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I’m Anthony! Help Me Forge Forward with Autism!

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My Struggle! My Journey! My Autism! 

My name is Anthony Evans and I am currently 19 years old. I live in Denver Colorado And have Autism, ADHD, and a Sensory Integration Disorder. I have been diagnosed as high functioning Autistic.


I was diagnosed late and I think things might have been different at home and at school if we had known sooner. As you can imagine, this was very frustrating for me. I often believed that I was different and felt helpless. I was diagnosed with ADHD in Elementary and finally went onto meds because other treatments were not working.  Once I was diagnosed with Autism, I was finally able to treat my symptoms in the correct manner and I was able to get off of all my former medications over time. This was a relief for me to know that there was a reason for what I was feeling and experiencing. 


I am a 5th generation native of Colorado.  I Like the mountains and the wildlife around me and the weather most of the time. I live at home with my two parents who love me even though they have to deal with my behaviour issues when I get triggered. I am an animal lover, especially Dogs. I have two dogs named Roxxie and Chopper and a cat named Frankie. We’ve always had lots of pets but I like dogs the best.


I had a really hard time in school including preschool and daycare. I was kicked out of three daycare’s before finding a place that was able to address my issues and they were able to provide help and the necessary coping tools to help me with my behavioral issues due to autism. This was extremely difficult and I often believed I was bad. I felt dejected.


I was tested for aptitude before I started kindergarten and found that I had an IQ of 144 and was placed in a school with a gifted and talented program.  This ended in failure because I did not receive any help that would allow me to function in a standard school atmosphere at the school I attended. I had some success in Elementary school, and I even won the first place in the 4th grade Science Fair! This gave me just a little hope in a challenging situation. 


Middle school & High school were the worst. I had to ride a school bus for an  hour and a half to and from school when my parents could not take me. It was really hard to deal with all of the noise and distractions of day to day school activities due to so many people in the halls, and people making fun of me because of my size and issues. It is a constant struggle to manage being overstimulated and the other obstacles that I faced at the same time. I often felt misunderstood and alienated.  I am  6’6” tall and on the heavy side. So you can imagine the issues I had to face. I was bullied a lot because I am big and I was different.  School really sucked. I was always bored and I was not able to work at my own pace. There were a lot of sensory issues at school that made it very difficult to function. When I became overstimulated, I would act out  in class just to regain mobility when I felt so powerless. This would get me kicked out of class.  I did not have any friends and I did not talk alot. I often felt depressed and alone.


A normal school curriculum was not working, so we tried online schooling.  While I liked my teachers and I even made a few online school friends, after a couple years I was falling behind with my assignments because the program did not have a structure that worked with my issues and I could not get motivated to do my work and assignments.


I left online school to try and get my GED.  I ended up going to Emily Griffith where I took GED prep classes and took my GED. I passed with very high scores. I graduated November 2018.  While at Emily Griffith I took a college course in GIS Geographic Information Systems, but I found that I was not interested in pursuing this as a career path.  This led me to various other IT type work and I found out that I like to code or pursue a career within the IT industry which is what my father does for a living.  I became interested in coding due to a Python course I had to take during my GIS training curriculum, which I found that I was good at as well as keeping my interest.

 

After deciding that I wanted to learn to code. I’ve found several options with EdX online that offer courses from both MIT & Harvard for FREE and I’m looking to possibly attend a Coding boot camp in Denver that doesn’t cost too much money.   


This is the reason for My Go Fund Me Campaign.


After looking at various courses and activities for online training and learning, I have realized that I need a new computer that can handle the workload of running the programs needed to actually write and learn different coding languages.  My parents bought me a new computer a few years ago, which we have upgraded to the max over time, but this is out of date and I need something better.   Money is tight right now for my parents, given everything that is going on with COVID-19,  and they cannot afford to buy me a new high end PC for me at this time.


My father suggested that I should build my own PC which could eventually help me with my A+ certification in addition to being cheaper to build a PC with better specs than buying a prebuilt PC.   My parents suggested a Go Fund Me Campaign as well to finance my project which could provide valuable business experience.


 I spent hours and hours of research and I finally decided on the specs I wanted for my new PC.  This is the parts list I came up with... 


CPU - Intel Core i7 10700k 3.8GHz 8 core processor

CPU Cooler - Corsair ICUE H150i RGB PRO 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler

Motherboard - MSI MPG Z490 GAMING EDGE WIFI ATX LGA1200 Motherboard

Memory/RAM - Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB (4 X 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 

Storage - Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

Storage - Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

Video card- Nvidia RTX 3080

Computer case - Corsair iCUE 220T RGB Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case

Power Supply - Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply


I chose these parts to ensure that this computer will be as future proof as possible at this price range.  The CPU is Intel’s newest i7 model. This CPU combined with 32GB of RAM will be more than capable of handling any task that I can throw at it. I chose the Nvidia RTX 3080 for the graphics card as I would also like to start live streaming.


You might ask how I know so much about computers, and the reason is that I spend a lot of time on my PC.  


I don’t have any friends that I can hang out with in person because all of my friends are online and in various other states and countries.  Some people might think that because I have never met any of them in person that they are not “real friends', but considering the fact that the few friends I do have online, I have known for 7 plus years. Due to this, my computer is as important to me as water, my computer is my life.


It is really difficult for me to ask for help, but I have been trying to advocate for myself and my parents agreed with me that this would be a good idea. I am almost twenty years old and I don’t know how to drive a car, and even if I learn how to drive, I will probably never get to drive by myself due to my disabilities as they can make it difficult to drive safely. I have taken public bus training classes while I was enrolled in school, but  I have never been able to successfully ride the bus by myself because of the stimulation.  It scares me and I feel unsafe, not to mention the other various sensory issues that can trigger me.  I want to build a new computer so I can put myself through courses to learn Coding or a related IT curriculum so that I can find a job where I can work from home and help support myself.   This also allows me to continue to spend time with my online friends in addition to making new friends that I may encounter along the way.

I would really appreciate anything that you can donate to my cause and I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my story.


Anthony Evans

Organizer

Anthony Evans
Organizer
Denver, CO

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