CharityFunDay wrote:
Due to various factors since leaving my last job (not least, being currently in education), I haven't had a job interview since I was diagnosed.
In my area of London, there is a pretty supportive and proactive Asperger Syndrome support service, with eligible aspies being assigned an individual case worker who generally tries to help one live one's life without interfering unless they are specifically asked to.
One of the services they offer is the possibility of attending job interviews with you, in order to decrease possible misunderstandings, ease the AS applicant's general anxiety in the stressful situation, and to interact with the interviewer(s) if a question is too ambiguous or potentially misinterpretable.
While I find this quite a tempting idea (should God ever grant me another job interview in my life), what do others think?
Would it be counterproductive, by marking you out as someone who can't function socially without an 'interpreter'?
Or would it be a valuable way of levelling out some of the unfair disadvantages that AS people face in such high-intensity and overtly-artificial scenarios?
I don't think society is progressing fast enough to make such a scenario pleasant. What we need is something so public, so huge and so revolutionary, that it forever puts the ASD community on the map in a dynamically positive way. Maybe we need another Daryl Hannah or a combination of Sheldon Cooper and Elvis Presley, to be a posterboy/girl and bring greater awareness and respect for ASD sufferers. Personally, I would love to one day build an Aspie village. Picture this: We plant a huge, gated forest, with every kind of tree you could imagine, and Aspies are paid to look after the trees. Visitors would pay $5 each for entry and the money would go to Aspie wages and resources. And we would live in those cute tiny houses that are becoming so popular, with solar power, no dirty energy, no freaking noisy cars, it would eventually become an exercise city, where everyone walked, rode, scooted, skated or wheelchaired their way around town. It would soon become such a big attraction that Hollywood would take notice and then it would attract the attention of the entire world, and people would start to give a f**k about the autistic community and see us as something positive, not just a burden on society. Once people started to see Aspies/auties as the envied ones and started trying to bluff THEIR way into OUR world, that's when the tables will have truly turned and our needs will be considered. I've discovered that in life, people only change their opinions when something becomes desirable, as opposed to it merely garnering sympathy.
Wouldn't that be a great life, though? You get up in the morning and have your breakfast to the sound of birds singing and leaves rustling and water trickling. You do a couple of hours of horticultural work, then have a break. You grow your own food and have some left over to sell at the nearby farmer's market (by a paid NT) which would give you just enough cash for your home's upkeep, your clothes and your internet/phone bill.
I don't know about anyone else here, but some days I feel I could just sit for hours watching nature without feeling bored. I think some of us are on a wavelength that's closer to the earth, but society today has moved so far away from that, it makes us look like absolute freaks. The world has lost its freaking head.
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"There once was a little molecule who dreamed of being part of the crest of a great wave..."
(From the story 'The Little Molecule' - Amazon Kindle, 2013)
22 Nov 2013, 1:04 am
