Taking on too much at work or in school is something I hear other autistics admit to doing. Add the ADHD many of us have and it’s a potential disaster in the making. We take on more than we can realistically manage, trying to prove our value while setting ourselves…
Tag: universities
It’s the last few days of April, with finals starting in a few days. Student project teams are submitting their final reports, videos, and interactive fiction projects. As with the entire semester, I’ll be swamped with grading for the next two weeks in a mad dash to file grades on…
Podcast 0111; Season 07, Episode 04; 4 December 2023 Our family is tired — exhausted — but we are well. The first half of this school year has gone smoothly, though everyone is extremely busy. We’re so busy that the blog and podcast had to be set aside, much as…
Podcast 0108; Season 7, Episode 1; 15 August 2023 As we start a new academic year and a new podcast season, I am trying to balance my health and my desire to be productive. At the end of every night, I complain that I haven’t done enough. I feel like…
I am honored to be joining the faculty at Texas A&M University for the 2023-24 academic year as a full-time lecturer. The COVID-19 pandemic had, in theory, marked the end of my teaching career. However, friends and colleagues persisted in sending me academic job listings. One friend, in particular, persuaded…
What am I? Who am I? It’s easy to dismiss the questions as a bit silly. The “who” is a philosophical question beyond the what, yet the answers create a Venn diagram because who we are is what we are. I am a father and husband. Those are the roles…
Once again I’m preparing for a low-paying adjunct assignment, vowing this will be the last time I work so hard for so little money. My base salary is $1900 per class. I spend a lot of time on these classes, updating existing materials and preparing new. Regardless of the term…
Severe test anxiety haunts me. I hate exams of any kind. Like many people, I feel sick leading up to any test and I feel uncertain of my knowledge. I worry for weeks before a test, during the test, and for the time after the test until I receive my…
Podcast Episode 0027; Season 02, Episode 13; February 8, 2019 Too often I hear people suggest that education, especially higher education, is somehow the ideal career path for autistics. It might be good for some, but education has proven to be an impossible path for me. If I had focused on…
Writing is how I relate to myself and to others. Writing has been a part of my life since at least the second grade when I started to make little books and write short stories. I tried to start a novel in the fifth grade, which I still dream of…