Last updated on November 26, 2023
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 a more technical field, maybe I would have succeeded as a professor. Unfortunately, I ended up in English departments or judged by English colleagues.
I am not a success. I am not an academic inspiration story.
I made poor choices. Maybe others can learn something from my mistakes.
Transcript (lightly edited)
Welcome to The Autistic Me Podcast. I’m Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
This week, I want to address education, one of the three topics about which I receive the most questions.
I could write a book about my experiences as a student and educator. I’ve started just such a project several times, and each time I’ve decided it isn’t helpful since it is one failure after another. There’s a lot more to say than what follows, but it’s enough to remind people that education is no better than any other path for an autistic individual.
I’d argue education is difficult for any disabled person. Higher education is particularly uninviting and unsupportive.
The assumption is that because I have completed various degree programs, I must have mastered how to succeed in higher education. The reality is more complex. Yes, I do have two terminal degrees, a doctorate and a master of fine arts, but the journey towards those degrees was fraught with academic and social failures.
I did not complete some of the programs I attempted. In several instances, I departed universities out of frustration. To this day, I regret being unable to complete degree programs I had hoped would lead me into a stable career.
I have not had, and am unlikely now to have, a genuine career. Employment failures resemble my struggles in academic settings, which require the same social and organizational skills as a workplace.
And so, I want listeners and readers to know that what they consider to be academic success actually reflects a series of desperate attempts to find a community and career in which I might feel comfortable and somewhat welcomed.
I remember a teacher in Bakersfield, where I started school, calling my family “trailer park trash” and that has remained with me. Technically, we did live in two mobile home parks when I was young. When we moved, we moved to Ivanhoe, California, a small town known for its poverty. I was well aware of the difference between living in Ivanhoe and living in the “better” rural neighborhood of Oak Ranch.
I’ve known since first grade that I enjoy writing and creating things. But, like most people, my career interests changed from writing, to science, to technology. The interests merged when I realized I could write about science and technology — and then use technology to create media.
I’ve written before about my shift into the Mentally Gifted Minors and then Gifted And Talented Education programs. Simply moving from one city to another, from one school district to another, led to significant label changes. I went from receiving one type of supports for struggling students to receiving supports for being gifted. Often, students rise to meet expectations, and I’d like to imagine I did better because it was expected of me.
The resource specialist for the elementary schools introduced me to the Apple and Atari computers. Eventually, I would own a Commodore VIC-20, a Timex-Sinclair, and two IBM-compatible computers, a Tandy 1000 and an Epson AT. Computers make sense to me, even when people do not. I learned to program because I wanted to create more things with the computer. I coded text editors, art programs, and even simple music.
People do forget that technology was rare in the 1970s and early 80s. Personal computers became common when I was in high school, with the releases of the IBM PC XT and the Apple IIe.
Though I might have seemed normal or okay to adults, I knew I wasn’t particularly liked by peers. A young girl, a fifth-grader when I was in sixth grade, ran a campaign that helped to elect me school president. I thought this meant I might have friends or be more liked in some way. If anything, being student body president in sixth grade made the isolation of junior high even harder to ignore. Younger kids had liked me, while my peers considered me helplessly weird.
Even worse, I didn’t know how to relate to the young girl who had managed to get me elected. She was really nice… so, of course, I didn’t know how to get to know her and show her any respect. She did the impossible, even if it became something of a joke.
I was a difficult student. I’d speak up when a teacher made a mistake. My parents were told I might not amount to much. School was a challenge because I was smart and socially inept, even with teachers.
High school was a social struggle. I didn’t go to prom or seriously date. I struggled with depression and skipped more classes than my parents probably realizes. Without three good mentors, I would have stopped at high school.
The value of mentors cannot be overstated. I need those people who will remind me to do things I dislike so I can later do what I love. Though I prefer to be alone, ignoring the world, you cannot do that and succeed — at least not usually. Finding journalism helped. I could write and use my technical skills. I helped set up computer labs and configure software. I could be a geek and a writer.
Other people were better reporters and I wasn’t the best writer because I would rush. But, I was good enough that I had a plan for college.
When I entered college, I assumed I would be a technology or business reporter, and use technology in the workplace. Computer science was more theoretical and mainframe-focused in the 1980s, so I focused on journalism. I added an English degree when I learned that to teach journalism in California you needed an English education credential. Teaching was supposed to be a safety net at first, but by my senior year teaching journalism was my intended career path.
The only reason I managed to complete my undergraduate degrees was that I was in the honors program at the University of Southern California. The honors housing, known as Faculty-in-Residence, meant I had a stable community and faculty mentors to help me navigate the foreign world of the university. I also found comfort working at the University Computing Services, where I could learn about IBM mainframes, Sun Workstations, and various programming languages. I learned more at work than in classes.
Again, I had two great mentors at work, another reason I was able to complete the two undergraduate degrees. At work, I was reminded of the value of any degree. Most of the programmers didn’t have technology degrees. They had studied fields including philosophy, classics, art, and music. To be a computer geek, you didn’t need a computing-related degree.
I finished the undergraduate degrees in December of 1990. My goal was to complete my teaching credential that spring.
Sadly, I did not finish the teacher education program.
I came within two courses of completing the credential and regret not doing so to this day. Instead, I had a conflict with the professor overseeing student teachers. My high school journalism instructor was about to take a sabbatical for a documentary project. I hoped to take his place for the year while finishing my studies.
My conflict with the USC School of Education was largely because the professor considered me too rigid and too format. She wrote that I was unlikely to connect with students, even though I knew my subject materials. In her view, I was not ready to enter a classroom. Instead of trying to negotiate, instead of arguing that I should be allowed to prove my abilities, I left USC and drove home… insulted and hurt that someone would say I shouldn’t teach because of my personality.
I did take the temporary teaching post, but the work at USC in education was largely wasted. I went from being eight weeks from earning a credential to starting over. Now, I had to enroll in another education program while teaching. That’s how I entered my second university. My goal became teaching and earning a degree in education so I could continue doing what I loved.
Unfortunately, instead of staying in my temporary post, I accepted a permanent post in another district for the fall of 1991. That post quickly fell apart after conflicts with my assigned mentor at the high school. He was abusive towards me and inappropriate towards students, but he was popular. Times have changed a lot since then, thankfully. I resigned my position, unable to continue in what was a toxic environment for me.
And there I was, with yet more education coursework completed and no job. I left the graduate program, feeling worse than I did when I left USC. Now, I had failed twice to clear my credential to become a teacher.
In the years ahead, I would try two more teaching credential programs. I left both programs unable to do the same work I had done twice before. I understand there are residency requirements at universities and they want to ensure some quality within degree and credential programs, but I wish there had been more flexibility.
Taking courses that aren’t of interest to me isn’t easy. Taking the same course twice has proved impossible.
I tried a graduate program in journalism, and really wanted to succeed in that program. Unfortunately, I was older than other students and felt incredibly isolated away from friends and family. A residential life advisor told me I made other students uncomfortable with my late-night walks around campus. I was told classmates considered me “creepy” and “weird.”
My body gave out, from pain and emotional exhaustion. Once again, I exited a program. The depression that followed was severe, but I had no idea what to do next.
I did make another attempt at a teaching credential, at the same university at which I completed two graduate courses while teaching high school journalism. But, I quickly became disgusted with the low quality of instruction and the even lower quality of the students with whom I found myself.
That was four attempts at a California high school teaching credential, each ending in a failure to complete the program. Nothing was working out, and I was thirty years old by that time.
Thirty. No career. No practical college degree.
Emotionally, I was a mess. The toll on my relationships was severe. I was good at school work, a good teacher… and a complete failure at jumping through the hoops to become a credentialed high school teacher.
It was at that time that I tried to seek help from a therapist specializing in educational supports. Neither the therapy nor the medications helped. If anything, my relationships deteriorated more, along with my self-esteem. I nearly lost the friendship of the one person who has been beside me through each educational misadventure, my wife.
Technically, I did lose her. We married and promptly divorced because I wanted her to find someone better. I hated everything about myself. The psychologist had suggested I might be in the wrong relationship for the wrong reasons; finding the “right” relationship would somehow fix me and set my wife free to have a better life.
In 2004, after my wife and her family had supported two different attempts at self-employment, I returned again to graduate school. This time, I entered Fresno State’s master of fine arts program in creative writing. I knew from teaching part-time at the local community college that an MFA was a terminal degree and with it I could teach college.
Within the first semester, I realize the MFA was not for me. I love writing. I write all the time. But, I didn’t like the MFA model of reading and critiquing each other. I also discovered that I don’t love contemporary literary writing as much as my peers. Give me my pop-lit and mass-market fiction. Also, I still prefer poetry that rhymes — however odd that might seem. Free-verse can be good, but I didn’t understand most of what was being read… or written.
I switched my degree to an MA in Rhetoric, so I could focus on screen, stage, and new media. I enjoyed the cinema and the drama courses much more.
There were, however, still struggles. I couldn’t memorize dialogue from a play as easily as others. I couldn’t walk across campus some days without serious pain. I struggled in some rooms with fluorescent lights. Pushing through some days was painful.
Luck was on my side, for once, and I again stumbled into a great mentor. He was at Fresno State only a short time, but he was there for my two years and helped me finish the master’s degree. He was the professor who encouraged me to meet with disability services, since I had a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and suffered from severe back pain.
After I graduated from Fresno State, with distinction, my wife and I remarried. We relocated to Minnesota where I was offered a fellowship in Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication. My goal now was to combine writing and computers, with more focus on the technology of writing. I could study how we use computers to create texts and other works, including audio and video compositions.
The University of Minnesota experience was horrible. There’s really no other way to describe it from my perspective. It was everything the USC School of Education had been, and worse. The only difference is that my wife was with me. Without her, I would have quit and walked away from everything.
There was the job lost because I made people uncomfortable. I was called a “gimp” one day in the building that housed tutoring. I don’t know who said it, but that was demoralizing. There was the meeting with a faculty member, who declared I was a lot of extra effort. An expulsion hearing because a faculty member claimed she was afraid of me. Changes in advisers, adding to a sense of rejection…. And so it went.
I was evaluated, at the request of the university, in 2007 and my diagnosis became high-functioning autism. I was asked to meet with a university counselor, which was a waste of time and counterproductive yet again. At some point, I canceled any future visits — but I cannot recall why. It’s probably best that some parts of Minnesota are forgotten to me.
My first job as a professor was as bad as the Minnesota experience and reminded me of the “permanent” teaching job that derailed my second attempt at the teaching credential. We mutually agreed to an early exit right after extremely positive reviews become extremely negative. The hostility of the work environment again made leaving a matter of personal wellbeing.
The second job was better. I served as a visiting professor and loved where I taught. But, when they hired someone else for the permanent post, I decided against remaining as a part-time instructor. Though I loved teaching at the university, and I enjoyed most of the students, I did not get along well with the colleagues on the hiring committee. I assumed teaching was again a dead dream, this time in higher education.
To make my way back into media, which was the purpose for my journalism degree so long ago, I enrolled in an MFA program in Film and Digital Technology. That experience was less than great. I ended up with a series of medical emergencies and a surgery that disrupted my studies. My wife and I were new foster parents, she had just undergone cancer treatment, and my health collapsed.
As with other situations, a mentor helped me complete the degree. He let me take independent study courses so I could catch up around being a new parent and physically ill. I still had to pay for an extra semester, but now I had the MFA and could teach in a journalism or media program.
I soon applied for an assistant professor post at a nearby state university. It was the job I always wanted — in a program with journalism and media production. I didn’t get the job. Nobody did, as the line was canceled. Somehow, I did end up teaching at the same university, in the English Department, for a fraction of the salary a professor with the same teaching load would earn.
My current contract is for one year, as an instructor. I’m teaching courses I’m not comfortable teaching. I thought I was buying a year while my wife and I waited to adopt our daughters. Then, I’d re-enter the job market before 2018 ended and we could move for whatever I located.
The adoption has been delayed, for legal technicalities. Knowing I do not want to teach English ever again, this year has led me to conclude it is time to call it quits.
Once I turned 50, it was clear there was never going to be a teaching career. This year, I realized I don’t even want to teach part-time if I’m not teaching in a media or technology field. I’m doing my best to learn as I teach, and I hope I’m performing well. But, I am unhappy and disillusioned.
I chased the dream of teaching journalism and media production since 1987. It is now 2019 and I have to accept that the dream needs to end. At best, I can freelance in media and do my own projects. Teaching journalism, photography, audio or video production wasn’t going to happen.
Over the years, I have published several academic articles, two book chapters, presented numerous conference papers, and co-edited a book.
And I’m going to be unemployed again in May.
Every diploma and degree I completed was due to the efforts of my wife and several mentors. I have let them all down, in the end.
I am not a success. I am not an academic inspiration story.
This has been Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
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