I'd also add that we really need to expand and improve the support infrastructure available to us when it comes to transitioning between undergraduate and graduate studies. I've noticed that support going from secondary school to undergraduate studies, whether you're autistic or not, is far more abundant than when one is considering graduate programs.

I ended up applying to grad school three times and got rejected from every single school I applied to the first two times. I had very little support in the process which took my disabilities into account. In undergrad, I had no idea what I needed to be doing to secure the appropriate relationships with faculty that allow access to critical research experience and references that make one's application competitive down the road, especially when it comes to fully-funded programs.

Even though my family believes in me and I am not the first in my family to obtain an advanced degree, it also did not help to bump up against the notion that we can't even get through college in the first place, much less go beyond a bachelor's degree and that I had somehow made it as far as I did is some kind of fluke. Now that I am in a program, I still have this sense that I'm not doing the best networking and that it might hurt me at some point. On top of all of this, is it then really any surprise that so much autism research conducted by MDs and PhDs in the present day is so out of touch with and ignorant of our lived experiences?

Sometimes, it truly feels like some of us were born in the wrong decade.