity. My favorite science fiction TV show was the original Star Trek. My favorite science fiction movies are 2001: A Space Odyssey and Avatar. For reading materials on the plane, I read The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Business Week, and many others. At home I read Science, Nature, Beef Magazine, National Hog Farmer, Feedstuff, New Scientist, and The New Yorker.

many aspects of our society are not set up to allow visual thinkers — which so many of us neurodivergent folks are — to thrive. In fact, many aspects of our society seem set up specifically so we will fail. Schools force students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The workplace relies too much on résumés and G.P.A.s to assess candidates’ worth. This must change not only because neurodivergent people, and all visual thinkers, deserve better but also because without a major shift in how we think about how we learn, American innovation will be stifled.