A UK university's take on understanding students with AS

Post Reply New Topic

Sorry about that, Sue......and you're right, I just copied and pasted the link.

If you still can't open the PDF file, try this link instead:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/acces ... r-syndrome

The whole document is presented there as Web pages so you won't need to worry about PDF readers.
I hope that makes things a little easier I should probably have posted that link in the first place.

I actually work at the same university that hosts this document. The interesting thing is, they have absolutely NOTHING on their website about EMPLOYEES with AS. Students pay fees, but employees are an expense, a liability. However, when I approach them with my diagnosis, if they should try to ignore my special needs, I presume that simply pointing to this document will be a pretty powerful argument - a disability is no less of a disability just because the person isn't a student, and I would expect exactly the same rules would have to apply. Otherwise the word "discrimination" springs to mind - not just discrimination against somebody with a disability compared with the non-disabled, but also against employees compared with students.

I'm very wary of declaring victory till I've seen how my case pans out - let's face it, there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip - but offhand I can't see how they're going to wriggle out of their duty to make reasonable adjustments. And who knows, they might actually be as politically correct as their website - though my experience is that this kind of enlightenment doesn't always percolate through to certain line managers. Some of them are going to hate me for having got this DX. Frankly I doubt they even know what AS is, and I suspect that even having to read and come to terms with this document would be anathema to them, as well as taxing their powers of focus.

As for the document itself, I agree that it's unlikely that many individual Aspies would have every problem described therein, but as I read it, I noticed a lot of things that I've always had trouble with in my job. Naturally I've got coping strategies for some of those things, and they work quite well, but it's great to see in black and white that the stuff I can't so easily cope with is at least understood by somebody here who is respected enough to be allowed to upload it onto the official website. Instead of the usual glittering generalisations that mean nothing in terms of day-to-day working life, this document has day-to-day detail which ought to be very hard to ignore.

wow, what a coincidence, TD!!

How are you doing in your job? If they ever fire you, you can indeed sue them for this discrimination, if only to show the world their double standard even if you don't win.

The document is excellent! This is the first time I have ever read anything and felt that whomever wrote it actually understands what it's really like to be me! I was impressed just by that because most the time it seems like what I read comes from people who do not truly get what my issues are.
The part about anxiety during classes and exams preventing accurate note taking and being too overwhelmed to recall information I've had trouble with. I got the feeling the woman who wrote it really understands the parts that interfer with education and dealing with people in general. I felt like she was inside my head and could express stuff that was hard for me to put into words. This paper is a good trend.

Certainly they have a lot to lose if it comes to litigation.....they're very sensitive about their public image.

Still piecing together the way AS has caused me so much angst in the world of work, Greentea. After all these years of not knowing about AS, naturally I've got some very ingrained rationalisations about why it's been so difficult for me.

Now it seems that I'm objectively armed to the teeth for my imminent battle to get the adjustments I need, but it still feels like I can't possibly win. It's barely in my nature to demand anything from anybody. In a way I feel very much like an Aspie guy I read about who used to turn up 5 minutes late for work most days, and spent the rest of the morning in such an anxious state that they couldn't get any useful work out of him. When the truth about hs condition came out, it turned out that he'd been doing "black-and-white thinking," and had been convinced that he was under great risk of being fired for being just 5 minutes late, hence his anxiety.

So it's like I know what my problems are, which should be a great help, but of course knowing I've got AS doesn't turn me into a neurotypical. I'm still just as poor at getting the help I need from others as I always was, and all I can imagine is that I'll just mutter something to one of the bigwigs and they'll fob me off with nothing. Of course if they do, then all I need to do is to take it further, go see a solicitor if necessary, but the thought of going through that initial process of trying to ask the employer for help feels like I'm contemplating jumping off a cliff.

Yet, from what I can work out, my livelihood is about as secure as it's possible to imagine a livelihood to be. Objectively I suppose should be over the moon, but the Aspie brain in my skull can't believe it, and just keeps telling me stuff about the best-laid plans of mice and men being prone to go astray. Maybe it won't sink in until I'm actually experiencing the adjustments as a reality rather than something theoretical on a piece of paper. I guess decades of being an Aspie in the world of work, absorbing the strains with nobody even suspecting what was going on, is going to take some time to come to terms with.

One thing's for sure, I'm not going to just sit about and do nothing. Tomorrow I visit my GP to have the diagnosis incorporated into my patient notes, to make it official. Next step, I contact the Occupational Health department and tell them what's happened. The ball will then be rolling.......

The author is Tess Coll - google her name and you'll find she's endorsed a number of books on Aspergers, and is referred to as an autism outreach teacher. In the university she's a study adviser in the "AccessAbility Centre," and she's the contact for the Autism Outreach Team for Leicestershire County Council, which provides "assessment, training, consultancy and monitoring of adults with autism who attend Further Education and Higher Education establishments, and of those who work with them."
http://aspergerleics.org/Documents/Adul ... ry0709.doc

Note the wording - not just students but adults "who attend Higher Education establishments.....that could be me . If I can't get things to work out by appealing to the powers that be in the workplace, I guess I could do worse than to send her an email.

Back to the original document, I was heartened to read that it's not just my who can't remember much about a subject once I've got home....I've often said to people that when I go from one place to another, my memory doesn't necessarily follow. But I never thought of it as an Aspie thing before.

And the admission that Aspies often find face-to-face communication so difficult that they have to resort to writing it down while they're alone - quite the reverse of NT expectations, they usually value face-to-face communication as a much better way of getting ideas across.