College/University | Andrea's Buzzing About:

WE MUST CREATE CHANGE

9 January 2015 at 4:37 (Abuse, Accessibility, ADD/ADHD, Advocacy, Attribution Errors, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Communication, Community, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Developmental disabilities, Diversity, Epidemiology, Family, Inclusiveness, Injustice, Learning Disabilities, Love & Acceptance, Neurodiversity, Non-verbal communication, Social Justice, Teaching/Tutoring, Weather, Work / Employment)

I was going to call this my “Hope For 2015”, but that is so passive and useless. Anybody can – and lots of people do – post warm, fuzzy notes with Hopes for the New Year, and others click and share. Lovely.

But this is NOT all warm & fuzzy. It’s literally dead serious (with many murdered throughout the year), and quite often blunt, because I am blunt at times. It’s also a call to a change of perspective for some of you.

Deal. Think about it. I’m not a lone voice. Click and share.

MY CALL TO ACTION IS FOR YOU TO READ THIS THROUGH, THINK, AND SPEAK UP. ALL YEAR LONG.

And the next year and the next.

This isn’t about some stranger, or Those Other People, or “That Kind”.

Children with disabilities or other differences are not diseased or broken. The same is true for adults. Yes, those “poor, little disabled children” grow up into disabled adults. Gee, so where’s the concern now? It sure isn’t at work; in the U.S. general unemployment is at 5.3%, but for disabled adults it’s twice that at 10.8%.

Nor are autistic or ADHD children some kind of modern mystery; millions of such adults have been around for decades, just unrecognized for lack of diagnostics. Most of us are profoundly relieved to find out Why. We still have to deal with the details, but that’s easier when you know that not all your difficulties are from some kind of moral failing, or from a lack of trying (and trying, and trying).

WHAT, YOU NEVER HAD KIDS LIKE “THAT KIND” IN YOUR CLASSES? YOU KNOW WHY?

Some were kept at home, because until passage of the IDEA in 1975, US law did not require public schools to teach everyone.

Some were warehoused in institutions, badly treated, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and oft uneducated.

But many of us were there; how we struggled through school and life, without accommodations or understanding, and often the target of bullying by peers and even school officials.

Untold numbers of women and men just knew themselves inexplicably “a bit odd”, and did best they could; some succeeding, others not so well.

At worst are those who not only lacked resources, but were shunned by society’s classism, ableism, racism and sexism, and (if still alive) are found among the imprisoned, derelicts, addicts, abused and enslaved populations.

YOUR CHILDREN AND EVEN COLLEGE STUDENTS WILL LEARN DIFFERENTLY, SO YOU MUST ADJUST

We are neither inherently stupid nor incapable of learning. Learning differently means teaching differently. Find what works. Everyone has limits, but a consistent lack of success means you should use another method, as well as more time. Sometimes the learning is highly irregular in pace. Tie learning to interests to motivate your children and students.

Also, be aware that sometimes the “simple basics” may be entirely bypassed by some students who leap to master higher concepts, albeit often forever struggling with those seemingly “simple basics”. People are humans, not robots. Learning is not always linear.

COMMUNICATION IS NOT JUST SPEAKING

Never assume that just because someone is nonverbal they cannot communicate. If you’re not getting their messages, then *you* are doing something wrong. Nor should you assume that because someone is nonverbal that they cannot understand what people say (though the processing may sometimes be delayed). Nor assume that because someone has been nonverbal for years that they’ll never speak. And damn, will you get an earful.

INCONSISTENCY IN DAY-TO-DAY ABILITIES IS FRUSTRATING FOR ALL, AND NOT A CHOICE

Importantly, just because someone is able to speak or do a task one day, that does not guarantee consistent results. It’s the nature of disabilities — regardless whether considered mental or physical – all involve the brain. Brains are funny things, and many of us have a few buggy Beta-version programs in our wetware. It’s frustrating as hell for all involved.

But don’t assume the “could-then-can’t-now” is intentional. “Oh, he can hear me when he wants.” “Well, you could solve those equations just fine yesterday.” I can guarantee that after a lifetime of such, ridiculing people and punishing them for things they cannot help only increases performance stress.

While that stress might increase focus from sheer terror, it often squelches overall functioning. (Do you want me to listen to you, or try to recall yesterday’s process, or slowly figure it out on my own? I can only do one — if my stomach will stay down.)

TRAMPLE THE TROPES

Ignore the media tropes and centuries of religious hype: disabled people are neither inherently amoral, soulless and evil, nor are they infinitely happy, friendly and angelic. People are people. A few will be nasty bits, some will be profoundly good sorts, and the rest are just ordinary folks who get mad, sad and glad, who screw things up sometimes, and who will also serve others selflessly despite bearing more abuse than anyone should.

We are definitely not incomprehensible, incomplete, little autism-puzzle-pieces, unloving, unlovable, or uncaring.

We are whole people with all the same cares, needs and wants as all humans. Beware — disability happens to anyone at any time. We aren’t a Them, and YOU can be among the world’s 15% in just one day. We are all Us.

STOP “TEACHING TOLERANCE”

Because tolerance means putting up with something one doesn’t really like, or that doesn’t really belong. We want full-fledged ACCEPTANCE.

Nor should we only be acceptable if we can somehow “overcome” our differences enough to pass for Normal Real People. Trying to “pass” all the time is exhausting, and invariably breaks down, oft resulting in the [supposed] Normal Real People assuming that one is lazy, stupid, crazy, all the above, or worse.

Training children for hours a day how to artificially perform “acting normal” does not serve to help them learn how to function best in the world. Yes, of course teach good manners, social and work skills. But suppressing every twitch of one’s natural being adds to stress, making everything else yet more difficult. This is especially when performing like a “normal person” means not doing the harmless things that reduce stresses.

STOP THE BLAME

I must call out the terrifying, unaddressed assumption which underlies so much daily trauma: “The reason the disabled [children] are targeted by bullies is because they are perceived as being weird”. Despite the pervasiveness of this social theme in society, most people are functionally unaware of it, all the while instilling in their Normal People children the same message. Normal People children need to act normal, and not act like That Kind. After all, that’s how the Normal People know the others are That Kind, who’s Us and who’s Them.

But it’s the disabled and different who are taught, over-and-over-and-over that not only is it their fault for behaving or looking weird, BUT ALSO if they weren’t so weird, well then they wouldn’t be bullied. “Quit being so weird! Just say No! Just say Stop.”

Just say BULLSHIT. Because this is blaming the victim. The problem is not that everyone isn’t the same, the problem is that there are bullies.

Even worse, blaming the targets actually empowers the bullies, because the social story says it’s the victim is the one who is acting wrong, so it’s not really the bully who is to blame.

Let’s just top off all that existing anxiety and depression with the trauma of trying to seek justice, but being told again that, “Well it’s your fault, you know. Attracting attention by being weird, and bugging people. You need to quit making trouble now. You already take up too much of our time with all of your “special” needs. Quit whining and go deal with it. — But no fighting, because we’ll know it was you who started it.”

By the way, it’s not “just a kids at school” thing that everyone will “grown out of”. It continues on through college, and happens at work, too.

YOU CAN’T WALK IN THE LITTLE BOY’S SHOES;

THEY’RE FLOATING DOWN-RIVER

It is NEVER acceptable to murder disabled children. Nor should these repeated, horrifying events be considered “understandable” or “excusable”, with the murderers being pardoned just because their son or daughter had a disability.

Increasingly more prevalent in social media, the crime becomes insidiously deemed more and more acceptable. Murderers re-cast themselves as martyrs, acquiring champions to their cause. Throughout repeated blog posts and news stories, they bemoan how taking care of disabled children is just too unbearable, they had to take care of them every day of the week, there was never any relief or help. (Even though there was.) Cue the groupies’ hand-wringing and protests upon the villains’ behalf: “Oh but won’t you walk in their shoes, how they’ve given up their lives, this wasn’t at all what they wanted.”

For in true sociopathic fashion, the poor, long-suffering parents revel in the attention, announcing to the world – sometimes ahead of time — what they have done, and all the while describing themselves as the victims. The dead children (young or adult) are unwanted, and deemed unwantable, less than human just because they couldn’t speak, or needed medical treatments, or used a power chair, or didn’t play with their toys the “right way”, or wore adult diapers … No one would want to live like that; the thing’s better off dead. And what of the groupies? Well, where do you think people get such terrible ideas that it’s okay to kill one’s own children?

ENOUGH WITH THE “DISABILITY INSPIRATION PORN”.

Quit using those heart-tugging videos, walk-a-thons, telethons, and other grand-society functions to win your supposed Cosmic Brownie Points for giving us your pity. Please stop dumping upon us the largesse of your unwanted rags (so Victorian, so passé), or creating useless functions requiring us to serve as targets of unwanted helpful-helper-helpiness for your ego-boo.

Get disabled people out of “sheltered workshops”. Yes, people need work they are suited to. But the segregation and token sweatshop “wages” are an embarrassment and humiliation to all.

YES, CHILDREN GROW UP.

YEP, STILL DISABLED, BUT NOW ADULTS

Do not assume your children will remain permanently childish and incapable — they mature on their own timelines. Allow adults to be adults. Support their needs and interests, but neither dress them like children, nor expect them to live their lives in naïve pre-puberty stasis, without adult desires for socializing with adult peers, life-long learning, mastering skills for some kind of job (even if that job is “just socially productive work” rather than traditional work), and yes, having a love life, however that may be expressed.

YES, PEOPLE ALSO NEED ACCOMMODATIONS;

THAT DOESN’T MEAN “CURE”

Most disabled or different people are not looking for cures to magically change them into someone else, some kind of fantasy Normal Real person that their families wanted instead. Our differences may result from physical events, by random mutation, and / or genetics. Your genetics. We are family. I’m Me, and I like being Me. If you somehow changed all the differences in my brain, I wouldn’t be Me anymore, with all my quirks and abilities.

Of course it will be great to find a means for preventing migraines, epilepsy, fatal medical conditions, et cetera. But it’s also a sad fact that some people have been so convinced of their undesirability as disabled human beings that they can only see “cure” as a means to being an acceptable Normal Real Person. (Worst of all, some people commit suicide because they’ve been taught to hate themselves, as useless and unwanted.)

But what’s really alarming is all the fund-raising, talk, research, and work going on today to eliminate entire kinds of peoples. I’m talking about the thousands of selfish individuals and sociopaths who believe that anyone with neurological or morphological differences should not exist at all, because That Kind takes up too much time, money, and resources.

That’s not “looking for a cure” – that’s eugenics and euthanasia, the same ideas that led to the Nazi Aktion T4 program and other horrors. (In my youth, the state hospital was still in the regular habit of sterilizing people. Had I been institutionalized, I might well not have had my lovely children and grandchildren.)

Yes, we want assistance, we want things that help us achieve what we want in life. Getting the things one needs to learn effectively, to move about, attend to their own needs, to work, to play, to be a part of the community, to have lovers or families. These things should not be seen as extraordinary, special, absurd, or a waste of money, just because they aren’t the same kinds of things used by other people. 15% of the people in the world have disabilities. That is a lot of humanity, and many are uneducated, abused, neglected, avoided, or shut away, depriving the world of incredible amounts of untapped abilities and talents.

CALL OUT BULLSHIT. REQUIRE ACCOMMODATIONS. DEMAND ACCEPTANCE.

MAKE IT SO.

4 Comments

It’s not all strawberry versus chocolate ice cream!

6 October 2012 at 19:48 (Cognitive biases, College/University, Communication, Critical Thinking, Epidemiology, Food, Logical fallacies, Politics, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Vaccines)

Now, I am a mint-chip ice cream (-loving) person myself, and dismiss vanilla* for being merely useful as an ingredient base for other treats. And of course, I’m entitled to my opinion. In turn, you all are free to express your own opinions about flavours of ice cream, including your total disinterest in eating ice cream.

(* It may be that I lack some kind of flavour receptor[s] to fully perceive vanilla/vanillin, because no matter what sort of sweet or quality of material, vanilla has never seemed to be particularly interesting or tasty to me.)

But there are opinions and there are other opinions, and Patrick Stokes, Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University, teaches his students that they are not entitled to have their opinions.

In a recent article, “No, you’re not entitled to your opinion” he immediately acknowledges this sounds a bit harsh, but explains that the point of a philosophy class is learning how to create sound arguments, instead of leaning on beliefs, emotions, and misconceptions of what we think we know. Although opinions may be owned or expressed, not all opinions are equally valid.

Stokes skillfully distinguishes between the different things that fall under the vast umbrella of opinion:

But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

It’s the conflating of being able to express one’s tastes, preferences, and beliefs — and then expecting those statements to be taken as seriously as fact-based, logically-sound argument — that is the major problem.

It is a major problem in everyday discourse, and in heated debates within and between countries, and it is an especially prevalent problem in various media. There’s the tired trope* of “getting balance” by interviewing “both sides” even though there are often more than just two sides (life is messy that way), and the problem that the opinions of both “sides” do not necessarily carry the same factual value (life is reality-based that way).

(* More on the problems with the news media and “balance” in my earlier post, “Both Sides Now”.)

Not all the information one finds or hears is equally valid. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”

Stokes further explains:

The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.

Wait a minute — can’t anyone have an opinion about anything? Of course!

Can’t anyone express their opinion about anything? Of course!*

(* Although it really helps if people take the time to ensure their protest signs are properly spelled and punctuated. Otherwise much hilarity ensues and one ends up with derisive and/or dismissive infamy rather than being taken seriously.)

But what unfounded opinion cannot do is carry equal weight when discussions require expertise.

Back to our ice cream opinions: I know that vanilla bean pods come from a variety of orchid, because that’s a tidbit of horticultural knowledge and I am a horticulturalist. Being a foodie, I have long known that vanillin was synthesized as a less-expensive alternative for use in commercial products, and that it is the primary ingredient in the artificially-flavoured vanilla extract sold at the market.

BUT, I cannot be an expert witness or speaker on vanilla.

Likely, neither can the majority of you.

Not on the cultivars, growing, agri-ecology, processing from raw material to diverse flavouring forms, business economics, grower’s social justice issues, distribution and packaging, artificial synthesis of vanillin, culinary chemistry, historical usage, future trends of natural versus artificial flavouring … none of that stuff. Nor anything else that didn’t come to mind, albeit I was able to come up with a longish list just because I have that horticultural background and was able to extrapolate what accessory topics could be included.

You are entitled to have and to express your opinion, but that does not mean it must to be taken as serious fact; pointing that out is not being disrespectful to you as a person — it means that your opinion is insufficient to the case.

‘Personal Opinion’ is not some cloak of factual immunity that one can wear to suddenly become a creditable expert.

(Oh, and speaking of public persons with opinions but who are not experts, guess who came along to comment upon Stokes’ article …)

Comments Off on It’s not all strawberry versus chocolate ice cream!

“SORRY, OUT OF ORDER”

2 August 2012 at 21:47 (Attribution Errors, College/University, Learning Disabilities, Mathematics And Statistics, Teaching/Tutoring)

A Facebook friend of mine posted this problem for folks to solve:

90 – 100 ( 6 + 3 ) = ?

Answers included 0, -90, 810 and -810. The correct answer is -810. Some of you are sniggering at the errors — quit that!

Now, if you didn’t get -810, hang on …

Why do people have problems solving math equations? It’s not that they’re stupid, but that:

they get confused;
are anxious;
the teaching was boring;
they’ve moved around and have missed bits here and there;
they’ve learning difficulties;
the teachers are trapped following the text and the text is a mile-wide and an inch deep and not in sensible order;
the teaching made no sense or was based upon “just memorise how to do this process” instead of understanding why or when to use what methods;
… and sometimes people have problems for several reasons.

Hey folks, don’t feel badly if you got it wrong. I had trouble with the maths in school, too! I didn’t even learn all my multiplication tables until 8th grade. You know what? It’s not fatal; I slowly went through some pre-College Algebra classes at my local community (junior) college, and filled in the confused bits, gained confidence, and eventually went on to introductory Calculus.

And I still have to pause and think on some of my multiplication facts, and still have days when I’m prone to reversing numbers. But those difficulties don’t detract from the fact that I am able to learn math, and they don’t mean I’m stupid. (“Take THAT, ‘Mr. Dull’!” she says, shaking her fist at a middle-school algebra teacher.)

But now I work with students in 7th – 12th grade math, and you know what? Good news! It makes a lot more sense when you go back and review it as an adult! You can fill in the parts you missed or didn’t understand, and get a better idea of how it all fits together. Honestly.

Math no longer terrifies me, even though my brain still has that glitch that prevents me from memorising the quadratic formula. But I never use the quadratic formula in real life.

I DO use ratios in real life, for example, adjusting a recipe, figuring how much stuff to put on my garden, planning travel time… And I’ll show you how to do those really easily, without getting all tangled up in multiple steps, and you don’t need some mysterious “intuitive feel for how to set the problem up”.

.~#~.

MEANWHILE, In our problem above we use Order of Operations. I tell my students, “You use Order of Operations every day! You put your tee on before you put on your shirt, and you put on your jacket last.”

The problem above is solved like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

Welcome to the Ivory Tower, Internet

20 August 2009 at 4:59 (College/University, Critical Thinking, OMG, Teaching/Tutoring)

My daughter shares this story:

Research is to English majors what coffee is to the general college student. Essays are ramen and reading material naps, if you’re curious. (Note that literal naps often overlap with these figurative ones.) So caught up in the glee of primary sources and minutia of MLA, we forget that not all of our academic brethren are blessed with this area of education.

Also, people are stupid.

So I’m sitting in my philosophy professor’s office, chatting breezily about feminist interpretations of Aristotle and (conventionally enough) existential crises in modern films. A flustered gentleman comes crashing through the doorway pleading for an audience. She invites him in, and he begins his protestations before I have a chance to vacate and thus offer privacy.

“Why did I get an F on this paper?” he whines, gesturing to the scarlet letter like it were the very knife Brutus plunged into Caesar’s back.

“Because it was a research paper,” she answers, “and you only had one source.”

“And?”

“And it was Wikipedia.”

“And?”

“And that’s not a credible source.”

“Nu-uh!” he cries, despondent in the face of life’s cold injustice. “I know it was! I posted the information myself.”

Seated on the bridge of the Enterprise, Captain Picard does a pained face-palm

4 Comments

Comfort-able

15 November 2008 at 18:55 (ADD/ADHD, Advocacy, Arthritis, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Coping strategies, Doctors, Dyslexia, Eye contact, Family, Hypermobility, Love & Acceptance, Migraine, Pain, Prosopagnosia, Stress, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder), Tourette's / tics, Work / Employment)

For the first time in months and months — far longer than it should have been, but there we are with the insane busyness of life — a friend and I got together at her house for dinner.

“You look like you’re finally relaxing,” she said after I’d been there a little while, and we decided to not wait in conversational limbo for the third person (who never did show). “You were so stiff when you came in,” and she made reference by some expression (that now escapes memory) of how I was indicating being relaxed by behaving more normally.

Not “normally” in the er, Normal (neurotypical) sense, but me-normal, where I felt comfortable enough to sit and rock slightly, to not worry about making eye contact, to get a bit flappy at funny events or when agitated, to shed the pent-up motor tics. To just be me. To “let my hair down” and to set aside unnecessarily restrictive social norms. To eat my chicken and rice with a fork, and the still-crisp cooked green beans neatly with my fingers (as one does with fries or asparagus), because her table was Nicely Set for our aesthetic enjoyment and yet we weren’t standing on formality.

We talked about typical stuff, like the foibles of spouses, the concerns for college-age kids, the drudgery of eternal home repairs, the quirks of cats, of temperamental computers and the thrills of new mobile phones, of career changes, and the vicissitudes of economic times.

We also talked about atypical stuff, like the difficulties of college education and employment when dealing with various educational/neurological disabilities, of managing arthritis pain and joint issues, of the wonders of TMJ bite blocks, of dealing with the profound cluelessness of the general public for the extreme pain of migraines and how hospital Emergency (A&E) is a horrid place to physically be when in the throes of gut-wrenching-head-splitting pain and the snarkiness of some medics therein.

Crip chicks like we don’t diss on our disabilities, we diss from our disabilities. It’s not poor-pitiful-me whining but the healthy pitch-a-bitch whining from someone who understands, even when our respective glitches are not all issues shared in common.

I need more social life, but there’s so much of ordinary socialising that I find enervating.

I’m not antisocial; the interest in socialising is not a binary form, where one either does it or doesn’t do it. But over the years I have learned what I actually enjoy (as opposed to what one is “supposed to” enjoy). My intro/extroversion levels vary wildly because some kinds of social interaction are nothing but draining, while others leave me (if not physically) at least spiritually recharged.

I’m not fond of socialising by large quantities of people all chattering with each other in the same room, where the conversations get all blenderized from my Auditory Processing Disorder, to where I end up trying to tease apart sequential fragments of half a dozen unrelated conversations, fruitlessly trying to follow just one voice or two, and reasoning out from fractured context what some of the mis-heard words could possibly be.

I’m not fond of socialising where the content gets watered down to less-consequential subjects of chit-chat, by dint of less privacy and some unwritten code of how long one is “supposed” to entertain time with another guest before moving on, and by the other unwritten rules of conversational quid pro quo, where my monologuing to fully deliver a story complete with back-explanations and thesis statements delivered at the end is discouraged in favor of witty repartee.

I like the time to mutually share and analyse our respective news, and the real, content-laden answers to our mutual questions of, “How are you?” The real “How are you?” question, not the fluff of “How-are-you?” or “How-was-your-day?” that is the social minefield trying to distinguish between polite interested query of acquaintances and polite disinterested query of associates (that latter social coin that is all form and no content), or the mental quagmire of trying to answer “How-was-your-day?” when the question is so vague and our answers are so experientially linear and tangential instead of whatever the hell others were expecting.

I was comfortable — we both were comfortable — because together we had created a social environment that enabled our mutual comfort. It was an agreement that had been developed by long familiarity and by various conscious decisions over decades, to create a friendship that fulfilled our individual needs over the culturally-proscribed forms. True friendship enables positive interactions, and supports needs and affirms and enriches our lives.

Here’s a toast to real friendships!

5 Comments

Wanted: Planet with longer rotational period

13 October 2008 at 5:02 (ADD/ADHD, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Sleep, Tourette's / tics, Work / Employment)

It’s not just me. A lot of people whom I know in person or via the internet have complained about near-futility of trying to get to sleep earlier at a “reasonable” time, meaning one that would give a person enough hours of sleep before having to rise for the next day.

My children and I can’t get to sleep before 11 p.m. unless we’ve been hit by dire viruses, or else have simply stayed up the entire night. In contrast, hubby can retire early and then go from laying down to snoring in less than five minutes, and we’re all mystified at how he manages this! Obviously, such a somnolent physiology was not something our children inherited from dad.

While our young adults have endeavoured to find college classes that start later in the morning (not unlike the majority of college students out there), I myself do not have the luxury of that option. I’m expected to be at the school at 7:30, which means leaving at 7:00. (In reality, I need to leave by 7:10, but I keep aiming for 7:00 to give me the necessary buffer in my nutz ADHD distractedness.) Given the zombie-like staggering arthritic stiffness and mental sluggishness of my morning routine, I need to roll out of bed at 6. Now that really isn’t an unusual time for working folks to get up, but my problem is that for most of my life I’ve not been able to get to sleep until midnight, even when I’ve put myself to bed by 10 p.m.

Part of that delay was due to the fact that Read the rest of this entry »

12 Comments

Backwards Symphonies

16 August 2008 at 1:57 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, College/University, Home stuff, Hyperacussis, Migraine, OMG, Pain, Sleep, Special Education, Stress, Teaching/Tutoring, Tinnitus, Uncategorized)
Tags: Uncategorized

“It’s been a long week — I bet you’re ready to decompose.”

I stared at my husband, blinking through the mental fog of too-many-jobs-not-enough-sleep.

“I’m not ready for the compost pile yet,” I replied, trying to figure out what his latest malapropism was meant to be.

“Or whatever the term is,” he added.

My brain finally catches up. “Decompress,” I answered.

What an incredibly long week. I can’t remember the last time I had one like this, and in my over-busy world that’s saying something.

Wednesday last week I had a pneumonia vaccination, which left my arm so sore I couldn’t take off my jogbra without assistance, nor even get my hand up to head level until the weekend. Moreover, Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments

The Crystal Ball Crack’d

7 August 2008 at 17:42 (ADD/ADHD, Advocacy, Attribution Errors, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Communication, Community, Developmental disabilities, Family, Learning Disabilities, Love & Acceptance, OMG, Parenting, Work / Employment)

The Kid recently took the ACT test, which like the SAT, is frequently used by colleges to determine scholastic abilities, and in his case helped place him for which college writing class he needed. He had to ask his sister what the test was like, and her impressions about its difficulty level. I could not personally provide any opinions, because I had never taken the ACT or SAT.

I never took them because no one thought I would go to college.

They made massive assumptions about my abilities and my future. So here’s what happened, and something to think about. I welcome you to please post comments, and more links to other positive blogs and sites.

My grades in secondary school grew worse over the years, and I had to re-take a semester in one class (English of all things, which in later years proved to be ironic when I became a freelance writer, with hundreds of items in print).

By this time in my life, my parents had divorced. My dad lived in another state, and was even more of a non-player in my life. Alas, my mother had spent years futilely trying to make me more “normal”, from requiring me to learn right-handed penmanship, enrolling me in a “charm school” at the local Sears & Roebucks to improve my feminine graces, and so on. But as the years wore on, my faults (problems) became more and more apparent. She no longer described me as “very bright”, but was quick to list all my failures and describe them in damning detail, until I was ready to vomit or pass out from the stress (though I never did, even though either would have been a relief).

By 9th grade it was apparent to all that I was not gifted scholastically, and the general consensus was that I was lazy, stupid at math, not trying hard enough, and acting up just to make her life difficult. When she was drunk, my failures and interests and personality traits would be compared to her ex-husband’s, “you’re just like your father, the bastard”. Even as much of a socially-clueless 14 year old that I was, I knew that these kinds of comments were untrue and inappropriate, and the problem was with her attitudes and her drinking. But they still hurt, terribly.

I would not be diagnosed with ADHD, Auditory Processing Disorder, and Prosopagnosia until I was in my 40’s. Such diagnosis hardly existed in those days; certainly my difficulties were not considered to be due to anything but my own personal failings.

No way, my family and school officials decided, could I be college material. I could not keep track of my assignments, I still struggled to learn and remember my multiplication facts into 8th grade, and I flunked or barely passed classes.

Given my social difficulties and subsequent lack of dating, and even my utter lack of domestic abilities (mom warned me off taking a sewing class because doing so would “ruin my GPA” – grade point average), I was obviously not highly marriageable. This was the 1970s, and most people still thought along those lines — an astonishing number of girls went to college to “get their MRS”.

The goal then was to get me some kind of minimal trade training, so I would, as she fiercely reminded me many times, not be a burden on the family. It was made plain to me that once I graduated high school, and then later turned 18, I was to be out on my own. I should not expect financial assistance from her.

So I was enrolled in typing, which was a miserable experience beyond the whole ordinary ordeal of learning to type on manual typewriters. The room was a cacophony of noise. The instructor was adamant about constant attention to task, proper posture, and graded with the intent on us producing perfection — as soon as a student produced a typographical error, then the score was made. (Additionally, the students’ pages were held up to the light against her perfect copies to check centering and spacing). There were many days when I would produce an entire page that was otherwise perfect but for a typo in the second line, and my grade would be an F because I had such a low word-count. Given my problems with developing manual speed, tracking text (near-point copying), attention, and transposing letters and numbers, I struggled to get a C grade.

But the clerical work that was deemed best for me also required taking bookkeeping. Not surprisingly, this was also a very difficult class for me. My aptitudes and interests were not really taken into consideration, because after all, even if writing and science and art were what I liked best, I had not done well in those classes, now had I? Besides, clerical work was what my mother knew, so like many parents she expected me to follow occupational suit.

Unlike many such students, my story has a relatively happy ending. I did manage to graduate high school, to everyone’s relief. A year later, I even enrolled in an evening class at the local community college. College classes were not easy, partly from my intrinsic difficulties, partly from not having the necessary study skills, and partly from not having a solid academic background.

But the glory of the American system is that such colleges provide opportunities for adults of all ages to acquire the these things, and to gain higher education. I worked hard, and slowly figuring out how I learned, which was not always in the ways that others thought I should study. Sometimes I had to drop a class and re-try it later on, to finish it successfully. Later on in my 40’s I was to also get some of my issues diagnosed.

I now have a Master’s of Science. I teach college students. No one would have expected this based upon my previous performance. (Employers who place near-complete trust in Behavioral-Based Interviewing, please note!) And this point, amongst all the others about the perils of attribution errors, and learning disabilities, and dysfunctional families, this point is crucial:

A child’s future abilities cannot always be predicted,

when based upon their current abilities.

Many parents of children who have developmental disorders worry that their children will never be able to attend school, or finish school, or go on to college, or hold a job, or live on their own, or be loved by a partner, or have a family, or talk, or be potty-trained, or any number of milestones. Just because the child cannot do the same things that their age peers can do, or are expected to do.

This is one of the biggest points of contention or discussion between the “autism community” (parents of autistic children) and the “autistic community” (children, teens and adults who are autistic, and many of whom are parents as well). Even beyond the farcical assumptions that either community is monolithic with regards to attitudes and knowledge and politics et cetera, there are inherent issues that need to be mutually addressed.

One of the best resources for the autism communities are the autistic communities. If parents go around just talking to other parents, especially those other parents who are consumed by the “Terrible Tragedy and Selfless Suffering Families” world-views, they may fall prey to this easy assumption: If my child can’t do it now, he’ll never be able to do it, and our lives will be ruined.

Sure, not everyone takes it to that extreme. Sure, there are a few children who do not achieve many of those life-goals. But those lack of achievements does NOT automatically mean that their lives are ruined, or their families’ lives are ruined. They do NOT automatically mean that people cannot live relatively happy, healthy, and productive lives.

Please do NOT assume that not being able to use speech as a reliable means of communication is the same as not being able to think, or not being able to communicate, or not having anything to communicate.

Please do not assume that because a child does not learn in a traditional manner that they are learning “the wrong way”, or that they cannot learn at all, or that they must be taught “remedial learning lessons”.

Please do know that even when children have problems, and are slower to acquire skills, they are not doomed.

Please do not give up on them.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.”

~First words (at age 35) of an autistic man [quote source]

I welcome you to please post comments, and more links to other positive blogs and sites. Kindly see the newly-updated “NOTES TO COMMENTERS” box in the top of the left sidebar for important information. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments

Congratulations!

22 July 2008 at 12:55 (College/University, Family, w00t!)

Are due to the Kid, who managed to hang in there through the finish of the scholastic year, despite various difficulties with the school setting. The cool part is that (after securing the Official Paperwork from the school), our high school junior then went on to take the GED test and passed with flying colors, thus earning the equivalent of a high school diploma.

While the rest of his former cohort is gearing up to start their senior year of high school, our son is finishing up a second college class, and is enrolled for the fall term as a full-time college freshman.

Even better, he says that this is the first time in years since the sight of stores filled with school supplies has not filled him with dread. Additionally, having a summer job doing construction labor has made him realise the value of further education, and even given him moments of, “I wish I were in class.” We’ve not seen this kind of scholastic enthusiasm in years.

Way to go, guy! We’re proud of you.

a blonde 12-month old boy seated on a chair, reaching up and pecking at the keyboard to an early 1990's personal computer

a blond 12-month old boy seated on a chair, reaching up and pecking at the keyboard to an early 1990's personal computer

11 Comments

Talking to Strangers

18 June 2008 at 12:46 (Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Communication, Eye contact)

So, the Kid is easing into classes at the local community college, with plans for taking the fall semester part-time and working. The inevitable What-To-Take? question came up, with the idea being that a couple of classes should be general-education requirements, and the third something personally interesting. Well, I said, you should see what courses are required for an Associate’s Degree. (A 2-year general education diploma, which can transfer to a four-year degree elsewhere).

This is all well and fine, and various categorical listings are perused until realisation set in: some kind of Oral Communications credit is needed, such as Interpersonal Communications or Public Speaking classes. Oh noes!

Why do I have to have a speaking class? complained the Kid.

To be sure, many people dread taking their college Public Speaking class. Psychologists tell us that a dread of speaking to large groups of strangers is common, right up there with a fears of heights, spiders, or thunderstorms. Then again, the average citizen did not have a preliminary diagnosis of Social Phobia.

I remembered the teacher’s comments on the Kid’s earlier oral presentations in school: Need to make eye contact. Remember to speak up. Use gestures, interact with the audience. Those comments had stuck in my mind, as about that time in history I was beginning to put things together and wonder if my own kid didn’t have a bit of Asperger’s. Sure, there was eye contact with family and the couple friends. But the general hanging quietly around the edges of large family gatherings was long ingrained, and by secondary school the strong reticence for striking up conversations with strangers or for joining school or civic clubs, was both inhibiting and inhibited by social interaction.

I also remembered these same types of comments on my own class presentation grade sheets, back when I was in primary and secondary school. I offered up some personal history, I remember taking Public Speaking when I was just a clerk, and I could not imagine when I would ever have to give a talk, much less who I would give it to, or what I would talk about. Of course, I have since given presentations to groups of hundreds, and been doing public speaking for over 15 years. Life has a way of zig-zagging and putting one in unexpected situations, where any previous skills may suddenly be useful.

But teens don’t find such parent comments to be useful; they’re always stories from Long Ago And Far Away, and have no conceivable bearing on the teen’s own future life. Such are the limitations of teen perceptions of both personal histories and of the possibilities of Life in general.

The Kid looked through the rest of the general education requirements, and under the Social Sciences section, came up with an introductory course in Economics. (I had always considered Econ to be within the realm of Maths, but I wasn’t the one making these lists up.) Econ was full of equations and would be easier for the Kid to digest conceptually than all those inscrutable sociological subjects. Okay, I replied, Econ is good; it will transfer anywhere. And for the personal interest course?

The introductory computer game design class, came the answer.

Of course; silly question. What else has the Kid been focused on for years now, but all flavors of card and video and online gaming, including working up the algorithms, character weightings, and testing of a home-made card game.

Then I had a brain-flash, You know, if you’re taking this class, why don’t you see what Associates degree program it goes with? You don’t have to do the whole program — you can try it and see if that’s what you want. But it would make sense to see what the requirements are for the program, so you don’t take stuff that doesn’t work toward it.

This made sense; who wants to take extra classes they don’t need? We noodled around and found the program, and looked over the requirements, noting that this class was one of the prerequisites necessary before even applying for the program, and —

OH! Hey, look! I pointed out to the Kid — There are no oral communication course requirements!

Someone out there realised that geeks are not going to want to take such classes, and found other courses more suitable to their future careers. Oh, happy day! Further examination of the requirements meant dropping and adding various classes, until a workable combination of time slots and still-open sessions was created. We also toured the bookstore to see how bad the damage to the pocketbook would be, and were delighted to find that the three classes would require no more than $100 of books, which is about half of what most courses require. At last, the Kid had enrolled in classes for the fall semester, and even found a career goal to try out.

And a class in Public Speaking is not even required.

4 Comments

EF4 and FI9

15 June 2008 at 4:58 (College/University, Weather)

Blogging has been interrupted of late due to job search and classwork. In contrast, the number of blog post ideas continue to grow …

My daughter came up with the Force of Irony in her stories, as an actual force of nature that causes things to happen. In turn, I came up with the idea that the Force of Irony can be detected by with an Irony Compass equipped with a needle of Absurdium.

The recent spate of stories about severe thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes and flooding have filled newspaper headlines. There are also record numbers of tornadoes this year; over 1500 have been reported in this first half a year, and last year there were only 1093. Meteorologists will be debated causal hypotheses for a while yet (including the inevitable dog-wagging tail of, “record-setting events are caused by keeping records”).

But this particular newsbit caught my eye: over in Manhattan, Kansas, there was a tornado last Wednesday. By various news accounts, it left a swath of destruction a mile long and half a block wide (in the typical Midwestern tornado track from southwest to northeast –– map and pix 1, pix 2). Judging by the damage and meteorological records, it was an EF4 scale twister, which is very heavy, indeed. The best operative adjective is demolished.

Kansas State University took over $20 million in damages to several of their Halls. The uni president, Jon Wefald, stated,

… the university’s insurance policy carries a $5 million deductible, requiring it to pick up one-quarter of the estimated damage. He said the university had recently renegotiated that deductible down to $100,000, but the change would not take effect until July 1.

Ouch! That just hurts. Sadly, compassion fatigue sets in as this sort of news is repeated in a number of cities and states. (Cue reminder to share with your favorite charity.)

But this particular datum ranks a 9 on the Force of Irony scale: the Wind Erosion Laboratory was completely demolished

1 Comment

Are You “Slow”?

17 May 2008 at 0:15 (Attribution Errors, College/University, Teaching/Tutoring)

“I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.”
~Agatha Christie

“I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.”
~Sir Winston Churchill

A recent post on the ASCD Inservice blog describes “Myths That Haunt Students”. The authors reference three points from Allison Zmuda:

* They see learning that comes quickly as a sign of intelligence and learning that requires effort as a sign of their own lack of ability.
* Students think school and life are disconnected.
* They think learning is an orderly process rather than a messy, recursive, ongoing struggle. Even high-achieving students will shy away from challenging tasks and embrace routine assignments, which they find more comforting, Zmuda noted.

These are fabulous points, and I would rush to buy the book referenced, if only I had the money and the time to read it (my current reading stack would literally be a meter high, were I so foolish as to stack the volumes in one place).

When we mistake speed for ability — or rather, lack of speed for lack of ability — we misinterpret a person’s intelligence and their ability to learn. Students who have difficulty processing multiple sensory modes will frequently have problems keeping up with lectures or rapid-fire instruction. Adult students who have been out of education for some time will also have problems because Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments

Not so lucky

22 February 2008 at 16:31 (Advocacy, Cognitive biases, College/University, Community, Developmental disabilities)

The other day at the college I was waiting for an elevator (lift). It’s rather slow, but a sleet storm was heading in and I was especially achy. Just a few feet away was a bulletin board for a program the college runs, including a series of non-credit weekend classes for people with Down’s and other developmental or cognitive disabilities. One of the things thumbtacked to the board was a yellowing newspaper clipping. The photograph showed a young man busy in his kitchen, with his father standing nearby, watching him. The article began by mentioning how lucky the young man is because he has resources to help him learn to live independently, to get his own apartment, to get a job to support himself, and other important things.

He is lucky.

“Lucky” is one of those stock newspaper words that seems to be required in stories about disabled people. It’s right up there with “amazing”, “inspiring”, “challenged”, “journey” and a dozen other terms that I’m blanking on just from sheer nausea factor. (I’m sure you can think of several others.) I finished reading the story by the time the elevator moseyed up to the top floor. By the time I descended three levels, I had gathered up a fair bit of annoyance. Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments

My Own Dream

21 January 2008 at 20:12 (Advocacy, College/University, Diversity, Medical Quackery, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring)

Here in the States, today is Martin Luther King Jr Day, a “bank holiday” honoring the civil rights leader. This means that as a school employee, I get the day off, which in turn means that I have the opportunity to not only contemplate civil rights, but also run errands to places I can’t go because my work hours are the same as their business hours. The exceptions of course are my bank where I need to visit my safe box, and a couple of colleges where I need to visit with people about getting teaching certification. Holy conundrums, Batman!

Anyway, reading through the news brought several things to my attention, and helped clarify some of my own dream for humanity, especially with regards to both diversity in academia and the rest of the work world, the academic responsibility for preparing our students, and the social and political valuation of real science.

Firstly there is the need Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments

Welcome to the first ring of Hell

30 November 2007 at 3:44 (Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Eye contact, Menopause, Non-verbal communication, OMG, Prosopagnosia, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Tourette's / tics, Work / Employment)

I’m going to send in a couple of job applications for biology teaching positions at community colleges. With some 200 credit hours of college education, I’ve been exposed to enough teachers to know that I teach better than some of them. I’ve had a course in college teaching, over a decade of teaching continuing education (designing my own courses, content, handouts & my own photography), and have been tutoring biology for several years.

But of course I’ve not actually applied for such a job before. So here I am re-doing my teaching philosophy, checking over my resume, chewing over application letter drafts and whatnot.

Like everyone, I’m really nervous about the prospect of interviews. Unlike a lot of people, I have particular difficulties with interviews, such as the prosopagnosia. This means not recognising people from one day to the next, at least not until I’ve been around them a while. I hate it when people drag you around a building and introduce you to a gazillion people. I can barely mentally file away some vague identification characteristics for one interviewer, and even then I never know which details will prove to be the useful ones for recognising them in the future. Yes, I know … I spend an hour talking with someone, and then (aside from the name on the business card) I truly can’t remember who the hell they were the next day. It’s awful.

During the actual interview process, I’m running mental circles around the auditory processing difficulties, fidgety-scatterbrained ADHD issues, unconsciously suppressing little motor tics (I shouldn’t have to theoretically, but it’s ingrained habit under such situations), concentrating on trying to make “enough” eye contact (whatever the hell that is), concentrating on speaking clearly and avoiding stuttering, ignoring the tinnitus and joint aches (and hoping against migraine). And being nervous is bad enough without those damn menopausal hot flashes!

Of course all that detracts from the amount of energy available for composing brilliant answers. So my usual interview plan is to anticipate interview questions and then prepare and practice answers. I spend days ruminating over and practicing my short “scripts” while in the car. Fortunately, I can never remember my answers verbatim, so they don’t come off as sounding “canned”.

Unfortunately, for all I have a large vocabulary and am a well-practiced writer, I’m less able to produce clear, concise answers to unexpected questions. It’s not that I can’t think of what to say, but rather that all the details of things come to mind at once, and I can’t prioritise and sequence them easily, nor compose paragraphs and then remember them all the way through.

So … anyone out there have specific tips for teaching interviews? (I’m good on basic interview stuff like professional wardrobe.) But this is a new kind of interview situation, and I don’t know what sorts of questions are likely to be asked, nor what sorts of unspoken conventions are typical for such a process, or what committees look for.

7 Comments

OMG the Paperness …

21 November 2007 at 4:04 (Arthritis, College/University, inertia, OMG)

There comes a time in every academic’s life when they must pack up all their crap and move. It’s a dread time, and not just from the whole physical hassle of boxing and schlepping and unpacking. The actual hard part is making all the damn decisions: will I need this again? How long should I keep these data sets/ copies of journal articles/ contracts/ professional reviews/ semi-legal correspondence? Bug Girl also did this recently, and I noticed that she never did post her final analysis … hmn!

I’m not really moving right now, at least not residences. But when I moved off-campus a couple years ago, a lot of stuff simply got crammed into available spaces and has sat there since. Plus, there was years of other stuff piling up, as paper is wont to do. My ADHD packrat qualities vie with my OCD-like* organisational quirks, resulting in Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

Still Invisible

3 November 2007 at 2:23 (College/University, Invisible disabilities, Physical impairments, Work / Employment)

Bug Girl is citing a new report (pdf download link), “A National Analysis of Minorities in Science and Engineering Faculties at Research Universities”, in which 100 departments representing 15 disciplines of engineering and science (including social science) were surveyed. As we might expect, the results suck. Actually, the results suck even worse than the authors (Dr. Donna Nelson, supervising Christopher N. Brammer and Heather Rhoads) probably realise. But before I get ahead of myself, let me share some of what they had to say. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

“Ancient chalk beds”

20 October 2007 at 18:56 (College/University, Learning styles, Teaching/Tutoring)

That was the phrase (from some science book of my youth) that came to mind the first time I stepped into a college lecture room with seating for some 200 students. The room was a broad wedge shape, filled with stadium seating of fixed chairs with small right-handed desktops. Down at the bottom was the instructor’s desk, a series of chalkboards, and a pull-down projection screen. Something was written on the chalkboard, but most discouragingly, I couldn’t read it from the back of the room. That meant I would also likely have trouble understanding the speaker, so I advanced down to the front row. Even moving to the front of the room was awkward (if not physically discouraging) because the terrace effect of the seating meant walking two paces forwards and stepping one down, an unnatural rhythm.

In such rooms, some professors would do a lot of writing on the board (usually still lecturing, which meant that they were talking to the board and were even less intelligible), and some profs would just stand there and lecture at us for the entire 50-80 minutes, sometimes writing a few things on the board. Some used slide presentations or overhead projectors, and only a few had moved to PowerPoint to merge the illustrations and text.

These were not classes from the 20th century — this was just a couple years ago.

The students around me were often visibly bored. Well, those that came. Some of them engaged in napping, with varying levels of discreetness. A few sat in the back and chatted with or texted friends. A lot of students took notes, or appeared to be doing something on paper. Few students volunteered questions, and fewer profs actually elicited dialog with and between students — most who asked questions of the students were just doing so to see if anyone had done the assigned reading.

The “sage on a stage” backed by those ancient chalk beds is a teaching style that’s over a century-old. Here’s a very interesting YouTube video,

… summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

It’s not just a very thought-provoking video — due to it’s text-driven style, it’s totally “open-captioned” as well! (Don’t worry — the video is much clearer than the frozen shot you see before clicking the Play button.)

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M, F, N/A

10 October 2007 at 4:59 (Abuse, Accessibility, College/University, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Developmental disabilities, Gender / Sexuality, Love & Acceptance, Parenting, Physical impairments, Work / Employment)

Wow. Here I was ready to comment on one piece of news, when several more caught my attention. They all revolve around social ideas of gender rôles, and marginalised or disabled people.

This first one struck close to home: Khadijah Farmer was kicked out of women’s toilet of a Manhattan, NY, restaurant because the bouncer thought she looked too masculine.

“I said, ‘I am a woman and I am where I am supposed to be,'” said Farmer, speaking at a a news conference. “I offered to show him some identification. I was told that’s neither here nor there.”

Some people might say that happened “just because” she’s a lesbian (like that’s a valid reason), but I can vouch for the same thing happening to me as well. On the occasion that I wear a skirt or dress, I look “appropriately” female. But since I have a really short hair style, and often wear men’s shoes (because I have wide feet) and men’s shirts (because I have broad shoulders and long arms) and am disinclined toward wearing make-up, I have been frequently mistaken for a guy.

Even my name doesn’t seem to help; just last week Read the rest of this entry »

11 Comments

Power surges and outtages

28 September 2007 at 3:52 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Auditory Processing Disorder, College/University, Doctors, Menopause, Pain, Sleep)

“Power surges” is the common joke phrase referring to having menopausal hot flashes.

Oh, yes. Because what’s life without something new to deal with? And naturally, it’s something inter-twined with everything else. Generally when women experience menopause, it’s because their hormones are going from the usual monthly oscillation to a damped oscillation, where the ups and downs get smaller and smaller. Mine aren’t — this is the thrill of quitting my HRT (hormone replacement therapy) that I’d been on after surgery five years ago. In a mere day’s time, I went from a low dose HRT to nothing. Klud.

First I had what my OB/GYN described as an ovarian cyst the size of an orange, which cyst+ovary she somehow managed to remove from a mere 1″ (2.5 cm) incision. (I suppose that pulling out large objects from narrow passages is the specialty of OB/GYNs.) Having been relieved of that painful annoyance, things went well for about a year, and then I started having the periods from hell again. They turned into the periods from hell with interperiods that were nearly as bad — now I had endometriosis.

That was bad enough, but the worse part wasn’t the surgical solution — Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment

The Making of a Geek

19 September 2007 at 2:59 (College/University, Geeks, Personal change, Retrospective)

Well, I’ve spent the past couple days crashed abed. After dragging myself to work today, I’m still not in top form. Basically, my brain-pan is full of snot, so I’m certainly not up to a great deal of psychoeducational analysis about much of anything. But until the green elixir kicks in (so I can get some sleep), I’ll natter away about how I got to be such a geek.

The original outlook wasn’t promising. In fact, I was quite the disappointment to my father for not being a chess whiz, and to my mother for getting poor marks in nearly all my subjects. The maths particularly eluded me — I was 13 before I had a firm grip on my multiplication tables — which for reasons that still escape me, led people to decide that in secondary school I should take a year of Bookkeeping as preparation for future employment.

However, I did better with a variety of hands-on pursuits, Read the rest of this entry »

12 Comments

A Most Dangerous Question

6 September 2007 at 11:14 (Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Coping strategies, Counseling, Hyperacussis, Stress, Tinnitus)

Once Upon A Time…

I had a great counsellor. That sort that gives you unconditional positive regard, and listens to what you’re actually saying (instead of what they’re expecting), and who also asked especially good questions. Some of the questions were of the Zen-master category of counselling, the sort that jog you from your everyday running, smacking palm to forehead and saying, “OH!” or else stopped you short because you had been doing something totally irrational and then had it pointed out to you when you were at a point to heed such. Other questions were more like planting little seeds, things that seemed innocuous at first but that later proved to be much greater things.

This is the story of the little seed question. It was a very dangerous question, not in the hazardous sense, but in the transformational sense. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

Accommodating the Normals

24 August 2007 at 10:45 (Accessibility, ADD/ADHD, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Eye contact, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Prosopagnosia, Stimming, Teaching/Tutoring, Tourette's / tics, Work / Employment)

In your place of business, educational institution, or public service area, you will have to make certain accommodations for the “normal” (“Temporarily Able-Bodied”) patrons. (Please note that within Normal culture, it is considered appropriate to refer to them as “normal people” rather than as “people with normality”.) Normal people will usually succeed in schooling, and will apply for jobs that they can do, presuming that they are given accommodations. These needs are diverse, and such accommodations include, but are not limited to, the following items: Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments

Buying Citizenship

29 July 2007 at 4:10 (Advocacy, College/University, Community, Invisible disabilities, Work / Employment)

I just got back from an “open house” hosted by my former uni. Happened to get some nice insect photos along the way, which pleased me. But I had an annoying experience talking to a researcher who’d recently been made a full professor. He told me about his students, and how they’d graduated and gone off and gotten jobs. I mentioned that over a year later, I was still looking for a job that reflected my post-graduate degree. What, he asked me, hadn’t I been applying for This job and That job? Yes, I had, I replied. Once again I had that bewildering sense, the vertigo of the psyche, where it seems like everyone else graduates and goes off to get gainful employment.

He couldn’t understand my dilemma. There were jobs out there (obviously, if his graduate students had been getting them). Unstated, but staining the tone of his questions, was the disdain of what was wrong with [me] that I couldn’t get a job? I ended up feeling like an unemployable idiot.

I’m not of course — actually, I have three different jobs. Put them together, and I have something almost like a full-time job. I get excellent employee reviews on my jobs. But it’s still patchwork employment at low pay. Jobs are not a given, under any economic circumstances. Sure his students got jobs — but for every person who does get the job for which they applied, there’s a score or more of other people who didn’t get that job. And despite my academic achievements (completed with great struggle against health issues), in the realm of employment I have “failed” to succeed at the appropriate performance levels expected for someone of my social station. I’m bidding too low in the marketplace for citizenship. Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments

Fraud

7 June 2007 at 14:36 (Attribution Errors, College/University, Personal change, Stress, Work / Employment)

I don’t belong here. Maybe I should have applied at a different department; Professor N was just being nice to write me a letter of recommendation. I don’t even know what those rec letters said; what if they were just so much “social noise” and I’m not really cut out for graduate school?

I am not getting these party jokes at all. Are they inside jokes? Are they related to people’s research? Is it a department joke? Just smile and move along…

I’ll never be able to cope with all this stuff. Omigod, they’ve added so much stuff to animal biology since I studied it years ago. I can’t believe I just got a B grade in biochemistry without knowing all these details.

How come everyone else seems to know what’s going on? Did I miss something on Orientation Day? Just act sharp and keep your mouth shut; hopefully somebody will mention something.

There’s too many people here to remember! But they all know each other. Just smile and ask “How’s it going”; maybe some clue will be mentioned.

My advisor says I ask too many questions. I thought he was there to advise me?

Oh no! How will I make it through four semesters of statistics? I’ve always been terrible at the maths. That A in Calculus wasn’t normal for me; we just had a really good teacher. I can’t hardly do these life table calculations without getting numbers turned around!

I feel like such a fake. I was just lucky. That was just an isolated event — it won’t happen again.

“You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it.”
~Reg Smythe

It’s not just me. This is what we call “Imposter Syndrome”. Often mentioned in the context of gifted individuals, and high-achieving women, it’s also seen in quite a different population. Read the rest of this entry »

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