![]() What is a Trope? Transcript (English & Spanish Subtitles Available in Video, Click HERE for Spanish Transcript)īy Tekla Bude, Oregon State Associate Professor of Medieval Literatures Conference for Antiracist Teaching, Language and Assessment.OSU - University of Warsaw Faculty Exchange Program.Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS).Scientific, Technical, and Professional Communication Certificate.This huge, crazy bubble of Hope rises up inside me and bursts forth into an uncontrollable smile. What does my future hold? I don’t know for sure, but I do know is that what I learn and contribute at Mind Shift makes me a better person and helps me prepare for that future and the challenges and opportunities it will bring.Įach morning as I head to work, it happens. Mind Shift helps me realize my potential. My position at Mind Shift accommodates my current abilities and helps me expand those, growing as a person and employee. Each day I go to work, I know that I’ll be productive, valued, and given the tools I need to excel and grow. It’s a place of support, encouragement, safety, understanding, and most of all, Hope. ![]() I knew my time in that position was limited. It didn’t take long before I’d start seeing The Look, and people who were previously friendly became distant. Every ounce of my focus was on meeting the work goals and not losing the job. I’d work so hard to meet them that all else in my life would suffer: home, friendships, nutrition, sleep, everything. The expectations of a “regular” job, without accommodations, were a guarantee of failure. It provides a place for me to learn of how much I truly am capable, instead of placing unattainable expectations on me from day one. ![]() How does any of this relate to Mind Shift and the Hope it gives me? Mind Shift accepts and accommodates my current ability level and encourages me to stretch those boundaries. Every social situation becomes a minefield. The words mean one thing to you, but something different to them and you lack the necessary parts to replicate the “correct” meaning. Imagine being dropped onto another planet with no frame of reference to interpret the native language. For each social gathering, there is a price to pay and I need varying amounts to time to recover and become energized again. As time went on, I found myself avoiding social situations, even when I wanted to participate, because the emotional toll was too great. Extended periods of social interaction were exhausting as I expended my energy interpreting and making my best guesses to the nuanced meanings behind neuro-typical conversation. I’d spent years learning and mentally cataloging non-verbal social cues, so I could superficially pass for “normal” within limited time frames, but it was never enough. This became a repeating pattern, and I came to believe I’d never fit in anywhere. Sometimes the consequences were a puzzled query from the other party, offering me an opportunity to correct my unintentional blunder other times it was immediate ostracization from my coworkers and subsequent sidelong glances until the pressure became too great and I’d resign, humiliated and angry with myself for not “getting it”. The Look is a slight narrowing of the eyes and a tilt of the head, always signaling that I’d done something socially incorrect. No matter how hard I tried to fit in, at some point I’d see “The Look”. ![]() I’d struggled to get and keep jobs, worked below my education level and agonized over all the daily social interactions. I didn’t fit in with others, struggling to understand the non-verbal cues. By then, I had internalized that I was broken, defective, an outsider. My diagnosis didn’t come until I was twenty-nine years old. I grew up in the age where Autism was thought of as an affliction that required institutionalizing, and no one even knew what Asperger’s Syndrome was the research wasn’t even translated from German until after I’d graduated from High School. By the time I reached adulthood, life on the Spectrum had taught me to be guarded and never really, fully hope for anything.
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