I love my job
Bartolome
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 13 Oct 2012
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 53
Location: Pennsylvania
I am very happy in my job. I work for a major healthcare network as an Intensive Case Manager, coordinating social and psychiatric services for children on the Spectrum, and their families. It requires serious people skills, which I learned, since they didn't come naturally, though obviously my empathy for the kids does come naturally, since I grew up with AS myself. I'm generally recognized as one of the best ICMs in my department and I've been told that the level of engagement that I maintain with my clients is unusually high. Almost no one at my office knows that I have AS, and because my boss is kind of stern and ex-military, I don't want that to come out, but I'm high-functioning enough and received good enough therapy as a kid that I can "pass" and very few people can actually tell.
Before this, I worked part time for a therapeutic afterschool program; before that, I worked as a TSS (therapeutic support staff), providing Wraparound services. I've always worked with the ASD population and was hired as an ASD specialist at my current job.
My major in college was actually Human Bio-Anthropology/Pre-Med (the Bio-Anthro track doubled as a Pre-Med track). I still do biomedical anthropology every day; instead of focusing on other species of primates, I focus on Autistic humans.
But I have to be able to "read" people, which, like I said earlier, is something I learned to do very well. I figure out what motivates people and IO use that knowledge to engage them constructively. By "people" I'm referring primarily to parents, and predominantly to deadbeat parents. One of the perks of my job is scaring deadbeat parents and incompetent, emotionally abusive teachers.
For the first time in my life, I have benefits, holidays, paid sick, vacation and personal days, and, when I'm ready to be a student again, a $4000/year tuition reimbursement for continuing education, so I can work on getting a Master's in Clinical Social Work... haven't started on this yet, probably next year.
It's definitely the perfect job for me. At the afterschool program, I felt underutilized, and there was no real way to ascend (I was only part-time, and they weren't about to hire me full-time). As a TSS, it was also too easy. My current job is challenging enough to keep me interested. I have almost 30 clients who are all very high-need individuals, and nearly all of them are low-income. Managing their care involves a lot of strategy, mind-games with very manipulative people, politics, problem-solving, and knowing how to surf above drama and manipulate it when necessary in order to bring about a desired outcome. I've also come to know the mental health system extremely intimately on both sides, as a patient and as a clinician.
I'm also very much aware that had I been born in 1965 or '75 instead of '85, I'd probably be a permanent and misdiagnosed resident at a mental hospital, totally unemployable. I'm damn lucky.
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