Skip to main content

I am an Inconsistent Employee

"I'm taking lessons with you because my friend took lessons with you last month, and he said you're the best instructor in [company name omitted]. He highly recommended you, and, when I saw that he got high scores on his exam, I was encouraged to contact you."
That's what a new student told me this morning, and, to be honest, I was surprised.

It's not that I'm a bad teacher. My unique way of thinking seems to work very well for most students, actually. Because my brain translates most things into the kind of thought-process involved in mathematical proofs, I'm able to assess a student's strengths and weaknesses and customize the curriculum for their needs as we go. My mind also works very systematically, which means that I present the material clearly and thoroughly, highlighting the "why" behind my recommendations. This also lets me provide detailed written feedback on each lesson.

I'm not a bad teacher, but I'm inconsistent. Autism, chronic illnesses, and mental illness get in the way of being the reliable employee that I want to be. Sometimes, I miss lessons due to asthma preventing lengthy speech, seizure-like spells, migraines, or total exhaustion (beyond normal tiredness). Other times, I open everything for class and sit at my computer but either panic and leave before the lesson starts or partway through the lesson. Still other times, autism has thrown me into a meltdown, sensory overload, shutdown, or semi-verbal spell that prevents me from doing my job. Finally, executive dysfunction can get so bad that I forget the lesson, come to the lesson but cannot operate my computer to log in/do anything, log in but cannot think enough to open the material, or set everything up but cannot think enough to give clear/coherent instruction.


I don't usually tell my students this. Despite my qualms about lying, I follow my work's recommendation that I blame the inconsistency on technical issues and other benign causes most of the time. Most students are surprisingly accommodating, although some, understandably, are not.

Honestly, I feel really guilty about my inconsistency, even though I know I do my best. I moved to the city in which I now live 2 years ago and started working intensely with a new team of doctors and mental health professionals to try to stabilize myself enough to work full-time. I truly thought that with enough effort and intervention, I could do anything I wanted. After 2 years, my team is telling me that's probably not the case. They are shifting their recommendations from workplace accommodations to SSI with part-time work of no more than around 10 hours per week from home.

I love what I do, and, even though there's no shame in having a disability, I'm still working through a lot of internalized ableism and guilt.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Ordered a Walker

lly have mixe    This is the model. I really have mixed feelings about this decision. I'm choosing to get the walker due to intense pain that's been worsening for about the last year. The cause turns out to be EDS , or at least that's what the doctors are saying. EDS is a connective tissue disorder that I don't yet fully understand, but it was explained to my that my connective tissue at my joints is too stretchy, and it's leading to my pain, fatigue, and susceptibility to joint injury. I was also provisionally diagnosed with POTS , in which blood pools in some areas while I'm seated or laying down, and my heart rate goes up too much trying to get the blood back to my heart and brain when I stand. If this process is inefficient enough, I can faint. Apparently, the doctor didn't do the proper testing for this, so I'm going to take this diagnosis with a grain of salt and just call it unexplained near-fainting episodes for now. Regardless of what causes...
2 comments
Read more

Dear Unnamed Friend

Dear unnamed friend, I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it. I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional. I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares. I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons. You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up. You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the w...
1 comment
Read more

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Part 4

All posts in this series reference working through DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition , and all quotes come from that book unless otherwise specified. This blog post continues to chronicle my takeaways from the Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills section of my DBT workbook. Parts of this section either did not work for my autism or my agnosticism, but on the whole, I found it helpful. Dialectics The next section of interpersonal effectiveness skills is dialectics. Dialectics are all about balancing opposites. This has spiritual applications noted in the book (talk of the universe, etc.), but that doesn't work very well for me with trauma and psychosis surrounding spiritual things. However, dialectics can also help us see both sides of a situation, embrace change in our lives, be aware of our connection to others, and see that we are both impacted by and impacters on our environments. The book then lists some beliefs that are dialectics, and a few w...
Post a Comment
Read more