What to do to prepare for life after college

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All right kids gather around because big brother JohnConnor is going to tell you what you need to do in order to make the transition from school to the real world.

Before I begin, I want to say that some of what I post on here will not apply to some of you. A small handful few of you will read this and go, well yeah, duh, I knew that. If that is the case then GOOD FOR YOU! But there are some on here who could benefit from this.


Lesson #1) Stay close to the academic network that you have built up during your school years. Especially the network that you built up during your final phase of your academic career. It is your accommodation coordinator/ special-education instructor that SHOULD have professional contacts that they can call upon to set you up with. BTW you should have what you want to do for a profession already figured out by the middle of your last year of school. If you have not then I would suggest that you ask yourself why and once you have examined yourself and figured out why, take care of the problem. Or your accommodation coordinator might have already suggested to you a career that fits your needs. If you take a look at the Greek system as well as any ROTC training corps at any large state university you will realize that (A) these groups have elder members and mentors who serve as mentors and role models for the younger members who are on their way to adulthood. I'll give you an example. Let's say I am a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity at the University of wherever and I am in my third year. You decide to pledge the fraternity and become a first year member. It is my job to make sure that you are the right fit for my fraternity that I love so much. After you make it through the initiation process I am to provide you with mentoring and to be a role model for how to act and conduct yourself in the real world. (B) These organizations are connected to networks that will provide you with employment after you graduate so that way you are not left high and dry after you graduate. To further my explanation. Once you graduate, you can give me a call and tell me that you are looking for employment and I can provide you with a reference after you graduate. You will have done more than well during your college years and provided that you have not done anything to bring shame to your fraternity you will more than likely get hired because the hiring manager will have also been a member of Delta Tau Delta as well as a significant portion of the other staff members. After you have figured out what you want to do you need to proceed to the next step which brings me to my second lesson.

Lesson #2) VOLUNTEER IF YOU HAVE NOT HAD THE OPPROTUNITY TO INTERN. Volunteering is a great way to figure out if the career path you are interested in is right for you and also if the organization itself is a good fit for you and vice versa. I am currently volunteering at a Veterans Affairs hospital in my city. Since I am a military veteran of eight years I know how to talk to the patients. I know better than to ask them about their experiences in direct combat if they have experienced it. I also have patience with government bureaucracy because I know how the system works. To top it off I have a disability which has caused me mental illness so I have understanding coworkers, even though the cause of my disability/mental illness is not the result of combat or any type of training. It will take some time and at this point you need to have already established an active working relationship with your next coordinator. It will take some time for you to adjust to your new environment which brings me to my next lesson.

Lesson #3) IT'S ONE THING TO BE TOLD THAT THE ROAD AHEAD IS GOING TO BE HARD. IT IS QUITE ANOTHER TO EXPERIENCE IT. For many of us the road to our desired place of employment will be an obstacle course. Some of the hardships will come from our own faults and some will just come from life challenging us to see how determined we are to achieve something. If you are like me and you are a fan of inspirational speeches on youtube you will no doubt here stories about some of the more famous American film actors of the twentieth century or the stories of how your favorite sports heroes got to where they are. Me personally I'm a fan of great military leaders throughout the ages. You will know that people like Sylvester Stallone had a vision for what they wanted to accomplish. Almost every studio he tried to sell the script for the film Rocky got shut him down. It got to the point where he was living on the street and he had to sell his beloved pet dog. Immediately after that a studio said they would work on producing the movie based off his script. Once he started to make money, he got an apartment, he bought his dog back and the rest is history. I'll give you another example that is FAR LESS GLAMOROUS!! My own recent situation. Right after I graduated college I developed my vision of working in immigration strengthening this great nation of mine by either admitting or denying those into the country. I had no professional contacts in government, no in-depth understanding of how Asperger Syndrome affected me, and no network of coaching staff to help me in the process. I lost my student loan money, the money that I was receiving from the Montgomery G.I. Bill, and was left with a sh***y retail job making $11.45 an hour. This was in April of 2013. My productivity at work began a downward hill slide. Management noticed it and decided to put me on night crew. How they thought that would make me more productive I do not know. On night crew I got even worse. I was on it for 1.5 years. My health began to deteriorate due to the fact that (A) I did not take the proper steps to fix my daily routine so that I would make a smooth transition from second shift to night shift. The area that I am living in does nothing but frustrate me sexually and socially. Now with the exception of close friends that I have kept over the years and others that I have known whom I think are incredible people in other ways there is nothing worse for a single guy who has ambitions to conquer his world than to be stuck in a situation where he deals with nobody but a bunch of senior citizens who have nothing interesting to say to him or some middle aged soccer mom who goes on and on about her little rugrats. She maybe good looking but good god nothing interesting is coming out of that hole in her face and finally some guy whose wife has basically torn him apart verbally/mentally over the years and is now a shadow of his former self. Oh I almost forgot, hard drug addicts and single male alcoholics with no job......enough said there. I no longer had my fellow brothers and sisters in arms, no young people with positive energy who were eager to either conquer the world or make it a better place. I was no longer around any veterans who I could converse with that had interesting stories, no awesome clergy folk, no inspiring professors and no interesting individuals from foreign countries to converse with. Also I had no beautiful single attractive women to talk to or explore sexually and vice versa. The only types of women that I had access to were either (A) too old (B) a minor (C) married (D) Unattractive whether it be physical or her personality (D) addicted to narcotics or (E) the type that let her sexuality overpower her good judgement and is now becoming desperate for a husband (F) Mentally unstable, even though I was too at the time, I know enough about human relationships to know that they are not like mathematics, two negatives do not make a positive........That can add up after a while. First the boredom kicked in, then the boredom turned into frustration, the frustration turned to anger, then the anger turned into depression and then around November of 2015 I started to have thoughts of committing a mass shooting and at the end putting the last bullet through my head thus committing suicide. But I received a tip from this website on how to select the right post college support group. Since mid December I have begun to recover and am feeling better with each passing week. This is because I managed to get in touch with the right organization to help.

At this point I have the need to say that I would not have said those hurtful things above had I been getting more of my needs met on the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs chart but the truth needed to come out. You may feel differently, however.


Lesson #4) REACH OUT TO YOUR LOCAL AUTISM SUPPORT GROUPS TO FIND THE RIGHT COACHING SERVICE THAT FITS YOUR NEEDS:




More to come tomorrow so hold on to your butts.

Lesson#4) SEARCH FOR LOCAL AUTISM SUPPORT GROUPS IN YOUR COMMUNITY: When contacting these different groups ask them if their staff is comprised of individuals trained to help you who are either (A) on the spectrum themselves (B) Are in a situation where they deal with those on the spectrum or other forms of disabilities. (C) Do they offer some form of payment assistance for their services.(D) Have bi-weekly meetups where you are in a classroom environment and also do they break off into group sessions where you can discuss your experiences about your successes and failures in the workplace with others who are also on the spectrum and different ideas on how to succeed in certain situations. (E) Have lots of paper handouts on who to contact for other problems that you have due to the spectrum and society not accepting you for what you have.


When I was in the military, we used to have simulated missions where we would go on raids to find and kill enemy combatants. After the, "raid" was over we used to all gather around and have what we called an A.A.R. After Action Review. In this period of time we would discuss what went wrong, what went right and how we could do better in the future. Does the support group you need offer a similar situation?



The support group that I linked up with is awesome! My professional job coach is an Aspie. The classroom coordinator is the principal of an all autistic high school and they offer a scholarship for those who are unable to make the full payment....At this point I feel the need to talk about receiving help from the government.....they're slow and at this point the government along with a lot of other support out there while well trained and experienced don't deal with autism much. Things is professional help should be able to know more about how autism affects you than you do yourself. I had been working with a job coach in the past who was AWESOME!! ! But due to the fact that I have done more and more research I began to realize that stepping into a job in the private sector was a bad idea for me. I had not learned about all the different ways that Aspergers affects me and trying to learn about it and iron it out while ON THE JOB AND GETTING PAID WAS A BAD IDEA. So I had to cease utilizing his help because he couldn't stick with me while I volunteered in order to "get the bugs out"


That is all I can think of. If anybody else has something they would like to add to it, please do so!!