Autistic people are shepherds of society (looking at the bigger picture, questioning everything, always solving problems), the rest are sheep (accepting status quo). I’ve seen many teams where most people are just ‘doing their jobs, can’t wait to go home’ but the team is held together by one autistic individual in the middle who really runs the whole operation.
I was “would do well if applied self and stopped getting distracted” when - things were too new, too hard, too boring, too distracting (not engaging), too much memorization of random facts and rules (history/geography/language).
I was “gifted and pleasure to teach” when - I got all the support I needed and I was shown that there was a system that was logical that I can understand if I just tried (math/physics/chemistry).