“Everyone Else Seems to Understand and Know What They’re Doing”: Navigating the Unwritten Rules of Post-Secondary School as a Neurodivergent Student
Starting a new academic year can be a massive transition, especially if you are neurodivergent and have difficulty understanding the rules of post-secondary school.
Just when you start to understand the spoken curriculum written directly in the syllabus, you may still be trying to figure out the hidden curriculum—those unwritten and unspoken social and academic rules in post-secondary school.
In high school, there may have been more structure to your day. But now that you are in university, you have more autonomy to build that structure from scratch.
In some ways, autonomy can be great. However, when you are a neurodivergent student, it can be a challenge.
As you try to decode the social norms connected to post-secondary life, you may start to think, “Everyone else seems to understand and know what they’re doing.”
You may look around your university or college campus and wonder why you don’t seem to get it.
Why do other students seem to know when they should email their professor? How do they know how to ask for an extension?
They know how to register for courses, find academic support, talk to professors, participate in class, form study groups, and figure out what their assignments are actually asking. How?
Maybe you have been told before that your communication is too direct for post-secondary school or that you aren’t professional enough, even though you thought you were speaking in a clear and professional way.
This can leave you feeling as if everyone else received a handbook on how to navigate post-secondary school that you missed.
Even if you understand the academic content, you may feel as if you don’t quite understand the expectations that surround university life itself.
From the outside, people may see you as someone who lacks confidence, has poor organizational skills, or is not being proactive enough.
But internally, you are spending an enormous amount of energy not only learning the academic material but also trying to figure out the unspoken rules that you never had explained to you.
Fortunately, support is available. Academic coaching or neurodiversity-affirming therapy in Canada can help you understand the systems that were never built for your brain, identify what is creating barriers, and develop strategies that work with your brain rather than expecting you to simply “figure it out.”
In this section of our neurodiversity-affirming blog, we explore the unwritten rules of post-secondary education, the challenges for neurodivergent students, what this experience can look like, the hidden costs, and strategies for navigating university with greater clarity and support.
What Are the “Unwritten Rules” of University?
Universities and colleges usually involve a set of formal rules that students and employees are expected to follow.
These rules surround course requirements, assignment deadlines, academic policies, registration procedures, grading systems, and student codes of conduct.
Alongside these written and direct rules, there are unspoken rules and expectations, which involve the hidden norms and rules within the school environment that govern how students should act, communicate, think, and socialize.
Countless expectations are rarely explained directly, but societal norms still believe that we should know these norms without having them explained to us. There are several different unwritten rules within the university environment, and different neurodivergent individuals may experience challenges with different ones. Some of these challenges include:
When it is appropriate to email a professor
How formal an email should be
Whether you can ask a professor to explain something again
How often you should attend office hours
What questions are considered “good” questions
How to ask for clarification about an assignment
How to approach classmates
How study groups form
How to find academic support
When you are expected to ask for help
How much independence professors expect
What “participation” actually means
How much reading you are realistically expected to complete
How to interpret a syllabus
Which deadlines are flexible and which are not
How to prioritize several competing assignments
How to communicate when you are struggling
When you should contact an academic advisor
How to advocate for yourself
What accommodations or supports might exist
Who you are supposed to contact when something goes wrong
None of these rules are written within the application process, course syllabus, exams, or anywhere on campus. However, these rules still have a significant impact on whether or not you succeed in post-secondary school. If you don’t follow them, there are often consequences and missed opportunities, as they are still enforced, even though they are not directly provided to you.
For students who aren’t neurodivergent, these unspoken rules surrounding post-secondary school may become obvious as they observe how other students behave, or they go through the process of trial and error.
For neurodivergent students, however, these rules tend to be impossible and difficult to understand.
You may spend hours researching something even though other students simply ask the professor about the topic and receive an answer in minutes.
This can create the feeling that university is a secret system everyone else understands except you.
What Navigating Unwritten Rules Can Look Like
Every student may experience challenges in postsecondary school from time to time.
However, neurodivergent postsecondary students may face challenges when navigating unwritten rules, and although every neurodivergent student will have different experiences, some common experiences may include:
Not knowing who to contact when you have a problem
Feeling anxious about emailing professors
Spending excessive time writing or rewriting emails
Not knowing when it is appropriate to ask for clarification
Assuming you should already know how something works
Avoiding office hours because you are unsure what to say
Watching what other students do to figure out what is expected
Copying classmates' approaches without knowing whether they are actually appropriate
Struggling to interpret vague instructions
Feeling uncertain about how much work is “enough”
Not knowing how to prioritize multiple deadlines
Missing important information because it was communicated verbally
Forgetting administrative deadlines
Feeling overwhelmed by university websites and portals
Not knowing what resources are available
Avoiding support because you do not know whether you qualify
Feeling embarrassed about asking questions
Waiting until a problem becomes urgent before seeking help
Assuming other students are more competent
Feeling like you are constantly behind
Comparing yourself to students who appear more confident
Spending excessive time trying to avoid making a mistake
Feeling exhausted from constantly monitoring what you are supposed to be doing
Other students may perceive understanding these expectations as common sense. They may see a student struggling to understand these rules and think that they are lazy or need to become more organized and proactive.
Internally, the truth is that the student is navigating complicated challenges without a clear support system, and they need support and accommodations to succeed. Stigmatizing students with labels such as lazy can leave neurodivergent students wondering why they struggle to understand things that seem obvious to everyone else.
A student may experience a constant sense of uncertainty, which can affect how students participate in class, communicate with instructors, complete assignments, and feel included within their school community.
Why Can Unspoken Postsecondary Expectations Be Particularly Difficult for Neurodivergent Students?
Many universities reward students based on societal expectations that expect students to understand hidden assumptions and make social inferences. Students are often expected to understand these expectations through indirect communication, social cues, and assumptions about what they should already know.
If you are a neurodivergent student, the stress of trying to understand these assumptions and navigate a world that isn’t built for you can cause immense stress. You may be constantly trying to hide who you are to try to navigate school “correctly.”
Although every neurodivergent student will have different experiences, there are several reasons why these unspoken expectations may be difficult to navigate.
Having to Guess What Is Expected
In postsecondary school, many social and academic expectations are not explicitly stated. Students are expected to understand, and postsecondary school often assumes that students will independently figure them out by observing classmates, instructors, or other people around them. For example, students may be expected to know:
When to stop talking during a conversation
How formal an email to an instructor should be
When an instructor or classmate may need help
When it is appropriate to ask for help
When to ask questions in class
How often to communicate with an instructor
When feedback means that something needs to be improved
Appropriate behaviour in a classroom
How to communicate with instructors compared to classmates
The challenge for neurodivergent students is that they often process information differently and may need clear guidelines to understand these expectations. Knowing these rules without being explicitly told what they are may not come as naturally to them as it does to other students.
As a result, neurodivergent students may feel like they are constantly trying to guess the social and academic rules to keep up. This constant uncertainty can contribute to anxiety and increase stress throughout their postsecondary experience.
Executive Functioning Challenges
Executive functioning involves a set of mental processes that help you plan, pay attention, manage multiple responsibilities, remember information, and initiate and complete tasks to achieve your goals.
These executive functioning skills include planning, organizing, prioritization, memory, and time management.
If you are a neurodivergent student, you may experience executive dysfunction, which involves challenges with some or all of these skills. This can make it difficult for you to begin, continue, organize, or complete school-related tasks.
When executive functioning challenges are combined with unclear expectations around assignments, deadlines, studying, and productivity, post-secondary school can become even more difficult to manage.
For example, a student who struggles with task paralysis or has difficulty initiating, continuing, and completing tasks may also experience challenges if unspoken rules are involved. They may not understand where they should begin the assignment, which academic tasks are most important, what the professor expects from them, or how to prioritize the assignments.
They may also have difficulty determining how much time they should spend on an assignment or how much work is considered “enough.”
Experiencing the uncertainty that comes with unspoken rules while trying to get through postsecondary life can increase anxiety. A student may become worried about falling behind, receiving poor grades, disappointing their instructors, or facing academic consequences.
Masking and Trying to Fit In
Given that the postsecondary environment is not built for neurodivergent students, it is common for some neurodivergent students to use masking as a way to appear “normal” and fit in with social expectations.
Masking involves hiding your natural behaviours and communication styles, and it can look different from person to person. Some examples may include:
Forcing eye contact
Monitoring facial expressions
Rehearsing conversations before having them
Constantly analyzing social interactions
Changing communication styles to fit expectations
Pretending to understand when they are actually confused
Avoiding asking questions because they are worried about how others will perceive them
While masking may help to avoid rejection, judgment, and social exclusion in the short term, constantly hiding parts of yourself or changing who you are to fit in can become exhausting over time.
Long-term masking increases your risk for anxiety, neurodivergent burnout, and other emotional challenges. For example, it may lower your self-esteem and make it difficult for you to feel comfortable being yourself.
4. Academic Feedback is Unclear
Feedback in the university setting may be given in a hurry. As a result, the feedback may be vague or very generic. For example, you may receive feedback that you need to “participate more,” “show more effort,” or “apply yourself better.”
Even though these comments may seem straightforward to the professor who is giving feedback, they may not provide a neurodivergent student with enough clarity to understand what they need to change.
Without concrete examples or direct explanations, students may feel confused about how to improve their work.
This confusion can increase anxiety, especially when the student is concerned about their grades or worries that they may continue making the same mistake without understanding what they are doing wrong.
The Hidden Cost of Constantly Navigating Unspoken Expectations
Navigating unclear postsecondary expectations daily can leave you exhausted. You may constantly be monitoring what other students are doing, what announcements are important, or whether you did something wrong.
Instead of having the energy to learn and participate in the postsecondary environment, you may spend your energy trying to determine what is expected of you.
Compensation by Over-preparing
Unclear expectations can cause you to compensate by over-preparing. Over-preparing can look different for everyone who experiences it, but some common examples include:
Reading everything multiple times
Researching far beyond what is required
Rewriting assignments repeatedly
Preparing excessively for presentations
Overthinking emails
Creating elaborate organizational systems
Checking course websites repeatedly
Asking multiple people whether you are doing something correctly
Sometimes, over-preparation may make you feel as if you will get things right this time. However, in the long term, preparing too much can waste an enormous amount of time and energy.
You may finish an assignment feeling exhausted because you spent significantly more effort determining what “good enough” meant than actually completing the assignment.
Comparing Yourself to Other Students
University can also create an environment where imposter syndrome is more likely. You may compare yourself to other students. This can cause you to doubt your skills and fear being exposed as a fraud, despite proof of your success.
For example, you may see someone casually walking into class, chatting with their friends, submitting assignments, and moving through their degree, and think, “Why is this so easy for them? What am I doing wrong?”
However, comparing your internal experience with someone else's external presentation can create an unfair picture of your own abilities.
Just because this student looks successful on the outside, it doesn’t mean that they actually are successful.
You can see that they are talkative, but you may not see that they have family support, accommodations, and a great relationship with the same systems where you experienced trauma.
Neurodiversity-Affirming Strategies for Navigating University
Although you can’t control what the postsecondary school does and shouldn’t expect yourself to magically understand every unwritten postsecondary school rule, you can explore neurodiversity-affirming strategies that can reduce stress and uncertainty and make the invisible parts of university more visible.
Build Your Own University “Map”
University can be a challenge because information is kept in several different spaces. Consider creating one place, on your phone or laptop, where you store all the information about:
Academic advising
Accessibility or disability services
Counselling or mental health support
Library services
Tutoring or learning support
Financial support
Important academic contacts
Program requirements
Registration information
Course websites
Important policies
This will help by ensuring that you can read a rule if you forget, rather than trying to remember where everything is.
Clear Expectations
ADHD, autism, and other forms of neurodivergence may be considered disabilities under the disability laws within Canada and the United States of America.
Due to this, professors and schools as a whole are required to support students with accommodations or changes that help students with disabilities participate within the school environment.
These accommodations can include the ability to ask your professor to provide written and direct instructions about the work and rules. You can ask them:
“Which tasks are most important or urgent?”
“Could you write these down so I have a written view of what to prioritize?”
“How would you define success for this assignment?”
“Can we clarify deadlines and expectations?
Asking these questions can help to clarify what you need and reduce the anxiety that can occur when trying to guess what is expected. If you feel too anxious to ask for something verbally, consider writing the questions down and asking your professor to read them or sending them an email with the questions.
Ask, “Who Is the Right Person?”
If you have a problem with understanding someone, you don’t need to solve this on your own. There are supports available in postsecondary school to help clarify what is expected of you.
You can ask a professor, teaching assistant, academic advisor, student support professional, accessibility professional, librarian, or another appropriate person: “If I have an issue with this, who can I go to for support?”
Understanding who you can go to for support can make you feel less alone in your struggles.
Ask Questions Before the Problem Becomes an Emergency
If you have a question, the odds are that there are 10 other students in that class who have the same one. You don’t need to feel embarrassed to ask a question.
You also do not need to wait until you are completely overwhelmed to ask for clarity. If the instructions are vague, you can ask your professor if they could provide step-by-step instructions to clarify what they mean by a specific part of an assignment, or you could ask them if they can confirm whether your interpretation of the instructions is correct.
Asking questions in advance can prevent small levels of confusion from turning into larger problems in the future. It can also prevent consequences such as failing a class or being expelled from university.
Create External Structure
University often requires you to remember several different pieces of information at once. No brain is equipped to remember this much information without having support to do so.
If you need external support, you don’t need to feel ashamed to use it. Each individual will use different external support systems based on what works for them, but you can consider the following:
Calendars
Reminder systems
Visual schedules
Checklists
Assignment breakdowns
Weekly planning sessions
Course-specific task lists
Timers
Body doubling
Study groups
Accountability systems
These external systems can help create enough external structure that you do not have to rely on memory and executive functioning alone. These supports can also make it so the hidden expectations become more visible and more manageable to understand.
Stop Assuming Everyone Else Knows More
If you are confused, there is a possibility that someone else is confused too.
University classrooms contain many students with different experiences, backgrounds, learning styles, and support needs.
Someone looking confident does not necessarily mean they understand everything.
Give Yourself Permission to Learn the Rules
You may have spent years blaming yourself for the challenges you experience in the classroom. Self-compassion can help in this situation by allowing you to treat yourself the same way you would treat a friend in these situations.
Self-compassion here can look like understanding that you are not supposed to arrive at university already knowing everything about how university works.
You are not supposed to arrive at university already knowing how university works. Being kind to yourself also means understanding that postsecondary school challenges are the result of systemic barriers and not individual failure.
Support and Neurodiversity-Affirming Care
Neurodiversity-affirming coaching and therapy for unspoken postsecondary rules can provide support to help you explore why university feels more difficult for you and find strategies to make daily life as a postsecondary student more sustainable.
Book a Free Consultation with Blue Sky Learning
Have you ever looked around your university or college and thought, “Everyone else seems to know what they're doing”? Do you feel exhausted by hidden postsecondary expectations?
You’re not alone. Many neurodivergent students struggle in postsecondary environments that rely on unspoken rules.
At Blue Sky Learning, our neurodiversity-affirming therapists and coaches support postsecondary students in:
Understanding your neurodivergent learning profile
Building sustainable executive functioning strategies
Breaking down assignments and academic demands
Navigating unwritten academic expectations
Developing self-advocacy skills
Supporting communication with professors
Exploring accommodations and available supports
Building systems that work with your brain
Supporting sustainable academic success
With the right supports, you can navigate postsecondary school with greater ease and more authenticity.
Book a free consultation with Blue Sky Learning by emailing hello@blueskylearning.ca or visiting our website to explore what support could look like for you.
Comments