This is partially asking for advice and partially to vent.
I recently finished my master's degree in history in May and am still without a job. I have Asperger's but it hasn't seriously affected me in a while, minus when trying to date but that is a different story. Something about the social structure of college just really worked for me and I can mostly pass as neurotypical so my occasional awkwardness was tolerated. In addition to that, I'm really good at my discipline. I consistently did well in school and was just generally good with things like that.
After graduating and joining the job market, I have been disheartened to be turned down from job after job. I have some experience, an internship with a prestigious think tank, but that didn't require an interview, but even small positions like administrative assistant seem to be out of my reach. This is not from lack of trying, I have applied to over 900 jobs since graduation and am generally a very type A personality, making this all the more painful. The obvious answer is to go for my Ph.D. but I'd like to pay off some of my student loans before taking on more debt so I'm trying to find a job outside of academia for now. The few places that have been seriously interested in hiring me turned out to be pyramid schemes so I had to turn them down. Recently I began to wonder if my Aspergers was interfering with my job search and I believe that is correct because after a quick search I found out I have been making a ton of mistakes during the interview that I hadn't even thought of prior to that. So does anyone have any advice on how to navigate the job market as someone on the spectrum?
Also, related to this, my social life after college is dead. In college, as I mentioned before I found friends who didn't mind my awkwardness but I've had to move back in with my parents since graduating in a small rural town. I've been able to visit my friends in college every once in a while but doing that often just isn't feasible. Most everyone I went to school with has either moved out of town or are on drugs now so those connections aren't really viable options. But my current cycle of filling out job applications and playing video games when I'm too burnt out on that is getting old. Does anyone have any advice on how to build a social life after finishing college?
12 Nov 2018, 10:54 pm
