Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin

To many, autism is viewed as an unfortunate circumstance that some people must endure for their entire lives. Interestingly enough, “Thinking in Pictures” written by Temple Grandin writes about her experience with autism as if looking through the other side of the glass window. Rather than seeing her autism as nothing more than a nuisance, Temple uses her autism to her full advantage.

Because of her autism, Temple was able to acquire a skill that many regular people lack; that is, the skill of visualization. This very skill helped Temple succeed at her job designing equipment for the livestock industry. The ability to visualize her designs before she makes them into a reality is quite extraordinary. When Temple first attempts at a design, she imagines the design in her head and how it will function in every possible scenario. Thus, she is able to envision potential defects and tweaks them in her mind. When the design is finally physically constructed, it works just as well as it did in her imagination.

Being that most people use verbal skills to process their thoughts, I like how temple tries to help us better understand her experience with autism by comparing it to a VCR tape or a CD-Rom disc. In order for her to evoke information, she must play a video in her head pertaining to the information she is trying to recollect. Temple repeatedly plays the “tape” in her mind until she successfully retrieves the information. I find it amazing how she can take a mental shot of a piece of writing in her mind, store it, and recover the writing whenever she desires to do so. In the essay she writes “When I retrieve the material, I see the photocopy of the page in my imagination. I can then read it like a teleprompter.” This is an attribute I, and surely, many others would love to obtain.

From reading this passage, I was able to conclude that regardless of what obstacles can comes one’s way, one can always find a means to overcome those obstacles and achieve success. All it takes is the willpower to turn what may seem as an inconvenience into a full force advantage.