[48/366] careers
Feb. 17th, 2020 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI had such a busy day.
First, I had to get Andrew and I to a medical appointment for him, at 9 this morning. I'd been awake half the night so when my alarm went off it actually hurt. It hurt worse when we just missed a bus and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one; by the end of that even Andrew was saying he was getting chilly and I was so cold my hands throbbed because of it (today Andrew learned that it's possible to be cold enough that it causes pain; I envy him not having any idea of this). The appointment went well though; we really like the specialist he's been seeing, and he's got a long-term plan for some new treatment that hopefully will help.
I went straight from picking up his prescription (where I apparently looked enough like I'd be called Andrew that I was a bit flustered when the person checking the meds asked for my date of birth and I had to stop myself from reflexively offering my own date of birth when I realized that isn't what he wanted!) to uni. Not for any of my normal stuff; there was a big careers event today that included a particular event for disabled students that I wanted to go to.
We had a speech by someone from EmployAbility, which has just the worst name but might be useful for advocacy and managing dealing with employers, getting advice about how the Equality Act applies (the person doing today's presentation said she had a law background and it shows, bless). And then another one by someone from MMU mostly talking generically about disability inclusion; she was visibly disabled herself yet seemed suspiciously keen on things like the DWP's "Disability Confident" scheme and Access to Work, both of which I've heard negative things about from disabled friends (some of this parish, likedavidgillon and barakta).
There were one or two employer representatives from big comapnies there as well as staff from Manchester and MMU -- they all sat in the front row for the presentations so I was worried I wouldn't be able to see the slides at all andw while we were encouraged to ask for reasonable adjustments for the meeting, we weren't told a damn thing about what would happen at it which makes the invitation fairly useless: if I don't know what will be expected of me, it's very difficult to ask for appropriate adjustments, and people with more complex needs would find it even more difficult; we're hardly going to offer a whole list every time when a lot of it's going to be irrelevant for any one event. I'm so sick of people thinking that asking "what are your access needs?" is all they have to do; you have to give some sense of the event or you're not going to get a sensible answer. The whole thing was laughably inaccessible anyway so I don't think it would've mattered what anyone asked for; we had to write our email addresses on a piece of paper handed round the room, the presentations were delivered with the door to the room open and even I found that disatractingly noisy at times. At the end we split into two groups to ask questions of the uni staff and external employers, but the groups were right next to each other and again, even with no hearing or auditory-processing disabilities, I struggled to follow the conversation.
This event was shceduled for just before the actual Careers Fair started at the Academy, and the email said there'd be help guiding people over there if they wanted but there wasn't. I know well where the Academy is, of course, but there was a bottleneck at the door because people were checking bags as if it were a regular gig there, and I had a lot of stuff as well as my cane to juggle, and the cane didn't make the "security" guys on the door be any more forgiving of how awkward and slow I was. It might not sound like much but it made me so anxious I almost didn't go at all.
Which would have been a shame, because I did find it interesting. My employment goals aren't for a role or a sector as much as they are something stable because I'm the only one who's going to earn a regular paycheck in my household, something that won't stress me out so much I burn out in six months, and something forgiving of me being both disabled and a carer for Andrew -- I was thinking about this morning's hospital appointment that it's trivially easy to miss a lecture for that kind of thing but what's going to happen when I'm working? If I can even get a job. Ugh. It's a huge stressful thing for me.
It was a huge room and it was absolutely packed; the "quiet time" for the first half-hour (which I guess is a nod to neurodiverse people) was exactly as noisy and crowded as the next half-hour. It used a ton of my spoons, because the lighting was terrible, people kept bumping into me even though I was brandishing my white cane, and even walking slowly and looking interested at things didn't get a lot of people to talk to me and I had to read a lot of banners/leaflets on tables/etc.
But I'm glad I did it. I told everybody I was itnerested in flexibility and support for diasbility and they all told me they were great at it, with varying degrees of believability. Being agnostic about what sector I'd work in I've come home with a bag full of brochures and whatnot. The consensus seemed to be that working for a university or the civil service would be best for what I'm after, which is fine with me. I've got to tidy up my CV, see if my LinkedIn still works, start looking at what kinds of jobs there plausibly are that I could want to do. It's huge and daunting. I signed up to a couple of agencies/things that help you find jobs today too, so that's a tiny step in the process.
By this time the lack of sleep was catching up with me, replacing sleep with coffee worked for a while but I was starting to feel ill. I took a little time to decompress and tried one of the new places in the precinct centre for lunch: I had some mediocre pho in a nice setting. By the time I was done, and had bimbled around the new Blackwells (it was a shipping container the last time I'd gone in), which looks exactly like a Waterstones, it was 3 o'clock, an hour until my next lecture but my brain was so full of things and my body was so tired.
I had takeout Chinese for dinner (satay tofu, it was very good), watched the third episode of Picard (we didn't think it had audio description for the first two but could use it with this one and it made it so much easier for me to watch; I always underestimate what a difference it makes) and have done some volunteer work that I also hadn't had the spoons for until recently.
My brain is stil full of things but Andrew's made the extremely unusual move of going to bed before me and keeps telling me I should join him. He's probably right.
First, I had to get Andrew and I to a medical appointment for him, at 9 this morning. I'd been awake half the night so when my alarm went off it actually hurt. It hurt worse when we just missed a bus and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one; by the end of that even Andrew was saying he was getting chilly and I was so cold my hands throbbed because of it (today Andrew learned that it's possible to be cold enough that it causes pain; I envy him not having any idea of this). The appointment went well though; we really like the specialist he's been seeing, and he's got a long-term plan for some new treatment that hopefully will help.
I went straight from picking up his prescription (where I apparently looked enough like I'd be called Andrew that I was a bit flustered when the person checking the meds asked for my date of birth and I had to stop myself from reflexively offering my own date of birth when I realized that isn't what he wanted!) to uni. Not for any of my normal stuff; there was a big careers event today that included a particular event for disabled students that I wanted to go to.
We had a speech by someone from EmployAbility, which has just the worst name but might be useful for advocacy and managing dealing with employers, getting advice about how the Equality Act applies (the person doing today's presentation said she had a law background and it shows, bless). And then another one by someone from MMU mostly talking generically about disability inclusion; she was visibly disabled herself yet seemed suspiciously keen on things like the DWP's "Disability Confident" scheme and Access to Work, both of which I've heard negative things about from disabled friends (some of this parish, like
davidgillon and barakta). There were one or two employer representatives from big comapnies there as well as staff from Manchester and MMU -- they all sat in the front row for the presentations so I was worried I wouldn't be able to see the slides at all andw while we were encouraged to ask for reasonable adjustments for the meeting, we weren't told a damn thing about what would happen at it which makes the invitation fairly useless: if I don't know what will be expected of me, it's very difficult to ask for appropriate adjustments, and people with more complex needs would find it even more difficult; we're hardly going to offer a whole list every time when a lot of it's going to be irrelevant for any one event. I'm so sick of people thinking that asking "what are your access needs?" is all they have to do; you have to give some sense of the event or you're not going to get a sensible answer. The whole thing was laughably inaccessible anyway so I don't think it would've mattered what anyone asked for; we had to write our email addresses on a piece of paper handed round the room, the presentations were delivered with the door to the room open and even I found that disatractingly noisy at times. At the end we split into two groups to ask questions of the uni staff and external employers, but the groups were right next to each other and again, even with no hearing or auditory-processing disabilities, I struggled to follow the conversation.
This event was shceduled for just before the actual Careers Fair started at the Academy, and the email said there'd be help guiding people over there if they wanted but there wasn't. I know well where the Academy is, of course, but there was a bottleneck at the door because people were checking bags as if it were a regular gig there, and I had a lot of stuff as well as my cane to juggle, and the cane didn't make the "security" guys on the door be any more forgiving of how awkward and slow I was. It might not sound like much but it made me so anxious I almost didn't go at all.
Which would have been a shame, because I did find it interesting. My employment goals aren't for a role or a sector as much as they are something stable because I'm the only one who's going to earn a regular paycheck in my household, something that won't stress me out so much I burn out in six months, and something forgiving of me being both disabled and a carer for Andrew -- I was thinking about this morning's hospital appointment that it's trivially easy to miss a lecture for that kind of thing but what's going to happen when I'm working? If I can even get a job. Ugh. It's a huge stressful thing for me.
It was a huge room and it was absolutely packed; the "quiet time" for the first half-hour (which I guess is a nod to neurodiverse people) was exactly as noisy and crowded as the next half-hour. It used a ton of my spoons, because the lighting was terrible, people kept bumping into me even though I was brandishing my white cane, and even walking slowly and looking interested at things didn't get a lot of people to talk to me and I had to read a lot of banners/leaflets on tables/etc.
But I'm glad I did it. I told everybody I was itnerested in flexibility and support for diasbility and they all told me they were great at it, with varying degrees of believability. Being agnostic about what sector I'd work in I've come home with a bag full of brochures and whatnot. The consensus seemed to be that working for a university or the civil service would be best for what I'm after, which is fine with me. I've got to tidy up my CV, see if my LinkedIn still works, start looking at what kinds of jobs there plausibly are that I could want to do. It's huge and daunting. I signed up to a couple of agencies/things that help you find jobs today too, so that's a tiny step in the process.
By this time the lack of sleep was catching up with me, replacing sleep with coffee worked for a while but I was starting to feel ill. I took a little time to decompress and tried one of the new places in the precinct centre for lunch: I had some mediocre pho in a nice setting. By the time I was done, and had bimbled around the new Blackwells (it was a shipping container the last time I'd gone in), which looks exactly like a Waterstones, it was 3 o'clock, an hour until my next lecture but my brain was so full of things and my body was so tired.
I had takeout Chinese for dinner (satay tofu, it was very good), watched the third episode of Picard (we didn't think it had audio description for the first two but could use it with this one and it made it so much easier for me to watch; I always underestimate what a difference it makes) and have done some volunteer work that I also hadn't had the spoons for until recently.
My brain is stil full of things but Andrew's made the extremely unusual move of going to bed before me and keeps telling me I should join him. He's probably right.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 12:06 am (UTC)Oh, god, I would have found that IMPOSSIBLE. And I'm not Deaf and have zero hearing loss, I just really struggle with auditory processing and screening out/blocking out irrelevant noises.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 01:18 am (UTC)I know that if I have clients with mobility, or other, needs coming over, I need to tell them how many steps there are, what the layout is, how wide the doorways are, etc. Not that my little business gets many people with such needs, and when I do, I'm more likely to offer to do fittings and pick-up/drop-off at their home.
I'm rather amazed that you made it through the day. just reading along, I felt the fatigue and the cold.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 10:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 01:33 pm (UTC)Disability Confident is a massive pile of PR toss, but some crips haven't worked that out yet and believe the hype cos it's very shiny PR etc. I tend to point people to the EVIDENCE but then we get seen as those nasty angry crips over there, and they tend not to work for businessy orgs and be allowed to open their mouths freely.
That event sounds VERY challenging, and I am sorry their access was quite so pants. As you say, Information goes both ways and I have been known to contact orgs to say "To tell you what access needs I have, I need to know how the event works, please give me an outline of the environment (I give an example) and the types of sessions (also give an example). That does usually work IF they're nice and trying... Or gets stonewalled if they're just tokenistic. And of course eats a spoon or 6.
Too low on spoons to rant about things like promising guiding but not having it and quiet hour being not-quiet or carefully managed. #rage etc.
You are excellent, these posts are brilliant to read.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-02-18 05:51 pm (UTC)