On not making the grade
I think it was when I was brushing my teeth yesterday that I began to have reveries of, as usual nowadays, being at work and arguing. Of course, most of them have slipped my mind, as usual, but one that remains in my memory was, as is often the case set in one of the meetings.
When I was away in Prague I wrote down some reveries of disagreements enacted in my mind with some of the management here and their philosophy and ways of dealing with students. Much of it stems, actually, I think, from a meeting I alluded to yesterday about music in which one of the managers said that MP3 players are bad because it discourages conversation (I reflected on it when I was listening to rock music in my car, and finding it cathartic). We were for some kind of compromise whereby students could listen to MP3 players at certain alloted times. She was adament that they should not be allowed to listen to MP3 players at all. One of my arguments was that those individuals with autistic spectrum disorders do not have the same inclination towards conversation and that, far from relaxing them, it stresses them out. My take on it was, and is, that yes, we should at all times help students by reducing the anxiety associated with social contact, and that we should indeed encourage social contact and facilitate it, but that we should not enforce it at all times of the day because it is exceptionally fatuiging for ASD individuals to constantly be involved in conversation.
Last night I had a similar reverie. There were several takes, but the mean was that I was in a meeting in which I saw fit to note that in America there are evengelicals who to this day offer electro shock therapy to homosexuals to turn them straight. I made this observation in connection with their way of dealing with Aspergic students. Ah, yes, I remember one thing that came up. I kept on talking about how it is idiotic to say to a student who is about to throw a brick through a window “do you really think that will make you feel better?” because, odds on, it will. I said if I were to throw a brick through a window I would most certainly feel better, and if the police were to come and arrest me, and if I were to shout and swear at them, that would make me feel better too. I went on to explain that all the time I am coming in to work trying to appear to be neurotypical, and in doing so I never, not once, make the grade. I always fall short of the mark. The best I can achieve, day after day, is that people think I am nondescript, borderline incompetent, lack a sense of humour, an easy person to forget. I don’t make the grade. And that is the motivation I have, that is the reward I get for working hard all the time, eating well. And then, of course, I eschew coffee and alcohol and people look at me like I’m some kind of an ascetic so long as I don’t talk at length about my problems - if I don’t talk at length they conclude that I am fussy about my food and perhaps neurotic. [I’ve lost track somewhat with people coming into the office at work. I don’t want them seeing the blog. And then others are having noisy conversations - irritating middle class chatter about dinner parties and the if I’m honest - and I can’t remotely think or follow my train of thought with others talking around me.] If you throw a brick through a window, often you are expressing the noise inside your head far better than by forever trying to be something it’s hard for you to be, and not getting the recognition for the constant energy you’re putting into it because you still don’t make the grade, and nobody can see the turbulance in your head that prevents you making that step, and it is natural for them to think sometimes that with just a little effort you could be normal like anyone else, that you could hold a conversation - you can speak after all - and control yourself - you do sometimes when you are following your own interests after all - when in fact this is not remotely true.
It went round and round in my head. I was tired last night, but there was a lot of noise in my head that was slow to ebb away. I listened to an audiobook for a while, and eventually fell asleep.
masterkidderminster.net » Blog Archive » I feel an obsession coming on :) ( :( :) :( :) ) / Reaching out says:
[…] could in short settle for the anxiety and depression of knowing however hard you try, you’ll never make the grade, or he could relax into himself, cultivate his portfolio of prodromes and eccentricities and be […]
November 27th, 2007 at 11:20 pm