Tyler Hackner is a senior in MICC’s College program.
MICC participant Tyler Hackner joined a recent episode of “Today’s Autistic Moment,” hosted by Philip King-Lowe! Highlighting that October is ADHD Awareness Month, Tyler discussed the unique experience of having both an autism and ADHD diagnosis on the episode entitled, “AuDHD Strengths & Challenges.”
Here are a few highlights from Tyler’s interview!
Philip: Tyler, I’m going to ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself, and also to tell us about what being Autistic and ADHD means for you, so that we can build our conversation for this topic today.
Tyler: Absolutely well. I’m Tyler Hackner. I’m 23 years old. I’m currently at MICC, and I have a lot of interests about a lot of things that kind of make me unique and make me who I am. I’m very interested in the arts, very interested in current events and world affairs, and trying to make the world a better place or make it more to what I would want it to be. I’m very, very passionate about being creative and being in creative spaces as well. Maybe that contributes to my Autism. But I do see it as more of a strength than anything I know. I know it’s long been stigmatized, stigmatized as a weakness. But I do think my uniqueness, or unique ways of delving from interest to interest, or delving into like many different things, allows me to just talk about anything, or almost anything anyway, because there’s some, because there are, there are plenty of things that I don’t know.
Philip: What do you feel are the positives of being both Autistic and ADHD, and how has that affected your understanding of yourself and both your abilities and your character?
Tyler: Well, I see it as positive in that I’m not like everybody else, and I’m not the type of person who is like is just boxed into one thing or bought or boxed into just one kind of archetype or stereotype of somebody, or whatever you think somebody is like, you don’t always have to be that. And that’s what I’ve learned. Like whatever you expect somebody else to be, or whatever you expect yourself to be, you don’t always have to be, that you can create your own expectations of what you want to be and how you want to go about life and come across to people and that it’s good to be unique. It’s good to be you. Your own person as an identity.
Philip: Minnesota Independence College & Community is a school that allows you to invest in the best of who you are and how has that shaped your self-perception and your confidence and your drive to really thrive?
Tyler: Well, I’d, I’d say the school just, but just by virtue of the fact that that it has a lot of people that are similar to me and that it has people who understand me and understand what I’m about, and not just what my challenges are about, what my strengths are, and they help me to understand all of myself, to help me understand like how well rounded all of us are as people. I think that’s a very gratifying thing. I think the fact that they’re helping us to learn to like take care of ourselves as we grow into adulthood, as we grow into being on our own and being by ourselves and with ourselves and understanding how to how to exist and function in the world as ourselves. I think that’s very, again I keep saying this word, but very validating, very, very important, because if we don’t have those tools, if we don’t have the people around us encouraging us, we wouldn’t really have anything. And I think having those people around us helps to guide us to just go off into the world and be and be ourselves and understand ourselves and just advocate for ourselves, that sort of thing.
Philip: Tell us about the arts that you are so interested in, that has me intrigued.
Tyler: Yeah, thank you. Well, my parents grew up with a lot of music around the house. My mom played it, played acoustic guitar in college, and then she gave it up, but, but she was, she was interested in doing that for a bit. I was raised with parents who listened to a lot of music growing up, and they played it a lot around the house. And I’ve took that and did things like going to like music centers and music therapy and that sort of thing. And I even joined a band. MICC has its own rock band that I’m a part of as well…it’s very fun. I think my interest in the arts just allows me to express myself in ways that I otherwise wouldn’t know if I wasn’t interested. I think that’s what makes me unique.
Listen to the full episode here.