hmm.....

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Well, I just wanted to mention that after about a month at my new job (I had an internship with a small public accounting firm doing tax, compilations, trial balances, etc.) I just got let go today. It wasn't on specifically bad terms - they knew I was trying, they said they liked my attitude and work ethic, new that I was trying, but for the past month that I've been there it's like every day's been a repeat of my first. Right now I'm not really bugged about it - I kinda felt like I was in over my head perceptually, felt like I was getting lost in the details, had to try and remind myself every 2 minutes of what the heck I was just doing - this is something I've had a sense of and some concern about with respect to myself for a while but anytime I ever did address it with people (before this job or even when I first started) people usually just figured I was being too hard on myself, was expecting more than what I should have out of myself, at least it's nice to a point that I have a definitive answer - I definitely do have the smarts but on the other end of it, I lack something very crucial in terms of mental coordination and of course like many aspies my short term non-procedural memory is trash half the time.

I guess I'm really posting this to anyone who's thinking about accounting to mention that unless you're someone who does have that kind of memory, can go to a brand new task with completely different factors, and not feel lost, you may just want to stick with government and industry. One of my professors who I had for an accounting systems class back arround last spring had mentioned most of the Big 4 weren't necessarily looking for the 3.8+ students (aka. where I'm at) but more for the 3.3 - 3.4 students who where kind of more on the social butterfly end. It's not discrimination, probably because the rote social skills don't mean nearly as much as a positive attitude and a good work ethic, but what it's really about is learning style and someone who's real quick on their feet, versatile, and has that certain type of mental dexterity that actually promotes a person to do well in the, how can I put this....horizontal sense? He mentioned that one of the reasons why a lot of the public firms usually aren't as big on the 4.0'ers is because the GPA high-rollers usually have a type of learning style that needs a great deal of certainty, given information, and to be honest I find that very true of myself. In a public accounting firm, especially a small one with no specialization, you'll never have things ironed out that well for you - it's just not reality.

If I'm mad about anything, I guess I could say its the fact that I was seeing psychologists and psychiatrists most of my life as a kid, they never actually tried to sort out the literal aspects of what my strengths and weaknesses were (cognitively speaking), and as my social skills got better and as I seemed to be doing better and better in the social and life sense they wanted to just sit there and tell me how proud they were of how I was doing (I'm in a local aspie support group and not a meeting goes by without the guy who's heading it telling me how well I'm doing, almost making me feel a little bit guilty about the rest of the group hearing it) when I feel it's a sharade I'm putting all my might into holding together and when I tell them about my problems I get exactly that - that I'm not looking at the positives enough or that I'm being too hard on myself. Getting that 'everything's fine' message when I haven't felt it at gut level has always struck hollow, felt kind of worthless, and it never did a thing for me in terms of sorting out some major problems that I knew I had in an abstract sense but couldn't quite put my finger on (and leaving me to hang in limbo on it). Yeah, I know they aren't perfect and people can only see things based off of evidence but you'd think they'd take stock in the fact that most people, AS or NT, try to put an Enron front on for the world just because they have to, confidence and self-assurance mean more than anything and sometimes that takes forcing yourself to deny very real issues and trying to patch in the holes when it starts crumbling, its even more of an uneasy feeling when those holes are never big enough for people to recognize on a conscious level, you patch them up out of necessity, you do it so well that you really do decieve the world for years on it, and you can't stop because the world demands you to put out your optimal self-image at the expense of practically anything.

Well, at least now I have some solid ground and solid self-knowledge to work with. I left work today in that sort of numbed and deliberately up-beat mode (I used to freak out about stuff like this, at 26 I guess its enough of a been-there-done-that to where my emotional side will let me be nonchalant about it, there's no point any other way). Right after I got home I called the disability counselor at school, someone who I'd set things up with but never had followed through on trying to get his help just because - as high functioning as the world felt I was I felt extremely guilty about getting help the first time and thought it would be best if I just tough it out like anyone else, get a job without any of it getting taken into account, and if I really found I was having problems THEN taking it as a second recourse. At least now I can tell myself that its really about job history, by the time I get like 3 or 4 W2's in 3 months I can pretty much expect employers to start seeing red flags. Odds are, just from what I"m hearing, that I'd probably do just fine in an accounts payable, accounts receivable, or governmental type job - that I could also give a try to and try to go it alone but I guess I'm at that point where my pride's giving in and I feel, especially with $800-900 in cost of living right now, that it would be stupid to roll the dice on this.

Hopefully in the next few weeks though I'll be able to start pulling strings and get myself back on my feet again, but untill then though I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Okay, first off, that sucks. But you already know that and I don't think you're playing for sympathy. So I'll tell you what I'm really thinking instead, which is to go analytical.

I think I understand what you find yourself missing because I'm missing something similar at my job. Completely different industry, sure, but the location doesn't really matter, it's about the style and frequency of tasks. For all that I sell myself as an intelligent, fast learner, I'm having a hard time keeping up with the other people at the same level. And yours are good words for it: it is a problem with mental dexterity or horizontal learning.

It seems to come with strengths and weaknesses. I'm indifferent or slightly receptive to rote tasks that the others find frustratingly tedious. They are a chance to relax in the midst of chaos and I speed through them noticeably faster than the others. One example is z-scrubbing, which involves loading up a film shot, doing a test render, finding and fixing any errors, and then loading up the next shot. Running through 50 or so a week. The only time there's social interaction or chaos is if I run across an error I can't fix.

But then when it comes to more complex situations, it becomes difficult keeping every thread in balance. Feels like I see too many possibilities and can't distinguish easily between the effectiveness of each one, so it slows me down in situations where the others just make a snap judgement and move on. For example a lighting artist comes to the rendering department with an unfamiliar error. I could go with them back to their computer and watch them try to reproduce it... but I'd betray my lack of verbal skills and end up saying something much stupider than I'm actually thinking. Or misunderstanding their work flow, not because I lack knowledge of it, but because I'm overloaded by the conversation and not processing visual info properly. I could thank them and say I'll contact them when I've fixed it, and then sit in front of my computer doing so... but there comes a point when one of the others would walk over to a friend's desk and say "have you ever run into X before?..." and the friend will say "yeah" and show them how to fix it. But I've tried that and gotten reprimanded for asking for help on a problem a TD ought to be able to solve for themselves. Can't figure out how they get away with asking without looking incompetent. Yet at a certain point it becomes necessary to risk the repremand rather than leave the lighting artist hanging. Or I decide I have to go back and talk to the lighting artist and spend ten minutes psyching myself up to do it when someone else would just leap up and start walking.

It's frustrating and I know it's hurting my chances of getting kept on once the project's over. Do you have any other ideas on how to deal with it?

I wish I did. As it is I'm even concerned about if I joined an A/R or A/P department - would they try to crank data entry out of me so fast that they'd be pointing out a 20% typo rate after a few weeks and canning me on that? With what your saying....the only bit of advice I can think of is what you've probably figured out - if you have enough time off and you have the learning sources, try to read up and get ahead of the problem when you know you have a gray area in your knowledge pool that could come back to bite you like that. I've gotta ask you though, when you ask these questions, where in the scope of your job are they? I'm guessing they're either the days when you pick up for the next person down the line when their off sick or when you have some kind of customer request that takes you doing complicated procedure that's just done once every few months? Getting those types of situations handled and how you'd want to do it probably depends more on the types off bosses you have - if you went to em to say "Hey, I wanted to mention that with (X) program I have difficulties doing (Y) because I've never really been shown how and I know I'm gonna have to deal with it sooner or later" and they were supportive then something like that may be a plan, otherwise if you think they'd laugh at you like "WTF? Your an adult! Do it your damn self" then you might just wanna keep yourself back from it and just put the work into reading the manual or practicing maybe at home with a similar program.

All arround though it sounds like your situation is a lot more manageable - your blush moments at work sound like they're maybe happening every once a month or two months rather than every other day. In that case I think you at least have the time to get enough know-how from that to leverage the situation.