Sixteen years later, little has changed
I just read an article in the Columbus Dispatch about young people with Asperger's struggling to find and keep employment (I've included the text of the article below.) This article really saddens me because it's the same thing I went through at their age (although I was applying for lower level jobs and was a high-school drop-out.) Our education
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Chelsea had to leave one promising job because she was required to work on the help desk. "If they'd let her do programming, she'd be great," said her dad, Rick. "But the help desk? She's phone-phobic."
Gah, this could easily have been a non-issue if the company had just been a bit more forward-thinking. There are plenty of help desk jobs that wouldn't involve phone calls at all-- and if not, why not open a non-phone-based support line? Be creative! Add text messaging or web chat or e-mail support! Or even let her do the actual technical stuff and just have the details relayed to her by a phone operator!
It amazes me how phone-centric society still is. I mean, can we at least get a large enough frequency range where I could hear the difference between "S" and "F", with all the technical advances that have happened?
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Short answer for now: I've found books and videos (at the library, natch, but also in bookstores) dealing with nearly every skill set I fail at: cold-calling, phone manners, etc. The kids/teen sections cover social skills such as making a conversation, reading social cues, etc. Lots of drill, etc.
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Anyhoo: you make a good point. If you're still in university, you might have access to whatever psychological counseling services they offer. Anyone with a behaviouralist bent (as opposed to, say, a Freudian) might be able to assess your degree of impairment and suggest a what areas need work.
As for the grown ups who give one such useful advice as "be good" (hah!) I sympathize. I probably over-explain my kid as a result. She's pretty tired already of "Can you tell me what mistake you made? Why is it wrong? What can you do to fix what you did? How could you prevent it from happening again?" formula.
She's also become a dab hand at figuring out what consequences she can live with in terms of her negative behaviour (i.e. if you want X sweet treat, you have to eat X healthy veg first. Fine! I don't need desert!) Kids are such a hoot.
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So what did they diagnose you with? They didn't even come close with me. "Emotionally disturbed with attention-seeking behaviors" was their best shot. So far off track it's not even in the race.
As for university psychological counseling, I tried that once, for one session, and it was incredibly damaging to me. I since understand that if a therapist is not well-versed in Asperger's and has *experience* (preferably extensive) working with Asperger's adults, they will misinterpret me, frustrate me, depress me, fill me with anxiety, self-doubt, guilt, and potentially harm me quite a bit. I am extremely vulnerable to bad therapy and any therapy conducted with me by a person who does not intimately understand Asperger's is, by definition, bad.
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