Welcome to the holiday season! The season is one of change, for a variety of reasons. The arrival of the holidays announces the coming of cooler weather for most of the U.S., begins a time of travel, and signals the end of the calendar year. The holidays are a time of change for college students, too. Most students who have been living full-time on campus since summer will be traveling back and forth between home and their dorms multiple times within a few short weeks.

Support For OffCampus TravelOff-campus travel can be complicated. Travel by rail can be rife with delays. Bus travel can be time consuming. And those traveling by air frequently encounter challenges due to cancelled flights and the navigation of multiple airports.

The Benchmarks of Effective Supports for College Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (2012) is an assessment tool with which to determine the readiness of specific institutions of higher learning to support the academic, social, and independent living needs of students living within the autism spectrum.

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My family, from back since when I was a kid, often didn’t have money for presents. Sometimes we would hand-make presents, bake goods or make coupons for favors like “I will make your bed for a week” or “Do your chores.” One Christmas we didn’t even know if we would have electricity…much less a tree.  A nearby tree lot donated a tree to us, they even dropped it off at our house, after my little brother went over and gave them a sad-faced orphan look. Many Christmases were just like this.

christmas

One Christmas Eve, we sat in the dark and just told old stories about our family origins and more recent memories. Each of us also wrapped up that ‘something special’ that we wanted our loved one to have. To this day, it is still the best Christmas I can remember as a child. Today with my own children, I find it is better to just keep it simple.

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