Partly, it’s because I’ve just been too depressed.  I feel like if I write about [...]]]> I haven’t been posting a lot lately.  Partly this is because of the amount of time I’ve had to spend reading job listings, filling out applications, tweaking resumes, and trying to write cover letters that aren’t don’t sound like total BS.

Partly, it’s because I’ve just been too depressed.  I feel like if I write about what my life has bee like lately, I’d just be whining, and I should be trying to be chipper and cheerful and all that crap.

But then I realized, this is a blog about adult learning disabilities.  Life with adult LD sucks sometimes.  And seldom does it suck more than in the area of employment.

So here goes.

Back in March, when my husband was offered his exciting start-up opportunity that involves a significant pay cut, my plan was simple: I’d go back to my previous job, which wasn’t that exciting, but was a decent place to work, and I’d put in a bunch of hours there while looking for something that paid better and was more in line with what I’d actually like to do with my life.

It seemed like a good plan, because every time I’d been into the store where I used to work, my former boss had said that he’d love to put me back on the schedule.  It sounded like a done deal.

So I applied there.

And then I waited.  And waited.

And then I called them about my application, and it turned out that there had been some changes in the management staff, but I landed an interview.  I was told that my previous employee evaluations looked good, and that they could probably use me, but I should call back in a week to follow up.

So I did.

And I was told that they hadn’t made their decision yet, and I should call back in a week.

So I did, and I was told that they hadn’t made their decision yet, and I should call back in a week …

And it went on like that for about six weeks, at which point they decided to go with someone else.

Which is fine, I guess, but did they really have to string me along for six weeks?  And actually, it’s not fine.  It’s a bit of an ego blow to get turned down for an incredibly boring, menial job that I worked for five years; a job that I can do in my sleep; a job for which the company would not even need to train me.  I had pretty good evaluations at that place — and if they won’t hire me, why the hell would anybody else want to?

A few weeks after that, one of my applications actually got a nibble, and I was asked in to interview.  It was a tough interview, what I later found out was a “behavioral interview“, that began with the interviewer pressuring me to disclose “things I didn’t like” about my previous management.  I was caught off-guard, and since I was totally unprepared for that kind of interview anyway, I totally bombed it.  I know I bombed it because I received an email form letter less than 24 hours later telling me they’d decided that “another applicant was a better match for their needs” — this after they’d told me the day before that they were still interviewing a lot of people, and wouldn’t be making a decision until mid-June.  They didn’t know who they liked, but they knew it wasn’t me.  Ouch.

And all of this is on top of my ongoing problems with employment — the fact that I was never able to land an entry-level professional job, because the skill sets for all of those jobs are in the exact areas in which I am learning disabled.  Administrative assistants have to be organized and able to prioritize.  They need to keep track of other people’s schedules and contact information.  They need to know where everything is, and often they’re called upon to do light book-keeping.  Try doing that when you have dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADD.

Lest you assume that my problems are simply psychological, that I’m psyching myself out, let me state that my problem is not that I haven’t tried doing this sort of work.  I have.  I have tried, and I have failed, and I have gotten fired.

What kills me is that when I describe this situation to friends, they often tell me, “Yeah … you really need to be at a high enough level so that someone else is doing that work for you!”

Great!  That helps so much!  But I can’t be at a high professional level, because I can’t get my frakking foot in the door.

So I have been stuck doing retail and customer service, and all kinds of informal teaching in the arts, and at a time like this that just isn’t good enough.  My work history is all over the place, and I’m competing for jobs with people who have been focused and successful.  I hate the kind of work I’ve been doing, but I don’t know how to dig myself out.  I’m smart, I’m competent, and I learn quickly; I’m a good problem solver, I’m analytical, and I write well; and I turn 35 this month, and I still don’t know how to work around my learning disabilities.

You start by putting [...]]]> Yesterday I hung a light in my art studio.  Just an ordinary shop light, soft wired, hung from basic ceiling hooks, with daylight corrected bulbs instead of standard florescent tubes.  It’s the kind of thing that should take half an hour.

But when you have dyscalculia and ADD, it goes something like this:

You start by putting on your new stay-cool air-flow respirator mask, which you bought because most masks are so hot you don’t wear them.  You mentioned this to your sister once.  She used to do did OSHA compliance for a mining company and put the fear of Fear into you about what particulate matter does to your lungs, especially to asthmatic lungs.  So when you found the stay-cool respirator at the hardware store you bought it, congratulating yourself on your mad self-care skillz.

You notice that your respirator smells obnoxiously of plastic.  You ponder the irony of your respirator protecting you from particulate matter while exposing your to volatile organic off-gassing.

Then you stare at the ceiling for awhile, trying to figure out where you should put your light.  You have two lights, and your space is 11 feet by 11 feet … and if you want your lights to be evenly spaced from the edges of the space, you have to divide 11 by 3 …  so you get out your tape measure and stare at all the little black lines that divide up all the feet and inches.

They all look the same.

Finally you just say “screw it” and take a guess at where to stick your damn light.  Whenever you try to take measurements and do division, you mess it up anyway, so guessing is probably safer, right? Right.

You decide you want the light to hang about one foot away from, and perpendicular to, the wall behind your studio table.  You measure about a foot away from the wall (you hope), and drill your first hole.

You get a ton of plaster dust in your eyes.

Cursing mildly, you go out to the shed to get your safety glasses.

Since your drill bit didn’t hit a stud, so you use a ceiling drywall anchor and start screwing in the bolt.  Nothing seems to be happening.  You look up “how to mount a ceiling hook” on the internet and find a video that tells you how to do it.  The only thing you were getting wrong is that you weren’t pulling gently on the bolt as you were screwing it in, so the anchor was just turning along with the bolt.  You try again, pulling gently this time, and turn your hook until it’s flush with the ceiling.  You have achieved a ceiling hook! So far so good.

You congratulate yourself on your mad manly handy skillz.

You look at the box the light fixture came in.  It says the light is 6 feet long with a 5 foot cord.  A five foot cord … oh, right, you’ll need the extension cord from the fridge, which is too short so it hangs awkwardly anyway, and you got a longer cord to replace it back in July, but you haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Cursing mildly, you stop drilling holes in the ceiling in order to take the short chord down and replace it with the longer one that does fit, so you can use the shorter one for your light.  This requires you to pry cable clips out of the wall to get the old cord off, and to hammer new ones into the wall to put the new cord on.  This takes about an hour.

When you have the correct extension cord, you’re ready to install your second ceiling hook.  You look at your ceiling hook and realize that you have a wood screw, not a drywall bolt and anchor.  Cursing mildly, you go to the shed to get a drywall bolt and a ceiling anchor.

You drill another hole.  You still get plaster dust in your eyes, because the safety glasses don’t fit when you’re also wearing a respirator.  You decide that you can live without your eyes, but not without your lungs.  You ponder the irony of going blind while installing a light in your art studio.

You put your drywall anchor on your bolt, and insert it into the ceiling.  As you’re jiggling it into position, it somehow pops out of your hand and up into the ceiling cavity.

Cursing mildly, you go out to the shed to get yet another ceiling anchor and bolt. To be safe, you get two more of each, so you can hang the second light when you’re done with the first one.

You screw the anchor and the hook to the bolt.  You insert it in the freshly-drilled hole, this time taking care that it won’t get lost in the ceiling.  You congratulate yourself on your manly handiness.

You descend from your stepladder and pick up the light.  You carefully climb the stepladder with your precious burden.  You hang it carefully on one of your ceiling hooks and let it dangle while you climb down and reposition the ladder.

You grab the other end of the light fixture and climb the stepladder again.

The light doesn’t reach.

You stare at the light, then at your ceiling hooks, then at the box the light came in.  You take the light down off the first hook, and then it hits you:

1) With one end resting on the floor, the light comes up to your ribcage.

2) You are 5 feet, four inches tall.

3) If the light were, in fact, six feet tall, it would be taller than you — kinda like your 6′2″ husband.

4) The light is not as tall as you.

5) If you had stopped to consider any of this, even for thirty seconds, you would know that this is no damn six foot light!

You take a deep breath.

You look at the box again.  It does, indeed, have a 6 on it … in order to explain that the light fixture as a 6 INCH reflector.

You take another deep breath.  Cursing mildly isn’t going to cut it this time.  Invoking the spirit of your grandfather, you start cursing like a sailor, a longshoreman, AND a truck driver.   The cats run for the hills.  Wine glasses shatter.  Paint peels off the walls.  But you feel a little better.

You go into the living room to illustrate to your husband that the light is not 6 feet long.  “What, you didn’t measure it?” he asks.

“... no …“

“What?” he asks.

“NOTHING!” you say.  Cursing mildly, you go back to your studio with your FOUR FOOT LONG light fixture.

You measure FOUR FEET away from your first ceiling hook.  You don’t hit a stud, so you put a drywall anchor onto the bolt and start turning the hook.  You hit something solid.  You probe the area with a pencil, and find that a few inches above the drywall, there is indeed a mysterious solid object.  Further probing reveals that it ends after a quarter of an inch or so.  Well, the hole needs to be enlarged anyway, so you enlarge it in that direction, and insert the anchor.  Once again you hit something solid, and as you try to move the bolt around, it vanishes into the ceiling.

Cursing mildly, you descend the ladder and get another ceiling hook, bolt, and anchor.  This time you don’t lose the hook, but after fifteen minutes of trying, you can’t get it to go in straight.  Cursing rather more strongly, you screw it in so it’s not quite flush.

You hang the light, successfully this time, and move onto the second light.  You drill your first hole … and realize that with the anchors you’ve lost in the ceiling, you need to go out to the shed to get more.  Cursing vitriolically, you obtain your hardware and install it.  You hang your second light within half an hour.  Your first light took three hours.

You go into the living room and say to your husband, “I need you to tell me that I’m not a total idiot.  And that measuring things is stupid.  And that it’s a useless, pissant skill that nobody cares about.”

Your husband is silent for a moment.  Possibly he is contemplating your friend whose job it is to keep the International Space Station from falling out of the sky.

“Um … I love you?” he says.

FINIS

* The answer is “Lime green pocket watch”.  Gibbering in a corner is also acceptable.

Conclusion: Experimental groups skills in math and Music training group in scores of IQ had show increased. Some methods, such as bilateral brain training and Music training could be used to reduced symptoms of dyscalculia disorder.

As [...]]]> I came across this fascinating post by an Iranian researcher.  It turns out music education might significantly improve dyscalculia symptoms:

Conclusion: Experimental groups skills in math and Music training group in scores of IQ had show increased. Some methods, such as bilateral brain training and Music training could be used to reduced symptoms of dyscalculia disorder.

As you may know, I get really tetchy when people try to tell me that “music is math”. That being said, formal music training uses a lot of numerical concepts, and the (possible) cerebellar disruptions implicated in dyscalculia can create challenges in certain areas of music such as rhythm and timing.

I can’t wait for more research in this area. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder whether I’d have been even worse at math if I hadn’t been studying music since I was seven.

I [...]]]>

Rickie Sugars is glad the study proves a link between learning disabilities and poor mental health.

I have no idea when this story ran in the Vancouver Sun, but it’s worth a look.  The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada has released a study on the long-term effects of undiagnosed learning disabilities.  The results?  Lasting psychological harm.

I can certainly attest to this.  My LD went undiagnosed until half way through my junior year of college.  By that point, I was at a top-20 liberal arts college, surrounded by people who were able to do the assignments AND the reading for all of their classes, and my self esteem was not only in the toilet but flushed into the sewers.  Since my disabilities are in areas that are the focus of most entry-level professional jobs (paperwork, scheduling, filing, and occasionally light bookkeeping as well) I essentially have no career to speak of.

As a result of this, I’ve been diagnosed with major depression and dysthymia, anxiety and panic disorder, stress-related asthma, and even a heart condition.  It’s taken my whole adult life to come to terms with this. I have had to rebuild myself from my foundations.  In short, friends, it has sucked, and it has sucked mightily.

Mad props to LDAC for taking this issue seriously, and for getting the word out.