Hi all,
It's been awhile since I was on here. I'd posted back in April about a bad job situation. Well, it's now August, and I've had two more failed employment situations since then as well. :/
In May, I tried a job assisting youth at a residential home. This job appeared promising at first, and it was related to some prior work I've done before as a direct support professional working in people's homes, but I learned during on-the-job-training that lots of cooking from scratch was involved on all three shifts. Cooking hadn't been mentioned in either the job description or job interview; it was only during the week of training that I learned I had to do it. Due to executive dysfunction and a degree of dyspraxia, I'm not able to cook from scratch unless there are recipes literally listing every possible step of cooking. The residential home had some broad recipes, but they didn't list every step. As a result, I lasted at this job for only a week.
After that, in June, I decided to try substitute teaching again. I'd had some level of success doing that before, particularly as a paraprofessional. I'd actually been doing that until February of this year when I happened to come across a bad assignment with a student who pushed buttons, provoked me to a meltdown, and led me to quit. However, a new agency had taken over for this new school year, so I thought perhaps a fresh start would be good, and I also looked forward to assisting at some of the schools where I'd had success before.
Sadly, that turned out to be a disaster, too. I did a few small assignments last week and the week prior, helping out with the district's IT department, which I'd done before. However, on the first day of school, I went to a middle school as an extra help paraprofessional. The day seemed to go well. But I got a call the next day from the district coordinator who told me that, although she received no complaints whatsoever about my job performance, she said I needed to not tell any of the teachers that I had autism. I'd told one, within the context of helping people with disabilities. She smiled at me and everything seemed fine. But after the school day, apparently this teacher had a problem with my disclosure. When I received a call about it, I was very angry. I'd disclosed many times before at other schools during the previous school year, and no one ever had a problem with it. It's not illegal to disclose! And while I was talking to the coordinator, she agreed with that, but she kept insisting that I needed to be more careful about disclosing. She wasn't making any sense, I got very mad and told her that she and the teacher from that school cannot legally discriminate like that, and I hung up because I was about to have a meltdown again. They fired me for hanging up.
I'm 32, have two partial Master's degrees, always did well academically, but my employment history has all sorts of issues. There were some companies where I got references and good reviews as a direct support professional, and also some schools and references where I got good reviews as a substitute teacher paraprofessional, but they were also mixed up with lots of criticism for the things I didn't do well related to my diagnosis. With all this in mind, I got frustrated and threw away my resume and my diagnosis papers a few days ago...it just doesn't seem like I'm employable long-term. Whatever successes I have here and there, nothing ever works out long-term.
I've done voc rehab (with some success in another city), I've been through diagnosis and mental health, I've tried about everything available to me -- but it's apparently time to move on from employment. I'm not good enough at reading social cues, I struggle too much with conflict and responding appropriately to it, my executive functioning issues and visual-motor integration problems make me clumsy and inept in some practical tasks...it looks like it's just time to stay home.
Husband has been supportive, as always. We have been planning for awhile to have a child next year. In the meantime, I like the idea of staying at home while he works. I have to give up some hobbies, like basketball card collecting and cable television, to help conserve money, but I can still read and write on the Internet, read library books, listen to my music CDs, help out in church, play Wii games, keep the apartment clean, and so forth.
Anyway, this is the part about being an Aspie that I hate most. It's very hard to talk to people about jobs because it's so difficult for people to understand how someone with above average cognitive skills can keep failing like this. I'm just glad I'm female in this context because it's at least acceptable to be a home-maker, especially in the context of my faith.
All right, that's all for now.
It's been awhile since I was on here. I'd posted back in April about a bad job situation. Well, it's now August, and I've had two more failed employment situations since then as well. :/
In May, I tried a job assisting youth at a residential home. This job appeared promising at first, and it was related to some prior work I've done before as a direct support professional working in people's homes, but I learned during on-the-job-training that lots of cooking from scratch was involved on all three shifts. Cooking hadn't been mentioned in either the job description or job interview; it was only during the week of training that I learned I had to do it. Due to executive dysfunction and a degree of dyspraxia, I'm not able to cook from scratch unless there are recipes literally listing every possible step of cooking. The residential home had some broad recipes, but they didn't list every step. As a result, I lasted at this job for only a week.
After that, in June, I decided to try substitute teaching again. I'd had some level of success doing that before, particularly as a paraprofessional. I'd actually been doing that until February of this year when I happened to come across a bad assignment with a student who pushed buttons, provoked me to a meltdown, and led me to quit. However, a new agency had taken over for this new school year, so I thought perhaps a fresh start would be good, and I also looked forward to assisting at some of the schools where I'd had success before.
Sadly, that turned out to be a disaster, too. I did a few small assignments last week and the week prior, helping out with the district's IT department, which I'd done before. However, on the first day of school, I went to a middle school as an extra help paraprofessional. The day seemed to go well. But I got a call the next day from the district coordinator who told me that, although she received no complaints whatsoever about my job performance, she said I needed to not tell any of the teachers that I had autism. I'd told one, within the context of helping people with disabilities. She smiled at me and everything seemed fine. But after the school day, apparently this teacher had a problem with my disclosure. When I received a call about it, I was very angry. I'd disclosed many times before at other schools during the previous school year, and no one ever had a problem with it. It's not illegal to disclose! And while I was talking to the coordinator, she agreed with that, but she kept insisting that I needed to be more careful about disclosing. She wasn't making any sense, I got very mad and told her that she and the teacher from that school cannot legally discriminate like that, and I hung up because I was about to have a meltdown again. They fired me for hanging up.
I'm 32, have two partial Master's degrees, always did well academically, but my employment history has all sorts of issues. There were some companies where I got references and good reviews as a direct support professional, and also some schools and references where I got good reviews as a substitute teacher paraprofessional, but they were also mixed up with lots of criticism for the things I didn't do well related to my diagnosis. With all this in mind, I got frustrated and threw away my resume and my diagnosis papers a few days ago...it just doesn't seem like I'm employable long-term. Whatever successes I have here and there, nothing ever works out long-term.
I've done voc rehab (with some success in another city), I've been through diagnosis and mental health, I've tried about everything available to me -- but it's apparently time to move on from employment. I'm not good enough at reading social cues, I struggle too much with conflict and responding appropriately to it, my executive functioning issues and visual-motor integration problems make me clumsy and inept in some practical tasks...it looks like it's just time to stay home.
Husband has been supportive, as always. We have been planning for awhile to have a child next year. In the meantime, I like the idea of staying at home while he works. I have to give up some hobbies, like basketball card collecting and cable television, to help conserve money, but I can still read and write on the Internet, read library books, listen to my music CDs, help out in church, play Wii games, keep the apartment clean, and so forth.
Anyway, this is the part about being an Aspie that I hate most. It's very hard to talk to people about jobs because it's so difficult for people to understand how someone with above average cognitive skills can keep failing like this. I'm just glad I'm female in this context because it's at least acceptable to be a home-maker, especially in the context of my faith.
All right, that's all for now.
! No one had any right to complain to you about telling someone you are autistic. Autistics lack empathy and social skills??? It seems like it's the non-autistics missing those things, doesn't it. That was horribly rude and cruel of them, not to mention illegal. Anyhoo, hope though it was just one of those things where it seems the Universe, Providence, or God, or whatever (Luck?) has better plans for you. 
Good luck! And sorry you had such a bad time with the school people
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