Autism Annex: The STAR Autism Support Podcast

Team Cash in College: Year One

August 01, 2023 STAR Autism Support
Autism Annex: The STAR Autism Support Podcast
Team Cash in College: Year One
Show Notes Transcript

Cash Frankhouser tells the story of his first year at Drexel University, where he studies civil engineering and participates in the Center for Autism and Neurodiversity.  Along with his parents Eric and Deb, Cash shares his triumphs, trials—and his incredible passion for mass transit. 

Transcript 

00:00:00 Johnandrew Slominski 

Hi everyone, welcome to a brand-new episode of the Autism Annex Podcast. I'm Johnandrew Slominski—glad you're with us. 

If you're a regular listener to the show, you’ll recall that back in the spring of 2022 we had a conversation with Cash Frankhousend his parents. If you wan to hear the full story, I recommend listening to the February 2022 episode of this podcast, too. You'll quickly see just how committed Eric and Deb are to Cash and how close they all are. Cash is very open and candid about living with autism, and the short version of that episode is that he was on the cusp of a very big life transition.  Here's Cash from last year with the crux of the matter: 

00:00:48 Cash Frankhouser 

So I am highly motivated to get out of state. I applied to three out of state colleges, Colorado School of Mines, which is in a in Golden just West of Denver, Hofstra on Long Island in New York and Drexel in Philadelphia. 

00:01:15 Cash Frankhouser 

And what's awesome about Drexel is that I actually have roots in that Eastern Pennsylvania area, and also it has support programs for people like me. 

00:01:28 Cash Frankhouser 

It's definitely a place that could make, in my opinion, a very good contender for my higher-level education. 

00:01:43 Johnandrew Slominski 

Not long after we spoke, he decided on Drexel University and last summer made the move from Austin, TX to Philadelphia, PA, as his mom, Deb points out exactly, precisely, 1440 miles from door to door. But more on that later. 

00:01:58 Johnandrew Slominski 

All year I've wondered how things at Drexel were shaping up for Cash, and you're about to hear the latest. You'll also hear his dad, Eric, mention very briefly that cash was nonverbal until the age of 4. Just a journey to consider as you listen to this brilliant, articulate calculus-crushing 19-year-old.  Stay tuned. 

00:02:22 Johnandrew Slominski 

Cash, Eric, Deb, thank you so much for making time to be on the podcast.  Cash, it's the middle of the summer. Where are you now, and what are you up to? 

00:02:34 Cash Frankhouser 

Right now I'm in Austin and I haven't been doing anything because it's just way too hot out there right now. So I am home all the way until the 25th of September. 

00:02:50 Johnandrew Slominski 

And Eric and Deb, as empty nesters for the last year, what's it like to have Cash back at home for a little while? 

00:02:58 Eric Frankhouser 

It's been great to have him back. 

00:02:59 Deb Frankhouser 

Yeah, it's been great and he's been hanging out and doing stuff and I'm going to have him do some work for me.  

00:03:08 Eric Frankhouser 

He's taking an unpreferred subject for cash is English, so instead of the high-pressure English at Drexel he is taking English through Austin Community College and a class that will transfer that Drexel will accept. So it's still stressing them out, but it's not as bad as our first semester of English, which induced lots of panic attacks. 

00:03:31 Eric Frankhouser 

But what was it like starting college? Like, think back to the summer when you went up into the practice program and then. 

00:03:38 Cash Frankhouser 

So in summer that was really easier for me than I thought it would be and that's really because I only had to do a handful of things. I went into general chemistry, which was basically all the basics of chemistry. Basically just the formal building blocks of chemistry, which was very easy for me to understand and the most advanced math course I could take for the summer term, was a course that I basically had gone through in high school, so I was crushing that one because I'm really quite a math person. 

00:04:21 Cash Frankhouser 

What really shocked me after summer was when I came back for the first term, how sharp the transition was from summer to fall because things started getting really crazy here because that's when English happened for the first time, which was so hard because as the pages I had, the papers I had to read were like 20 pages long. 

00:04:52 Cash Frankhouser 

And I'm not joking when I say 20 pages it was actually that long. And on top of that I had to basically write about the paper and take those 8000 words and make a summary about it in less than an eighth of those words. So that was really hard to do because there was so much information to pack it in. So this is what caused all the pack attacks. 

00:05:26 Johnandrew Slominski 

And that sounds like an incredibly tough transition and I'm very sorry to hear that it triggered some panic attacks for you. How did you work through that, though, and how did you find the support that you needed. 

00:05:38 Cash Frankhouser 

I had to get my parents involved with that numerous times. 

00:05:44 Eric Frankhouser 

So say managing panic attack by FaceTime is not for the faint of heart. Yeah, yeah. 

00:05:50 Johnandrew Slominski 

So with your parents on board helping you through. What did that start to look like, Cash? 

00:05:57 Cash Frankhouser 

So basically, anytime I worked on it basically just team worked when it came to taking all the pay paper and summing it up, we really team worked on that and they basically helped me try and pick out important points of an article and I basically wrote it down. 

00:06:22 Eric Frankhouser 

So I gotta back up a second. Give everything all this some context. So Cash, can you just quickly enumerate why you picked Drexel as a school? 

00:06:33 Cash Frankhouser 

So, to give context as to why it ended up there, there were actually many reasons and that was...  So frst off, there was the CAN program, which I will explain later.  Second off, a bunch of my dad's family lives in Pennsylvania and not only that, but I also don't need a car to get to any of them, which is also a big deal for me since I have a huge passion for mass transit. 

00:07:13 Cash Frankhouser 

So the mass transit, the family, and the CAN program are really the three big reasons why I moved there. 

00:07:24 Johnandrew Slominski 

You've mentioned that there was a big difference between summer school and the start of the fall quarter. Eric and Deb, from your perspective, what happened in that transition? 

00:07:36 Eric Frankhouser 

What they had is they had a summer program that only had two classes, 2 academic classes that allowed them to practice how to go to college before his first official quarter started. And so that was, Hey, here's how you sign up for classes. Here's how you find your buildings. You know, all those things that basically any freshman in the world would have benefited from. But they got to live in a dorm and find out, sort of how that was going to go. They got to figure out how to manage their classes, manage their time. There was a class called Adulting 101, I think, which talked to say, you know, students that needed help learning how to do mass transit or figure out how to get there. You know, school ID card. They did a really, really amazing job in prepping him for his fall quarter and it went incredibly well. 

00:08:28 Eric Frankhouser 

And then the rug came out at the start of the first true quarter, Cash's very first quarter at Drexel. Very good school with very hard classes on the civil engineering track was 16 ½ hours of credits. 

00:08:45 Johnandrew Slominski 

Yeah, that's a huge jump right from two classes to 16 1/2 credits. 

00:08:50 Eric Frankhouser 

Yeah, and they were, if memory serves English, 

00:08:53 Cash Frankhouser 

English, calculus 2, I think. And then Engineering 111, chemistry 101. 

00:09:10 Deb Frankhouser 

Real chemistry. Not the. Yeah, not the easy chemistry he did during the summer. 

00:09:16 Eric Frankhouser 

But those all had labs as well. 

00:09:18 Cash Frankhouser 

Because my next term would be in my computer course which I withdrew from, more context on that later and my biology course I withdrew in spring. 

00:09:31 Eric Frankhouser 

Right. So we went from kind of driving 20 miles an hour, you know, basically from the Disneyland car. It doesn't matter what you do, you get going to the right place, to all of a sudden, you know, driving NASCAR for the first time. While the practice was great and allowed him to be successful in that first true quarter, it was still a really, really, really big transition. 

00:09:57 Johnandrew Slominski 

So, it sounds like the practice was very helpful, but the transition to the full quarter was still a significant challenge. If you take us back to that time, Cash, you're also now living in the dorms, which is another experience altogether, right? 

00:10:15 Cash Frankhouser 

And that's really what made me the exact opposite of a stay at home person because everything was just so tight and I wanted to get out of it every day and I don't know a day which I didn't get on a mass transit vehicle because I just I wanted to stay out of that building as much as possible. It was so tight and the desks were tiny, tiny, which made me not know where to put anything, so that made it super cluttered. 

00:10:55 Cash Frankhouser 

I got used to it, but like the actual like keeping things clean did not get easier for me because I just it kept getting really I it was just always messy. 

00:11:11 Eric Frankhouser 

And we had a bit of a rough start to the semester. He got, what did you have? You had strep throat, right?  Got strep throat right off the right off the bat. That was our first panic attack. 

00:11:27 Cash Frankhouser 

That was a big one too. 

00:11:31 Eric Frankhouser 

But out of that, he learned how to go to the on campus doctor. His roommate actually helped him through that. But that was a call that started about 5:00 in the morning, I think, on FaceTime. He FaceTime his mom first. I was on tour, not at home, and I was in the western part of the country. They very kindly waited a couple hours till about 7:00 AM or so my time to join me in and then we basically just stayed on FaceTime with him all the way through his doctor's appointment. 

00:11:56 Deb Frankhouser 

Blow up his phone. 

00:12:02 Eric Frankhouser 

But then Cash stepped up to the plate. He went to the CVS on his own, got his own antibiotics and did everything and emailed his teachers and didn't miss a beat as far as academics. 

00:12:16 Johnandrew Slominski 

Yeah, not an easy start for sure, and I'm glad you're OK. You've been really open in talking about your panic attacks before. In addition to the experience with having strep right at the beginning of college, can I ask, how was your anxiety around this time? 

00:12:36 Eric Frankhouser 

From my perspective, Cash it was you were calling us saying oh my gosh, I thought I had everything done and now I realize. 

00:12:44 Cash Frankhouser 

That the exact opposite was true. I feel like that it was really basically everything that involved a lot of writing. So it was basically all the English papers and all the labs, basically anything that involves writing makes me very uneasy. 

00:13:13 Johnandrew Slominski 

Cash you clearly came up against plenty of unexpected challenges, whether that's the papers, the writing, strep throat, which, let's just say in combination, was an awful lot. Looking back, though, did anything go unexpectedly well for you? 

00:13:31 Cash Frankhouser 

Well, I think one thing unexpected that went well was both my parents and me getting an A in that English course. 

00:13:44 Deb Frankhouser 

That was, that was true, yeah. 

00:13:45 Cash Frankhouser 

So that was. But I think they single handedly earned that for me. 

00:13:51 Deb Frankhouser 

That’s not true, you definitely did all the work. 

00:13:52 Eric Frankhouser 

He did all the work. We didn't do any of his work for him. We helped him through it. He had to do all the work. 

00:13:58 Deb Frankhouser 

And he has, what's your GPA? Let's start with that good point. 

00:14:00 Cash Frankhouser 

So so the GPA I got for that term with the English course was, I think along the lines of 3.85.  Currently right now as it sits, it's 3.7. 

00:14:17 Eric Frankhouser 

So he made the Dean’s List the first two quarters. He missed the Dean’s list the final quarter by 4/10 of a point, but for the year he's on the Dean’s list. Other highlights would be what did you find to do? Like you didn't really bond to make friends, but what did you do? Like what are some real highlights of when you got out and were able to explore. 

00:14:41 Deb Frankhouser 

Like your parks and all of that. 

00:14:42 Cash Frankhouser 

So the biggest thing I feel like when it comes to who good things that happen with me being able to explore and really there was so much I could do in Philadelphia that I didn't even need a car to get to. 

00:15:04 Cash Frankhouser 

Some of those places were places in which, like huge urban parks, that if you walked far into them you wouldn't even be able to tell you're in the city. Yeah, so I could basically take the bus or train to go hiking within walking distance was also the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Which was also really fun and a highlight that came close to the end of the year is I actually led a group over to the art of Museum of Art and we went through some of it. 

00:15:54 Eric Frankhouser 

So we went from being scared beyond belief to actually being able to lead a trip to the museum. 

00:16:02 Johnandrew Slominski 

You know, that's pretty incredible that not only did you find some of your very favorite places in Philadelphia to go to, but you also had the opportunity to then share them with others. 

00:16:16 Cash Frankhouser 

Yeah. And I also the other places that I often took the train or bus to was like I've mentioned before, my dad's family. So I would, I would love riding the train train out there and I love spending time with and that's and then that's and then not also to mention, I took really long trips out of Philadelphia too, also by train. 

00:16:51 Johnandrew Slominski 

So I have to ask the master of mass transit: Where'd you go? 

00:16:56 Cash Frankhouser 

So the one there was one I took down to New York up to New York City City for spring break, which I rode New York Citys mass transit all by myself. 

00:17:10 Johnandrew Slominski 

So hold on, just so I understand, you are thousands of miles from home, all on your own riding the New York City mass transit system for the first time.  I think most people would be more than a little intimidated, but not you. 

00:17:26 Cash Frankhouser 

Because I'm really good at figuring out mass transit map maps, that was no problem for me. Not to sound arrogant, but my parents sometimes refer to me as a human GPS sometimes. 

00:17:46 Deb Frankhouser 

He is. Absolutely. There's a lot of other things that parents and you fear about your kids getting out, but him getting lost is not one of them. There are, you know, other things that he'll run up against but getting you know and figuring out if he does accidentally jump on the wrong train or whatever, him getting around or getting lost is not is not one of them.  He will find his way. 

00:18:10 Johnandrew Slominski 

And you also took a solo trip to Washington, DC on mass transit. I was wondering: How did that compare to New York? 

00:18:18 Cash Frankhouser 

Yeah, DC, I also went down to and I was able to navigate DC's transit fine.  Their transit are not as complicated as New York City.  But what was amazing about the DC trip is how many steps I took during that trip. I think it was like 20,000 or something like that.   

00:18:47 Eric Frankhouser 

And I would just poke in here because I’m going to brag on him. He grabbed the Acela on his own down to DC. Checked into hotel on his own and explored the town completely on its own. We didn't hear from him until he was checking to the hotel that night around 7:00 or 8:00, like when it started to get dark. 

00:19:08Deb Frankhouser 

And in New York, his spring break trip was we were there for spring break. 

00:19:13 Cash Frankhouser 

The reason I said talked about the mass transit is even though my parents were there, every bus and every train I went on all by myself. 

00:19:24 Eric Frankhouser 

He basically took advantage of the fact that I was working in in New York City for the week and happened to coincide with his spring break. So we had a free hotel room place for him to crash, so once again, he got himself on the Acela, and then I was gone, he would be gone. We didn't see each other till the very, very end of the day. I'd look at my phone and see who's in Brooklyn, or look at my phone and see he's down by the Statue of Liberty, but I never worried about it. 

00:19:50 Eric Frankhouser 

He was he navigated New York completely on his own. 

00:19:53 Cash Frankhouser 

Yeah, and the other thing that if all three of us did together was see Starry night, right, which Starry Night is in the modern Museum of Art there and. 

00:20:00 Eric Frankhouser 

Went to the museum. 

00:20:08 Cash Frankhouser 

I think you might know what it looks like once you see it. 

00:20:12 Johnandrew Slominski 

Oh, absolutely it's stunning. And in fact I think the MoMA is one of my very favorite museums of all time. Eric and Deb, I want to ask you about your experience having Cash so many states away for the very first time. Could you talk a little bit about what that was like for you? 

00:20:33 Deb Frankhouser 

Well, first of all, let me say that if you look on find iPhone, it's exactly 1440 miles. And so every time I look at my phone and look at how far away Cash was, it was 1440 miles, so. 

00:20:48 Eric Frankhouser 

The short answer is dropping him off and leaving him at school and going to the airplane was scary AF, as the kids say. It was one of the hardest things. I've done some hard things and it was walking out of the dorm and getting on a plane and leaving our son who was nonverbal to the age of four and, it was panic inducing. 

00:21:12 Eric Frankhouser 

Was, you know, it was, it was, it was really, really hard. And then the summer program was just so successful and he was so happy, and it went so well. And the first quarter hit like a giant tsunami and we were not ready for it and it was very, very hard. I travel for a living. Deb ended up taking a lot of phone calls or facetimes, or we’d try to tag team them because just emotionally, one of us couldn't carry that load all by ourselves. We tried to pass it off back and forth as best we can. 

00:21:48 Eric Frankhouser 

There were moments where I was like, I can't believe we're pulling this off. This is amazing. I'm so proud. And there are other moments like we've flown way too close to the sun. He has to. Come home right now. 

00:21:59 Deb Frankhouser 

And we’d ask Cash. Sometimes I would ask him, you know, Hey, is this are you even, and he does have some anxiety about getting on flights, is this bad enough that you feel like that you could go through the whole exercise of flying home? Is that is what is happening right now so bad that you are willing to go get onto a plane and fly home?  And ultimately that that never happened. So yeah. 

00:22:24 Eric Frankhouser 

Definitely persevered through it. Cash persevered through it. Keep in mind, he's the one doing all the work. We're for the first time in our lives, not able to hit a button and fix something or just like you know, I'm by nature, I solve problems. It's really hard to do when your child's not there. He had, like huge successes, like we talked about. Independent travel, incredibly good academic work, just you know, shopping for groceries on his own, cooking his own food. All of that, just like, you know, off the charts success.  Followed by, oh dad, I'm gonna take a trip to Harrisburg and see the Pennsylvania capital this weekend. Great son, have fun. 10 face times that day about how great it is the last facetime is I've got 3% of my phone life and all my batteries are dead and I have no way to show the conductor my train to get home. Massive panic attack. 

00:23:20 Johnandrew Slominski 

If you were to look back at the past year and how it progressed and how you navigated these ups and downs what do you think you might have learned as a family? 

00:23:33 Eric Frankhouser 

Every single quarter got a little bit better every single the first quarter was really, really, really hard. The second quarter was better and the third quarter was even better. We learned as a family what his limits were and Cash, to his credit, knew when he couldn't handle something.  And instead of the sort of, we're just going to do it anyway, force it, he knew he couldn't do a class.  He would drop the class, have to talk to his academic advisor and that's why he was so successful. He was smart enough to know to pick his battles. 

00:24:09 Deb Frankhouser 

And there's some things we learned, like, he can only he shouldn't be taking 16 hours, you know, in a quarter, that's just too many for him, and that we need to set some boundaries, you know about that and it's OK if it means it goes a little bit longer. 

00:24:25 Eric Frankhouser 

Is such a net positive, even though the scary parts are so scary, but the the net positive aspect is there without a doubt. And cash loves Philadelphia. He loves visiting my aunt Diane, my uncle Tom, my Uncle Sam. He loves going to his favorite park, what was called DASP, the Drexel Autism Support Program is now called the Drexel Center for Autism and Neurodiversity, or in Dragons CAN. 

00:24:54 Cash Frankhouser 

So it's literally the college version of my IEP in high school, right.  Because what it does is basically supports all of the people on the autism spectrum go to college, which is helpful for me since I am on that spectrum. What happens is I am required to meet with my supervisor at least once a week and we and for me what happens is we discuss basically, everything that I need to do for the week. What is due, do what are my projects are are basically and when we do that basically so I can reset reminders for when everything is due. 

00:25:44 Cash Frankhouser 

What I hopefully am trying to get all that is me not forgetting and doing stuff at the last second, or me worse off missing the due date completely, yeah. 

00:25:56 Johnandrew Slominski 

And there's more to the CAN program, right in terms of supports, including, I think, social skills. What was that aspect of the program like for you? 

00:26:06 Cash Frankhouser 

So what happens every week I would also go to a social event and we talk about stuff, we play games, basically do all the things that might help build relationships that that, that, by the way, is also kind of what helped build me to lead that group to the Art Museum. 

00:26:32 Deb Frankhouser 

Yeah, the social component was probably the slowest developing of all the things, but I cannot as a parent, speak any more highly the of the CAN program that I do. They are fantastic. They understand that parents are stressed about sending their kids and you know, so you get the case manager, but they also have a co-op specialist also so when he goes through the work co-op stuff, there is a CAN specialist for that who is sort of responsible for that part of it. So they sort of address all the different aspects of Drexel’s, you know, program. And they do provide the support that Cash is talking about, but also they talk to parents. They held family parents’ meetings, what, once a quarter at least to sort of so parents could get on and talk about it and just literally just, you know, ask questions, but also just talk amongst parents and ask questions and find out what's going on with kids. Because a lot of parents talked about the fact that their children didn't, weren’t checking in with them as often as Cash. You know we were getting oftentimes daily facetimes, but you know, parents, other parents weren't hearing from their kids for weeks. 

00:27:44 Cash Frankhouser 

Outside the panic attacks I might have also had a few depressed calls of me missing my parents. 

00:27:44 Deb Frankhouser 

Yeah, there were a few of those. So they, you know, they sort of, you know, they talked to us. Communicate with us if we felt like there was something we needed to have happen in terms of support, they were, you know, they were all over it and you know, and obviously they want them to be independent. That's the goal, so. 

00:28:10 Cash Frankhouser 

But you gotta do it yourself. 

00:28:14 Johnandrew Slominski 

So having now the wisdom of experience, I want to ask each of you what advice you'd give to families about to embark on a similar journey. Cash. Let's start with you. What would you want new college students to know, especially if they're on the spectrum? 

00:28:34 Cash Frankhouser 

Alright, so easy one off the top, don't procrastinate. That's not going to help you in any single way, because if you do, there's going to be more stuff piling on and it's  going to be miserable if you do. Break it up into chunks and do it every (day). Try to work on it, try to spread it all out, all out, which is again, I know it's really hard to actually try to because it's going to come at you and it's going to be really intimidating and you're going to want to push it off, but really, try your best to split it up over multiple days. 

00:29:24 Cash Frankhouser 

Second thing is be willing to ask for help when you need it. Like the people at college, in my experience, all they want to do is help me. So, so don't be nervous to ask for help, help apps if you're confused on something, then reach out and someone will help you on it. 

00:30:03 Johnandrew Slominski 

Such great takeaways there ,and I I love both the courage and the humility of asking for the help you need and encouraging other people to do the same. Eric and Deb, same question. For parents. What advice would you give? 

00:30:21 Deb Frankhouser 

There are a couple of I would say housekeeping things that I would tell parents of kids that have any kind of disability, IEP, you know. At least here in Texas, you can register with your VR services, your vocational services here. That's the Texas Workforce Commission and in Philly, and it's called the Pennsylvania VR. But you know every most states have on every state. I don't know. 

00:30:49 Deb Frankhouser 

But you know, so we did that. High school recommended it for us to do that which we did. And so they provide support in a lot of ways. They basically take over what is his school IEP. 

00:31:00 Eric Frankhouser 

So yeah, and I would just you know, the old joke location, location, location. Figure out what your child needs and what your child wants and what their desires are. Make sure they're driving the train on the school they pick, but give them the parameters that you know they need to be successful. We did that. We visited a bunch of schools. We only looked at schools that had successful or well known or well regarded autism support programs. Texas Tech was one of them. Colorado School of Mines had one.  We visited all of those schools and I think we all knew as a family that Drexel was going to be the correct school for Cash. 

00:31:47 Eric Frankhouser 

That doesn't mean it's the correct school for any other kiddo on the spectrum, but it's important that you look at what that school offers and if they offer the support that your kid needs to be successful, they're going to give them the tools needed, all of those things are incredibly important. 

00:32:04 Eric Frankhouser 

Go to parents weekend your very first semester and attend every little breakout session you can find. It was life changing, I don't know that Cash would have a place to live in his upcoming year, if we hadn't gone to parents weekend andearned that you're required to have a certain type of housing and that you better get your application in yesterday, all those kind of things. 

00:32:28 Deb Frankhouser 

For sophomore, yeah, for sophomore housing, we didn't know  that there was required sophomore housing at Drexel. We just presumed freshmen because that's what we were, that's what we knew. 

00:32:37 Eric Frankhouser 

You're also caught in the weeds, right, where it was not easy. So like thinking ahead to next year was sort of a luxury. We weren't doing that. We were thinking ahead to the next hour, many days. So, questions, questions questions, and make sure that the support program matches what your kiddo needs. I cannot overstate the importance of what my aunts and uncles did for Cash while he was there. They were his social network. 

00:33:10 Johnandrew Slominski 

That's incredible. 

00:33:11 Eric Frankhouser 

And that is another reason why the year was successful. When he had a really bad day, he could jump on a train to my aunt's house and swim or talk, or be fed 10 pounds of Hershey's kisses, or go to my uncle’s house, or go to my other uncle's place and check out the old-time train station or whatever. So. It's there's just so many things that go into it but make sure the things that your kid needs are going to be accessible in some form or fashion. 

00:33:42 Johnandrew Slominski 

And all the people that make up Team Cash, family friends, the CAN program at Drexel, they all really came together this year. Cash, as you're looking into the next year, your sophomore year in Philadelphia, what do you think you're looking forward to the most? 

00:34:01 Cash Frankhouser 

I feel like what I'm looking forward to to is not necessarily in college, but basically all of my outside of college active me like going like, seeing my favorite parks again, going back to see my dad's family. Like all of that was so fun to me, and I feel like all of that contributes to such as all of that is to why I'd say even with all the negatives, there is a net positive. It’s because of all the parts and all the family, and basically all of the independent travel that I get to do. 

00:34:43 Johnandrew Slominski 

Well Cash, Eric and Deb, it sounds like it's been a remarkable year and I am so grateful to you for sharing all the updates with us here on the podcast. 

00:34:56 Eric Frankhouser 

It’s great to alk about it, we love sharing, and of course, crazy proud of this guy right here. So you know, it's a heck of an accomplishment. 

00:35:06 Eric Frankhouser 

100% because. 

00:35:06 Deb Frankhouser 

100%. 

00:35:08 Eric Frankhouser 

It’s Team Cash, all the way everywhere, you know. There's a Pennsylvania Team Cash. There's a Texas Team Cash, there’s a Drexel Team Cash. You know, Cash said it better than any of us did.D on't be afraid to ask for help. 

00:35:23 Johnandrew Slominski 

And just so you know, if there’s room for a few more honorary members of Team Cash, I think you've got a few thousand podcast listeners behind you as well. Thanks again to all three of you. 

00:35:40 Johnandrew Slominski 

You’ve been listening to my conversation with Cash Frankhouser, on his first year college experience, along with his parents, Eric and Deb. 

00:35:49 Johnandrew Slominski 

The Autism Annex podcast was developed by STAR Autism Support. I'm Johnandrew Slominski. And if you'd like to travel back in time to catch up with cash before the leap to college, check out the February 2022 episode of the podcast. Thanks for listening. And until next time, take good care of yourself and one another.