Skyler Schneider

So when I went to Governor's School over the summer after my junior year, I knew that I would have to be living with a roommate for the first time. I didn't really have much apprehension about that - I'm pretty sure I can live with like 99% of people so I was sure it would be fine.

When we showed up the first day and went up to my room - I believe it was 208 - my roommate was already there. He was sitting on his bed, which I believe had only plain white sheets on it, and although he looked pretty set up, he had basically no decoration anywhere at all. I think I remember noticing a TON of things underneath his bed, but I could be wrong about that. He was scribbling in a tiny notepad when we walked in. He was probably 6'2", it was hard to tell what ethnicity he was but I'm guessing half-Jewish and half-Asian, and pretty thin, whith shortish black hair that it looked like he gelled at spiked. I can't remember what kind of shirts he wore.

As most people reading this probably know, my dad could charm his way out of the Lewinski scandal if somebody asked him to. He can get anyone to talk and he can do it without putting effort into it. So while my mom and I were setting up, my dad figured he would break the ice for me and talk to Skyler. No matter how long he talked to Skyler, though, my dad just couldn't get through to him. He would only give one word answers to my dad's questions, and he would never look up or make eye contact - he just kept scribbling in his notepad. He did find out he wanted to go to Cornell though. We asked him if he wanted to come look around the campus with us and he said no, he said something else to do, but maybe if we would go another time. We didn't go with him, although I think he did actually ask if we had gone yet at one point hoping to go with us.

The first day or second day that we met, the instructors and administrators were talking to us about the academic honesty policy at PGSS - basically, they expected that everyone would work together and that they wanted us to work together because PGSS is pretty challenging for the grade level we were at, and they wanted us to learn proper collaboration within science communities. They told us to make sure that we weren't plagiarizing or cheating, but to feel free to discuss problems and methods with other people as much as we wanted. Skyler raised his hand and said, "If we don't work with other people, are you going to come after us?" I believe Barry said something along the lines of, "No, but we aren't aware of anyone that's ever made it without working with someone else."

For the first little while, Skyler basically disappeared from my life. I didn't really interact with him in any way, not even when I was in the room I don't thing. He went to bed early and didn't hang out in the same places or with the same people I did. I saw him in class though. A lot of times he had a roll of yellow duct tape around one of his wrists. A lot of people asked him what it was, and he would either not answer or say "To fix things" or something like that. One day, my friend Jenna broke her shoes or flip-flops, and she actually used his tape to fix them during class. I remember that he would walk up the stairs in the class funnily - he would approach the first step, stop, and grandly step both of his feet onto the second step, stop, approach the third step, and repeat all the way up. One day one of the girls asked if they could touch him to make sure he was real, and he said yes, and she touched his arm confirmed that he was real.

Somewhere along the line, I was coming back up to my room around the middle of the afternoon. I went up the stairs and turned to the right to get to my room, and I saw Skyler at the waterfountain on the way there. He had two wastebaskets near him, one turned upside down, and he appeared to be filling a plastic bag with water from the waterfountain. I had NO IDEA what he was doing, just absolutely no idea.

So I went up to him and asked him, "Ummm... why are you getting water out of the waterfountain?" And he responded, "It's cold." [The water from the sinks was significantly warmer]. Then I asked him, "So uh... where did you get that second trash can?" And he said, "From a friend." It turned out that friend was ME. That was MY TRASH CAN. Anyway. Still totally baffled, and afraid that he would suffocate me in the middle of the night or drown me, I finally asked, "...What are you doing?" He responded, "You don't need to know."

((OOOOOO_OOOOOO))

We found out later he wanted to fill the trash cans with cold water and blow a fan over them to make the study lounge temperature more bearable.

One time when we were in the study lounge, we were all working on our chem homework. I think Nate was there, and Skyler was there too. We had to draw models of the molecules we were working with, and someone suggested doing a 3rd grade science project and using jujubees and toothpicks to represent the atoms and bonds in the molecule. I think I ran out to the store on Forbes Street to get some, came back, and put them together with the guys. While we were working, I remember Skyler took the container of toothpicks and made a joke like "Would you like some wood on your [forget this word]?" And I was a little shocked just because it was Skyler.

At the final speech, we knew that Skyler would have to talk. We all wondered how the hell that would work out given his fear of speaking to the rest of us. Actually, when he got up there to speak, he was flawless. He didn't stutter once or shake or get nervous or anything. He was probably just about the best public speaker out of any of us. We were totally baffled.

We found out, I believe on the last day, that Skyler's parents had woken him up at 3am or something to drive to PGSS on the first day, dropped him off with his stuff, and immediately left. The day that we had to go, they showed up, quickly picked him up, and immediately left.

//

So basically all throughout PGSS everyone thought that Skyler was really weird and basically no one hung out with him. I was a little bit nervous around him and he went to sleep early and I didn't have a terribly wonderful roommate experience. I was kind of mad that I was put with him.

We found out later that apparently he had Asperger's Syndrome.

And that sucked. If we had known that he actually had a problem, then we wouldn't have been so cold to him after we had one bad experience trying to talk to him. My entire experience would have been totally different if I knew that my roommate didn't hate me, he just had ASD. It probably would have been a lot better for him, too. It was kind of a tough choice, though. On one hand, people should have known because it would have let us understand him and his reactions to us much better and probably would have made the experience much more positive for all of us. On the other hand, its his private medical information and he has the right to tell us or not tell us, and the admins and instructors probably had no right to tell us either. I don't know, I just thought that wasn't so fun to learn.

Peace out.