Work/Life Whinge

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This is going to be a wall of text... apologies in advance...

So, I usually try to avoid being pessimistic or venting about how having an ASD makes life difficult; but, I think maybe venting semi-anonymously here will be beneficial.

So, as some of you know, I work in higher education as an administrator. I've worked in this field for close to three years now (shortly after I went to university), and for the most part I've very much enjoyed what I do. Working in the field has helped me learn to relate to people, pay better attention to nonverbal cues/behavior. I got to do a little minor application development/desktop publishing/graphic design type work in addition to scheduling and managing a number of employees.

I decided to go to graduate school for student affairs administration instead of pursuing a degree in library science followed by a degree in cultural anthropology. I applied to a number of schools and received admission to quite a few, and a smaller number with assistantship (scholarship attached to a job) offers running residence halls/dormitories.

I chose to accept an offer at a southern school that was not very good on the technology aspect because it would give me an opportunity to work with a different population of students than I had previously. When I interviewed I asked about actual paper-based paperwork versus electronic/paperless paperwork and I was told that they were moving to a paperless system and would love help with the transition/etc.

I explained that I had a couple of disabilities that sometimes made filling out manual paperwork difficult (CP & arthritis) if the forms got too long and was told that I could ask to type longer things (like incident/accident reports) if I needed to for a particular situation.

So, I accepted. Everything went very well for the first 8 months of the position (it was a 10 month position), and then in the middle of February I had a few incidents occur. In one case, I misunderstood my supervisor's supervisor regarding turning in an incident report. She said "turn it in as soon as you can" when I told her I was waiting to hear back from another administrator about some details, and I understood that to mean it was okay to wait until I heard from the other administrator to turn it in.

I had a crisis happen that weekend, and had to deal with the same woman from above as a point of contact. I asked this supervisor if it would be ok for me to type my report and also if I could have the residents and new staff member type theirs before transfering them to official forms. She told me that it was ok to type them and not to worry about having anybody transcribe their reports onto official forms.

So... my supervisor gets back. Everything seems fine until our usual weekly meeting. She then tells me that she's very disappointed that I typed the reports (because she heard from her supervisor that I did it because I didn't have enough forms), that I deliberately turned in the other report late, and that she heard that I told a resident something that contradicted what another supervisor had told the resident.

So I explained to her my perspective on the issues, and she immediately said, "I'm not going to argue with you. I believe things happened exactly the way I was told they did." -- Keep in mind that I had never had an issue with job performance/discipline before, always very prompt and detail oriented.

So I went to my supervisor's supervisor and filled her in, told her that I thought that there had been some miscommunication, apologized for inadvertently turning in the report late, and then asked her how she figured I asked to type reports because I didn't have enough. She explained that she thought that my disability was really just an excuse for not having enough paperwork, etc and that there's no way that anybody could misunderstand "just turn it in as soon as you can" to mean anything other than "I need you to turn it in today."

I clarified with her the disabilities that I had discussed prior to being hired and asked her if I needed to do something official (EEOC or disability accommodation from HR), and she said no. She then made a comment that the department was considering restructuring and might eliminate some assistantships this year.

So... I went back to my supervisor and let her know that I had discussed matters with the appropriate parties and attempted to clarify. She told me that since I didn't have a history of making mistakes that so long as I didn't have any issues, nothing further would stem from the situation.

I go home on a (pre-approved) vacation to visit my gf and the night before I'm due to come back I get an e-mail from my supervisor stating that she has decided to pursue further disciplinary action.

So, anyway... I finish the year without incident and then I find that both supervisors are giving me negative references and thusly hindering my ability to find a job in the field despite telling me that they would still be willing to provide positive references.

So.. I've been pretty depressed lately and have been seriously questioning whether or not I can have a future in the field/profession with two recent supervisors behaving as they are in reference checks.

Wow

That stunned me, I would have interpreted that the same way as you did. Actually I was feeling stressed just reading your situation. I have enough trouble with executive dysfunction to have to sort out BS as well. It sounds to me like you covered all your bases and were handling the original incident report in the correct way. I wish I has some sage advice for you. I'm sure someone on WP will.

A fascinating pattern! Every single paragraph begins with "So" or "I". I've never seen its like. Was that planned? Some "So" are standalone, some are "So" with a comma (So,) and some are So with an ellipsis of a varying number of dots (So... or So..). What I find interesting here is trying to figure out the impetus behind each variant of So!

Oh, and don't get depressed. You have a future in the field, but it might not be with this company. You'll probably shop around (voluntarily or not) until you find a boss you fit with. I wish you the best with that!

Now, back to the word patterns... <-- (I like ellipsis too!)

Interesting, the unadorned "So" (that is, So + verbage) seems to be used during the most passionate writing. Ellipsis also change during this time period from the standard three dot (...) to the double-hyphen (--). The longer, higher punctuation also seems to convey an image of dots that are moving or in motion, like the thoughts are points are coming quickly and smoothly.

The "So," (So + comma) is used conclusively to conclude the thought in the paragraph(s) above. It is used much like a multi-paragraph Finishing Move (FATALITY (sorry, video game reference crept in)).

The final "So..." (So + ellipsis) eludes me. There is not enough data to classify it on this post alone. It seems to represent a minor transition in thought. The subject remains the same, but the focus within the subject has shifted. However, since this is also the nature of paragraphs themselves, it is difficult to determine if this is a result of the new paragraph or the writing convention.

It wasn't planned. Just very early in the morning.

Leave it to an aspie to notice a pattern.