AUTISM AND COLLEGE
Webinar Field Placements are just… Pointless…
I can’t even stand it…*sigh*… Here I go again…
TW & CW – Topic/Content Warnings
Emotional Breakdown Mention, Food Mention, Capitalism Mention, Me Being Too Hard on Myself, and Some Mention of Emotional Agony
Hello Everyone!
I wanted to write “An Autistic Social Service Work Student’s Perspective on Webinar Field Placement”, but I accidentally deleted it (big oof). Anyways… I hope that y’all enjoy this story! I invite all of you to share your perspectives on this as well (if any of y’all are comfortable doing so and/or if any of y’all are also social service work students)…
The beginning of my field placement experience
When I first started my field placement webinar back in September of this cursed year, I was first okay with the weekly field activity assignments along with the lectures that I attended about placement in my field seminar class on Wednesdays.
I was also enjoying my most favourite part out of this experience, which was writing my weekly field placement journals. Even though I started handing them Sunday in the early morning, sometimes I was able to hand them in on time. Sundays were more endurable and manageable for me than the weekly field activity assignments that my classmates were also dealing with.
Several of my classmates expressed that they too stressed about catching up with their assignments. They were so stressed that they reluctantly had no choice but to email one of one peculiar and suspicious/sus professors who also did not communicate with them to their satisfaction and also was expecting others to always hand in everything on time, which was not considerate of the hardships that my classmates were dealing with.
Where I started to realise how pointless Webinar assignments are…
Throughout my webinar field placement experience, I started to internally dread my webinar field placement. I remember being extremely hard on myself when I felt overwhelmed about certain assignments.
It got to the point where I even detested myself for making mistakes. To this day, I am still healing from them and still learning from my mistakes – mistakes that were kind and fair life lessons. It is hypocritical that a neurotypical society preaches that it being okay to make mistakes, but then contradictorily punishes others when they make a mistake. What happened to the old idiom: “Practice what you preach?”
Despite sometimes detesting myself for even making mistakes on some webinar field placement assignments, I still persevered by viewing each mistake as a life lessons — Life lessons that will forever protect me from allowing others to tell me that I am not “good enough” as they want me to be…
As my previous semester progressed into completion, I began to notice that my classmates were becoming stressed and were being overwhelmed by webinar assignments. I had empathy for them, but it derives from my own perspective, as I am not able to understand their perspective.
They often expressed their stress and feeling overwhelmed to one of my professors – One of who I sometimes could relate to. They went to my professor seeking help, which was a mistake as his natural reaction was that of being a cold and unempathetic person, as he would proceed to flatly tell them to submit their assignments before the semester was done, and any further attempts to communicate with him beyond that was met with vagueness – if anything at all,
This was when I began to understand how pointless webinar assignments are, and that was when I also realised that those assignments are just preparing us to become drones for the same capitalist and carceral system that the entire Social Service Work field runs on.
I also realised that the same professors/teachers who preached to us about their neurotypical versions of self-acceptance, self-discovery, including how to “manage” our time (i.e., society expecting others to find “balance) were all a fucking lie because they were actually practising the opposite. For example, how society conditions us to detest ourselves and to not be “selfish”, while at the same time disguising deficiencies in acceptance of their own advice, which was no more than a veil of hypocrisy.
What I’ve seen and experienced during my time as a previously third semester Social Service Work student
As an SSW student who finished their third semester, I hated how my peers were suffering from unnecessary assignments that no one asked for all along. With the amount of emotional agony that they’ve experienced, as I’ve also seen in an SSW support chat. And yes, I admit that I am a part of it.
One of my peers even expressed that she needs the “holy spirit” after this semester, to which I responded to her with planning on being “nocturnal” since I was used to pulling some actual all-nighters in terms of getting some work done.
One of my peers (let’s refer to her as J for privacy reasons) even expressed that she never wanted to have one of my professors ever again “ON GOD”, as she said in a WhatsApp group chat that I am also in. J also told me that I was a real one, and that was one time when I was helping others become caught up with their work based on photos of my work, which helped them a lot. And I am willing to do that again since I hate seeing my classmates, peers, and friends suffer from my college’s bullshit.
I will share one of my experiences, but as I’ve said earlier, I encourage y’all to share any experiences in terms of dealing with webinar-based field placements or with any bullshit that y’all have dealt with that is assignment-related while in college.
I remember one time that I stayed up late with J while we were both doing our own learning contract assignments. I was also listening to typing ASMRs (as referred to by the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it is an “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”. This response is usually described as perceiving a “tingly feeling” that goes from the head in a downward direction. Some individuals experience as a response to certain sounds, for example, crinkling paper, soft whispering, a gentle touch, one’s hair being brushed, moans while also listening to low-fidelity music, which emotes a sense of beauty and aesthetics.
Low-fidelity is not what you are looking for if you are exam cramming, or cramming in terms of getting assignments done the night or before the due date of assignments. Now for that, you need the metal variety, in which case being low-fidelity or high fidelity matters not, as it’s all about the pounding power of volume that you need to to keep you alert and driven.
I also remember staying up late to try to finish the assignment… However, I began to have a quiet emotional breakdown as it was early in the morning when this happened and my family were still asleep, unknown to what I was doing during the night/early morning. I texted J on WhatsApp about it, and she reassured me throughout my quiet emotional breakdown about it along with the unexpected changes that happened in this hellhole of a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just before sunlight, I was finished with having my quiet emotional breakdown, so I decided to nap so that I would gather more energy and strength to get my assignment done.
I n the morning, I got up to make some oatmeal with Matcha (or green tea) powder. I made sure to have some nutritional fuel first before I finished my assignment, finally! I handed it in on the day that it was due, and although I was happy on the outside, on the inside I was feeling overjoyed with a sense of accomplishment. Despite obstacles, I finishing that assignment, and in diligently doing so, I learned valuable lessons that will always stay with me in the days to come.
Conclusion
To my dear readers, thank you for listening and for reading this since I wanted to write this out in a cathartic sense and this feels like I’ve gotten something off of my chest.
I encourage people to share their experiences with me because I would rather create a safe place where y’all can do so along with creating bonds with one another and to ensure that everyone is feeling okay after online school or college/university. And finally no, I will not tolerate any ableist bullshit around here, and that goes to any kind of bigotry,
~ From an Autistic Social Service Work college student to another ❤.
