It has come to my attention that I have to go to work at a call center for what they call "work hardening" for the time being instead of going back to school and finishing my degree this summer as I wanted to do. I'm just struggling to accept "my new norm" again.
According to my neuropsychologist,I need to consider the following questions:
- How much work I can tolerate in a day, a week, and further?
- How long in each day before I am too tired to work?
- How long in each day before I start making too many mistakes because I am overtired?
- How will I handle the diverse and alternating attention required to work in a classroom?
- How much extra activity and noise can I tolerate on a job?
- Can I learn my new coping methods to re-learn how to focus?
- How quickly can my brain process and apply new information?
- The doctor says that if I don't figure out the schedule and my limitations and abilities thoroughly enough, I will just be setting myself up for failure. It will take another couple thousand dollars to finish my degree, while meantime I am still struggling to the extent that the doctor and therapists can't say if I could successfully complete even the most basic aspects of the job I'm aiming toward. The question he and my family posed was: "Why get into more debt if it turns out that you will only ever be able to work part time at a much simpler position?"
How did my nueropsychologist convince me to reconsider his prognosis and take it more seriously?
A dot-to-dot.
Using the dot-to dot that I've attached, the neuropsychologist re-tested my diverse and alternating attention, and I am still one standard deviation below the norm. I don't remember bell curves very well, but isn't that like the equivalent of getting a C or a D grade?
Even if it isn't really all that bad, I can't fill out a dot-to-dot correctly within any normal range of time. I take 10-15 minutes to do it.
In the most recent attempt from last week, I made two mistakes.
How this translates in my actual day-to-day existence:
- If I am doing a dot-to-dot that requires me to alternate my attention from a number to the corresponding letter in the alphabet, i.e. 1 to A, then 2 to B, 3-C, 4D, etc, without making mistakes, then I can't drive a car safely because my attention is required to alternate between the speedometer and the front, side and rear-view mirrors, from the cars in front of me to the dogs or children who may dart into the road --
- Even one driving mistake can be fatal, so it's not like I'm "only" making two mistakes, it is much more serious than that.
- The doctor is certain that another car wreck would kill me.
- He isn't saying I can never drive again, but he is saying that he thinks I would fail the test if I were to take it right now.
- At my volunteer position at the local elementary, if I get interrupted while making copies I mess up the directions for the copy jobs the teacher has lined up for me.
- If I have to correct anything that isn't fill in the blank, multiple choice, or spelling, it takes me twice as long as it used to. Actually, even spelling takes a little longer because I can't spell anymore, but at least the spellings don't change.
- If it takes me two hours or two days to correct twenty-six 5th Grade Reading Packets, how will I ever correct 130 Thesis Papers in a timely fashion?
- In a classroom, my attention has to be everywhere at once -- on students, the text, the technology, the clock, the announcements and bathroom break interruptions, the lesson plan, and what Johnny is doing over in the corner that has nothing to do with what he's supposed to be doing.
- This doesn't even account for the neuro fatigue that sets in whenever I do anything that requires any extra brain cells, such as making judgement calls while driving, or when correcting a paper.
If I work at a job part time and flounder around, I can at least learn what I need to improve or develop new techniques to cope with any deficits. I then would have data to work from for future work-related goals. I will know if I can hack completing my degree or going back to a classroom, and I will know it more accurately than if I were just to continue as a volunteer doing all the easier aspects of teaching -- making copies, correcting papers, etc. Because, let's face it, if those are on the easy end of the scale, and I'm already messing those up, then I am not yet ready to move on to anything more complex.
And so, at the advice of my family and my neuropsychologist, I have to shelf college for the time being and focus on work-hardening to determine how much I can work, how I can work, and how long it takes me to work. I am not especially pleased, but people have been trying to tell me this for months now, and staring down that dot-to-dot again was the doctor's way of proving to me that they are making valid points.
I can't do this based on positive thinking alone. It's going to take time and it's going to take a lot of hard work and determination. So I'll go work at a call center at a place that hires people with "disabilities," and see how I can do at that job. I will try my best to learn the job and have a good attitude, and I will set goals toward my future with the possibility in mind of still going back to college later on if I am able. I'm not quitting; I'm just shelving an idea until I can find room for it in my life again.
And I will continue my painting because, so long as I can still do that, it is well with my soul.
