How I Got Out of Autism.
Or Did I?
I don’t work in clinical practice. I haven’t for nearly 18 months. Now my clients are behavior analysts. I have a new training group every two weeks and have fully developed the learning curriculum to include hands-on exercises as well as lecture and engagement opportunities. This is not how I started out in my practical experience.
My undergraduate practicum was in a pre-primary classroom for kids with autism. I loved it and spent 5 semesters in the classroom. It is still one of my favorite places I have ever worked. I learned incredibly high quality DTT skills and received even more incredible supervision.
In my first placement in graduate school I was also in a school setting. While the structure was amazing, I didn’t receive much supervision. I did get an opportunity to brush up on my ASL skills.
I did one more practicum with special populations during school. This one was a long commute but allowed me to gain even more valuable knowledge and supervision.
The rest of my experience during graduate school was in the graduate school setting. My coursework focused on instructional design and I was a teaching assistant for several different courses.
Following graduation, I spent the next 2 years working with adults with DD/MI in a group home setting. I was working all the time during the week. Eventually, I became unhappy with the direction my supervision was going. It was becoming more and more difficult to show up in a meaningful way at work. I was fortunate enough to receive an offer to move to Washington state and work at a preschool setting.
It was pretty much a dream come true. I immersed myself in precision teaching and learning every day. I learned to develop programs for kiddos with autism while in a preschool setting. It was one of the best years of my career. I was sooooo underpaid, ended up with a gas guzzler vehicle, and was in traffic for up to 2 1/2 hours a day.
I left my dream job and from there I spent many, many years of working with kiddos with autism. I worked for many different employers in tons of settings and in many different position.
Now, I work in a corporate setting in a clinical operations department. I get to go to work each morning, do my job and go home. I work with typically-developing adult employees and I LOVE IT. I work for a large autism services company.
Did you pick up on a few different things?
I studied in graduate school with typically-developing adults
I worked in a training and instructional setting while accumulating my experience hours.
I worked a lot of other places and jobs before ending up where I am. It took 8 years after becoming certified and 14 years after beginning to study ABA as a career.
I still work within the field of autism.
You will not get to your dream overnight. If you do...um...how?
It is totally possible to change where you’re at. Hard work, showing up, being willing to try something new, and taking chances will move you further and further toward your goals.