hope
Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends
After my public whine about DARS, a few friends reached out with unexpected and much appreciated offers. Sam seized on them both, forwarding a resume to one and securing an interview with another.
I accompanied him to the interview, in part because I wanted to see my old friend, but also because she asked that I be there.
My friend runs a company started by her late husband assembling circuit boards. I’m sure there is nothing in “What Color is Your Parachute” or any of the other how-to-get-a-job-books about bringing your mom along, but that’s how we roll.
Sam and my friend communicated just fine together. They are both straight shooters. She gave him a tour and checked his ability to do some of the fine motor work. Then she told him she would work around his Albertsons schedule for now. Very classy. If it doesn’t work out, there is an easy retreat for both of them.
But I have to say, at the end of the interview, when she asked about another task altogether — helping her link up some kind of time clock hardware to her current accounting software — I saw a huge spark in Sam’s eyes.
Every Day of The Year
Based on things Sam has said about the gas plant next door over the past 12 months, I can tell he wakes up each day and thinks, “Maybe today is the day that they lose and we win and we can stay.”
As my friend Nancy said, it’s sweet, but it’s sad.
It’s a universal truth, too. I wake up everyday thinking my husband is alive and my home isn’t threatened.
Then I draw my first waking breath.
How Paige Sees Home
The Second Biggest Mistake Ever. Or Not.
For a graduation present, I bought Sam an iPhone.
Second only to buying him an old car for Christmas, it was shaping up to be the biggest mistake I ever made.
Family members, friends, and all the AT&T retail sales reps and guys from the Genius Bar at the Apple Store down in Texas have been getting an earful about the Bad Decision Apple Made, one that makes it impossible to assign properties to your contact groups.
It was something his old Nokia phone could do, and he warned me (and has reminded me repeatedly the past four days that he warned me) that without that feature, it was a deal-breaker.
It didn’t matter that he could turn on the navigator to help find an alternate route to the airport today, or to the Apple Store. It didn’t matter that he could play his favorite music on it. Because he couldn’t tell his phone to ring one way for a call from a family member and another way for a call from friends, the phone might as well go in the trash can.
He tried finding apps. He tried work-arounds I found on various help sites. He could create the groups in Outlook, but Outlook wouldn’t cooperate with the sync. Even if he gets that to work, he’d still have to program each individual contact with his preferred ringtone.
A waste of time, Sam said. He’s right, of course. But I told him that if it’s really that important, he’s spending an awful lot of time figuring out the work-arounds. So much time, in fact, that he probably would already have had all 60-ish of his contacts programmed.
Yes, he said, but why should he have to waste his time because of this Bad Decision Apple Made.
Then it dawned on me. He could write an app for that.
We had an animated discussion on the way home from the Apple Store about it. I told him a lot of people learn to make a good living by solving problems people want solved.
His perspective changed. Or he at least stopped saying I made a huge mistake buying him the phone. He recognized developing an app as a project, and one with some big hurdles, but he’s on his way.
When we got home, he made his first “alert tone” in Garage Band, one that he used on his Nokia that he’s upset wasn’t on his iPhone. And we looked up resources for app developers.
This could be an interesting summer, especially as the job hunt begins.
Autism Awareness Floofie
I am surrounded by some of the most talented people. Maddy Mathis created this furry little guy in autism awareness colors.
She will attend art school in California. In about a decade, this young woman will be a creative force in the art world.
Just a bit more at NCTC
The vice president for student services bent Sam’s ear at a graduation reception for NCTC’s TRIO students earlier this month, and convinced him that an associate’s degree was within his grasp.
Sam had given up a few years ago and started pursuing the certificate, rather than a full degree, after he took American Government (more on that in a minute).
We learned that he no longer needs American Government to get the associate’s degree. NCTC has since changed its core class requirements and the history class he took fulfills that humanities requirement.
Just a few more computer classes, probably all online, and he can file for the associate’s degree. In Texas, that degree is some serious higher education currency. With it, he can transfer all 30 hours to any public, 4-year institution and be halfway to a bachelor’s degree.
And that might mean something some day.
I was devastated when he made that run at American Government two summers ago, because it was the last non-computer class — the last real hurdle — to an associate’s degree. Similar to college algebra and one of his other core classes, I thought he would take it all the way through to the last possible day to drop, drop the class, and try again.
It’s not the best way to go at a class, I suppose, but it worked for Sam.
When he got to the last day and dropped, I asked him when he would take another swing at American Government.
Came his answer: “I don’t care how many times I take American Government, Mom, I’ll never understand it.”
Amen to that, Sam. Amen to that.
Updating the Resume
Tonight, Sam took another step, without DARS, in his job hunt. He updated his resume.
It was a nice thing to add, that section of work experience, describing how he built gaming computers for clients who would use them to design games and applications, all part of his internship.
Gary Moore, with nonPareil Institute, told me last week that he got a call from Goodwill. They were looking for workers who could help them rebuild Dell Computers. It would be great work for Sam. But the workshop was in Oak Cliff.
Commuting to nonPareil was already a real reach. He can’t commute to South Dallas. Gary said he’d keep his ears and eyes open, and remember us and send us referrals when the work was north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Sam registered with the Texas Workforce Commission, and we’ve been checking job boards.
I hope this doesn’t get discouraging, but I fear it will.
What You Know Best
Today there was lots of chatter today in the public radio and television sphere about autism. Diane Rehm hosted a segment in the second hour of her show, based in large part on the piece that’s running on public television right now.
As I was listening today, I thought a lot about how much the world has changed for youngsters with autism and their families in the past 20 years. One of the guests even helped bridge that gap in discussing her 16-year-old with autism a little.
Her son was diagnosed when he was 2. That seemed like such a luxury to me. Two years of anguish we would have been spared if we’d gotten a diagnosis that much sooner.
And as I was listening, I thought about how I’d made a pitch to her shows producers — let us talk about early intervention and behavioral treatments, let us show you that they work. Then, like most people might feel, I wasn’t surprised my pitch was passed by, possibly even ignored. Who am I to think I had something to offer this greater conversation, with these incredibly smart knowledgeable people on air right now? Every once in a while they bring up something I didn’t know — proof I’m an imposter.
Then, they’ll blow right by a topic — the upcoming cohort of adults with autism and how are we to support them in having full, productive lives — just open the door and say, “see, we’ve got a problem coming,” without articulating that problem in any sort of way.
I have an inkling of how to articulate that. That has been part of this blog from the beginning … just feeling my way through the darkness. We weren’t completely driven off the cliff, but it was close.
I’ll try to keep that in mind with the upcoming training I’m giving May 7 in Richardson at the Region 10 Education Service Center. I’m not an expert on what’s new and great for the young set. But I can tell you what you will need in the future — and how to make the best use of your precious time and resources on the way to the future.
And I hope the national conversation goes a little further — and real soon — about articulating what we need to do for this cohort.
The Best Accommodation
I asked Sam tonight about a test he’ll be taking tomorrow in his computer tech security class. When he first started at North Central Texas College in 2006, he would often retreat to their student success office to take any test. He needed the quiet room, free of distractions, and the extra time, to get it done.
But the past few years, I’ve noticed Sam working diligently through test study guides. Now, these guides are often long — perhaps 50 questions or more, clearly pulled from past tests, possibly on the upcoming test.
Sam works through them all methodically. He looks up the answer in the book or his notes and types it out in complete sentences on a virtual piece of paper. He puts in several hours each time he prepares. And he rarely does poorly on any test he takes any more.
I was curious whether he was going back to the student success center to take the test and Sam said no, he doesn’t need that accommodation much any more, especially if a professor can accommodate him another way.
I was a little sketchy on what that detail might be, but Sam has learned to advocate for himself and the professors there at NCTC have come to understand him, too.
I asked him whether he thought those study guides were a good thing. He said they were the best accommodation of all. Once he answered something from the guide, it was “in my head for good,” he said.
I wondered about all those students who might see a 50-question guide, skim it, and say to themselves, “oh, I know all these answers.” I know I was one of those kind of students in my day. I got away with not going fully into the corners as I learned things, something I do not do anymore. I got bit one too many times in my life by not quite knowing what I should know.
Most of the time, all that is required is a full, careful reading of the material. And then it’s in my brain for good, too — or at least enough that I know it exists and where to find it again.
He said the funniest thing at the end of our little exchange.
“I don’t need many accommodations any more. I feel I’m fully grown up now.”
High Fives for the Local Guys
Our sister paper, The Dallas Morning News, ran a nice piece about nonPareil today. (Yes, there’s a pay wall. We journalists have to make a living, too.)
When Sam saw the photo, he said, “when I see that, its just amazing.”
Today was his first day to be a trainer. He said it went well, but he has to train a lot more to be a good trainer.