Gregory P. Desrosiers

About Me - Timeline of Achievements

September 1998 - Started attending Riverside School Board's REACH School (Victoria Park School) in Saint-Lambert, Quebec

As a reaction to my parents' dismay when I had my diagnosis for autism in 1996 at The Montreal Children's Hospital, they placed me in a specialized education for preschool mostly because they wanted me to practice social integration with other students who had a diagnosis for a disability early in their childhood. This is where my file was put in place for the next 13 years with the school board.

June 1999 - Started attending English language therapy camp at Montreal's Saint Matthias Anglican Church

I wasn't speaking very much, even at five years old. My parents were still kind of fearing about what was going to happen if I wasn't going to communicate very much, so they placed me in a morning camp for part of the summer to work on speech and reading.

September 1999 - Started attending Boucherville Elementary School

Amazed by my marks during preschool where my parents learned that I was too smart to handle material taught at REACH School, they transferred me over to regular education, with the exception that I needed a shadow in case I would hurt or bug someone, and to keep my concentration as well as for particular consequences of my behavior.

June 2006 - Graduated from Boucherville Elementary School

After seven years of intense elementary education where I had trouble controlling myself and learning all of those things, I graduated from elementary school, with a recognition on a plaque of the Principal's Award.

September 2006 - Started attending Heritage Regional High School

I was adminstrated into Heritage without going through a special process. To make sure that my education there goes well and that I would try to satisfy some of my parents' expectations, they placed me with the school's Student Services Department.

March 2009 - Awarded the Canadian Mathematics Competition - 2009 Pascal Contest School Champion Medal and Certificate of Distinction

To my surprise, I scored over 100 points in my attempt in a competition that my Secondary 3 Mathematics teacher recommended that I participate in. I was actually in the enriched section at that time because I've scored over 90% in both Secondary 1 and 2 Mathematics before.

November 2010 - Performed in HRHS 2010 Da Bomb Variety Show as a dance actor in "Funky Cold Medina" under the Tribute to 90s sequence

Produced by Natalie Small and directed by Amanda Neville, my Secondary 5 Drama teacher, I was one of the actors for this variety show act that some of us actually did the choreographing. I was known as the "waiter" because we imagined the act in a bar scene very similar to the actual music video. I was anticipating at first that I was going to act in a play with vocals, only to find out that I placed myself in a dance act which I never really wanted to try out. Somehow, I wasn't reluctant at all to do this, because I was placed in front of an audience during the act as part of my efforts in trying to show to people that I desperately needed to be included in group conversations and chats with friends of my own. (In other words, I was isolating myself too much, but was pushing so bad to break out of the social barrier and improve my self-esteem by going out with my friends.)

February 2011 - Performed a lip sync of Justin Bieber's Pray for HRHS 2011 Black History Month Variety Show as a commemmorate to the victims of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake

In the hunt for getting myself out of the social stigma I once realized in Secondary 4, and trying to ask my own friends to include me in conversations, I took on this "complicated" approach to tackle this problem myself, without any parental supervision, by doing a lip sync act of Justin Bieber's Pray music video released in December 2010 by Def Jam Music.

June 2011 - Graduated from Heritage Regional High School

Feeling absolutely discouraged and too limited to my own social situations where I anticipated the consequences of this, I attended a graduation ceremony held at Fairmont's Queen Elizabeth Hotel on Rene-Levesque Boulevard in Montreal. Facing 2000 spectators in the large conference hall, and under a black graduation gown, I bowed to them, and to the HRHS Graduating Class of 2011, upon receiving the yellow Honour Roll lanyard and a red graduation booklet honouring the award of my secondary studies diploma.

September 2011 - Started attending Champlain College Saint-Lambert in Computer Science

Still feeling socially disadvantaged and how I felt envious from watching so many videos by Freddie Wong and Emiliano Rosales-Birou (Chuggaaconroy) on YouTube, I moved on to continuing my education; this time to the closest English CEGEP from my home. There was a fresh orientation going on for several hours where I signed up for it and followed along with an upper student. It was sort of stressful going through the start, but eventually I made it through.

May 2013 - Held a speech on Asperger's syndrome with help from the Champlain Student Association

On January 21, 2013, in the first semester meeting by Champlain College Saint-Lambert's student union, I discussed my idea about delivering a speech on Asperger's syndrome. It was there that for the next three months, I work in collaboration with the union there to organize a speech and a PowerPoint presentation that went with it. Emphasized in the presentation were certain people, including Jodi DiPiazza who was featured in a duet act directly with Katy Perry in Comedy Central's Night of Too Many Stars in October 2012.

From this event, five different photos were taken and were put on Champlain's own album gallery. (It's a small album; somewhere just half past the album, you should find five different photos taken in an amphitheatre. I was wearing an grey Angry Birds T-shirt that day.)

July 2013 - Completed writing "The Asperger Computer - A Self-Published Guide on Asperger's Syndrome and Multimedia" with over 190,000 words

Before this, for one full month, I wrote a 20,000 word piece that I tried selling it through several self-publishing websites including Lulu.com. It was finished and released there in one 2AM Sunday morning; I even shared the book to my English instructor because to my surprise, I felt like I was where I belonged in an ordinary CEGEP classroom. Later, I found out that I didn't really sold copies of my book because I didn't set up a publishing budget. And so, I spent over one full month during the summer to work on an updated version that's so much longer based on taking a look at one of Mark Coker's files for self-publishing a book on his e-book network, Smashwords. The book is not in stores, but I'd only wish I can modify it and make it stand out in a more philosophical and not-so-pressuring approach. (Hmm, if only if I could do something like this because then I would inspire the world a little more on how I was able to get into UWaterloo and be empowered.)

February 2014 - Scored 72 out of 75 points in the Canadian Computing Competition - Junior Division; recognized in an article posted by Champlain College Saint-Lambert

To enhance my chances of being enrolled at University of Waterloo in Software Engineering, as well as potentially earn an entrance scholarship, I attempted the Canadian Computing Competition sponsored by UWaterloo's Faculty of Mathematics. It was through the help of my instructor for my last CEGEP programming course that made me succeed in the competition. In Champlain's surprise, nine of us students in the college were officially in the top 10 Junior Eastern Winners. I was not one of them, but thanks to my performance in past programming courses, I scored 72 points and was featured in a short article posted by Champlain staff.

June 2014 - Graduated fron Champlain College Saint-Lambert with a Quebec college degree in Computer Science and Mathematics

A graduation ceremony was held directly on campus, in the institution's gymnasium area, with a follow-up prom in the institution's cafeteria complete with a renovated section. I was under a blue gown, and when I came up to claim my authentication certificate for my college degree, I left a salute to the audience in front of me and to my classmates and other students sitting down in the same area as I was. Once the ceremony was over, after taking a few photos of my success, I went on over to the cafeteria for the prom event, meeting along certain staff and some of my friends to say goodbye.

September 2014 - Enrolled in Software Engineering at University of Waterloo

Arrived in the early afternoon of August 31, 2014, at UWaterloo's Village 1 after riding on the road for over seven hours from Boucherville, I started my university education from there. There was a full week of orientation; even though there were ups and downs along the way as it was my first time being exposed to university as well as not being very coordinated and oriented, it was still the beginning of a whole new world with one major goal of seeking empowerment.

November 2014 - Completed a Scribbler bot project with five other team members in the same program using Python

For one month, I worked in conjunction with UWaterloo Software Engineering Director Andrew Morton and five other SE students to develop a program in Python for a simple and basic robot as an introduction to software engineering. Our implementation was to have our robot discover a cola can using color detection, and move towards it using motors and IR sensors. We did faced several obstacles along the way, with one of them being a technical issue with the Fluke dongle used in the project. However, we were able to meet minimal requirements and produced a report on our actual process. I was in charge of logging in the progress as we made our implementation.

December 2014 - Completed Software Engineering 1A under a full course load (six courses)

In the three years I took to complete my college degree, I was under a reduced course load where my minimal take was five courses, and my maximum was seven. But since I was living directly in UWaterloo's Village 1 where it isn't that far away from the buildings where I had my lectures, and I had a full meal plan, I decided to give it all with what I've got and ended up passing all of my courses. To my surprise, it seems that it's possible for an individual with autism like me to tackle a full course load in a very difficult environment.

May 2015 - Volunteered for UWaterloo's You@Waterloo Day Open House

To exhibit my spirituality and to enhance my resume, I decided to volunteer for this open house as a pathliner where I handed people the map of the UWaterloo Campus, a sticker, and gave them directions to mostly the university's Physical Activities Complex. It was fun, and reflecting on it, I think I would do something big.