Ask HN: How to navigate the world as a brain-damaged 17 year old?
Tough road, kid, tough road. I had pretty serious brain damage when I was a child -- dyspraxia, dysgraphia, a bunch of other poorly-understood stuff -- and even today I'm still patchy. I've learned to have NT people handle the stuff I don't, like calendaring (I can't do time zones at all) and to be sensitive about tabulated data. I'm 51 now, and I've had a fairly successful career spanning a number of fields.Two lessons from my experience.1) the brain is incredibly plastic and over time figures out how to get things done2) intense practice of very simple activities leads to very surprising and dramatic rewards -- video games with a strong hand-eye coordination component vastly improved my dyspraxia (at my age, we're talking Pac Man in arcades!) and then I moved on to tai chi. Deliberate practice of very simple things seems to be powerfully transformative for people struggling with neurological issues in general.I don't know how much it helps, but strong odds there is a future. The year between A Levels and university to give yourself time to heal before you go straight into the next thing is a great idea. I also imagine there's a ton of emotional fall out from your attack and that also takes time to heal.Shit hand of cards. You sound like you're doing a good job of coping. Keep on going it will improve over time.