Transitions and changes

I've been sitting on this one for a couple days, before posting it. Note that some of the effects I was having were likely hormonal-induced - ah the joys of being a female aspie... In any case, here's the post, for whatever it's worth.
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"The shortcomings that can occur in this method such as the basis instability, the collision of hash table, and the noise sensitivity will be discussed. Among them the noise sensitivity is a serious problem. This can always cause the recognition procedure to fail." -- Kao, Chang-Lung
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA225839


So, usually I'm pretty flexible, I think. I handle changes and transitions pretty good for an Aspie. Some days, when I'm stressed, it's harder. And it always catches me by surprise, and worse, catches others by surprise.

A couple days ago was an example. I had a good but full day. Had everything planned out and things went pretty smoothly. I even got my last paper of the quarter finished. Woot! Then had the eye exam (my and my son) from hell - I hate when they shine the damn lights in your eyes, and worse is flashed light, and there was this machine that we had to flash my eye repeatedly (to take a picture) because she couldn't explain clearly to me what I was supposed to do and when I finally understood (after a dozen flashes into my light-sensitive eyes), we got a decent picture of each first try. So, I wasn't in the best shape after that but I survived, so I went to Costco and grabbed stuff quickly since I was on a deadline, and managed to get checked out reasonably quickly. Even got the stuff home okay and son helped unload. Headed off to pick up sweetie for a meeting.

Then, in rapid succession, I tried to park (and had trouble with other cars and shuttles and buses) - but parking there is always a hassle. So then I finally park and call sweetie to tell him I'm there (cuz we have a meeting to go to, so there's a deadline to beat), and my bluetooth earbud doesn't work, but I don't realize that at first, and finally realize that he's already answered and I just can't hear him thru the damn earbud, so I put the phone up to my ear and say hello a couple of times and FINALLy hear *him* but of course, by this time we're both frustrated.

So I tell him I'm there and he says to meet him in the lobby of building 40. So I go there and of course, it's locked, because it's almost 6pm. So someone lets me in and I wait, and he arrives and we go to get food.

We'd planned to just grab and go - he wanted to be to the meeting on time (so did I), and he worried that my usual "take a bit of many things" style of eating there took too much time. So I'd already offered to just grab a salad. This is what we planned this morning. But - there's a barbecue. So he says we should get barbecue. It smelled awful, and I was confused because I thought he wanted to grab and go, and then thought well, maybe he just wanted to have something besides salad. I tried to explain that he could grab whatever he wanted, we didn't have to have barbecue, but that didn't work. And he somehow got the impression I was upset at him.

So then, I have to try to explain why I'm upset. I wasn't upset at him. I was just tired and stressed out and having trouble with all the changes of plan that were happening (the phone, and the bbq, and sitting down to eat instead of grab-and-go) and the horrid smell of the barbecue (it ended up much better than I'd feared - I was able to get some reasonably unsmoked stuff - it smelled like they were doing severely "hickory-smoked" stuff... or over-using the liquid smoke or something.) but I can't explain things like that on the spur of the moment well. I'd gotten my tastebuds up for a fresh, light salad, and suddenly I was facing heavy, strongly flavored hot foods. He wanted to know what was wrong, and kept wanting explanations but my explanations weren't helping things at all and I was just getting more stressed because how do I describe all this when I'm already stressed. I tried saying I was just tired and he responded that maybe we should just go home.

I finally managed to say, "Just let me sit quietly for a minute to settle down." And he let me alone so I could regroup. And the evening ended up turning out just fine.

I want to be clear - he wasn't being obnoxious about his questions - they were perfectly valid questions and he wasn't yelling or chastising me or anything, just I couldn't explain well and it wasn't getting better with me trying.

Yeah - I normally have no obvious problems with changes and transitions (or when I do, I cover it pretty well) but sometimes, like after the hectic quarter I've had, it's just harder to cover. Sometimes, I get reminded forcibly that, oh yeah, I'm really not neurotypical, even if I can often pass as normal these days.

So - how does it feel - changes, transitions...
it feels like standing on a moving surface - having to constantly adjust and shift balance while juggling multiple fragile plates and smile dammit and don't forget to make eye contact, and don't talk too loud or too soft, and don't swing your arms too far, and remember all the things you'll have to juggle tomorrow too, and here - add this teacup in to the juggling and oh - the surface just started shifting on another axis, so don't try to keep balance the old way, gotta do the new balancing act - but suddenly, and by the way, there's only room to stand on one leg now... and why are you acting so upset? Explain yourself coherently dammit!

It's not always this bad. It's rarely this bad. I've worked really hard on dealing with transitions, being flexible, not being too tied into expectations while still managing to not completely get lost in the chaos and shifting sands of spacetime...

Just, sometimes, it's hard. Sometimes, I can't just suddenly go with the flow. And it's even harder when I'm trying really hard to meet someone elses's deadlines and schedule. I can easily go with the flow if I can just go with the flow and don't have any external deadlines to meet. I just can't do both at once. If I have to *be* somewhere, then I have a deadline and I'm in "logistics" mode and switching out of planning and logistics mode while still maintaining some hold on the logistics and planning... it's just not easy for me.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well. I'm trying to just give you all a view into what it looks like from the inside, not *always*, just sometimes. And I'm not saying there's anything anyone needs to do different, just trying to explain now so that maybe, when I'm in the midst of another time where I'm having trouble, I can maybe just say "remember the post on transitions and changes? I'm having one of those days right now." The hardest part is convincing the other person that it really truly has nothing to do with them. It's a reaction to all the little things that all happen within quick succession on top of each other to unbalance me.

What does help: just give me some space and time (quiet, no demands or questions or processing) to decompress, to regroup. Don't try to interpret my bodylanguage or tone of voice when a sudden change or transition has happened - mostly, you'll probably not be terribly accurate. I'm likely not upset at you, or angry, or anything like that. I'm most likely, just trying to re-orient myself to the new situation. And frustrated at my own lack of flexibility. Mostly, I just need to be informed of the new situation and then left alone for a short time to re-integrate everything.

It's like trying to modify a list while sorting on it, (or trying to modify a hashtable while it's being rehashed?). It's often a pretty unstable process. Let me just finish processing everything first, then we can go on from there.

Values and career

I was taking an assessment of "values" related to careers at the Career Development Center (CDC) on campus. The assessment consists of a bunch of cards with one word or phrase on each card (like "family", "money", "personal growth") and you put the cards into piles of "Very Important" "Important" "Sometimes important" "Not important". After that, you take the Very Important pile and pick out your top ten and put them in rank order.

I commented to my husband that my top ten did not include "money". He was surprised. Mine, instead, included things like "passion", "integrity", "challenge", "competence". Money, to me, is a given in a job. Of course, I expect to be paid. I'm not Richard Stallman, nor am I independently wealthy, so yeah, I work to be paid. It's a survival thing.

My husband responded, "but money isn't just for survival; you like iPhones and jewelry and travel and the things money can buy. Money as a value is about being able to have it to spend." I had to think about that - and on my walk home, I realized there are two aspects to money for me: survival and fun. I will compromise on certain values (like passion and personal growth) for survival. If it's a choice between letting my babies starve and putting up with an awful work environment, of course I will work - just as most parents would. But once I've gotten past the level of survival, then money for fun just isn't as important to me as work environment. I don't want to work at a place I hate just to make enough to buy stuff or do stuff.

I just find it interesting to consider how different my husband's answers might be from mine. OTOH - he's always had sufficient money for survival, so he's never had to make that choice. I think that makes a difference. I've had to make the choice - and live the choice. I spent too many years putting in my time, just getting through the day, putting up with less than ideal jobs or workplaces because I had to make a living. At this point, I suspect that any job I take upon graduation is likely to fulfill the "make a survivable wage" and so it falls into the "fun" category, for me. If I had to choose between enjoying my job and making enough money to spend on toys and travel, I'd cut out the toys and travel. I expect to spend 40+ hours a week at a job - that's a *huge* chunk of my life. Doing that anywhere that I hate (and if the place violates my top ten values, I would hate it) just isn't worth it to me for anything other than survival. And that's the point of an assessment tool like that - it helps define what's important to me, and what I need to consider in jobseeking, and careerseeking. I also have to accept that my values are going to be different from his and take that into consideration. But that's a whole 'nother topic.

So what are my values? "passion", "integrity", "personal growth", "challenge", "honesty", "open communication", "competence", "trust", "learning" and "knowledge" were the top ten.

passion: I want a career/company that values passion, that wants people who are passionate about what they do, that isn't going to stomp on people for being "too intense".
integrity: I've been at places where CYA was the norm and people got set up as scapegoats. It's hard to say "I screwed up" when it's going to be used against you. I want a place where I can acknowledge mistakes, where people accept responsibility for their actions, and where everyone is more focused on finding solutions and working to achieve a goal than on blaming others. Intellectual integrity is another aspect of this: being able to say "I don't know" and "I was wrong" and with people who will do that is important to me.
honesty and open communication go hand in hand for me. A place where answering a question by, say upper management, isn't going to get me in trouble for A) answering honestly and B) "violating chain of command". (Again, BTDT.) I don't do well with office politics - I need a place where I can be honest (not tactless, but honest) and open with people. I also tend to find my way around silos, and make connections with people in a wide variety of positions and departments wherever I've worked. That's important to me. Work places that encourage and support that are great. Places that discourage it are unpleasant at best.
All of these lead to a huge value for me, which is trust: I need to be able to trust the people above me and around me. And I need to be treated with trust. If I feel that I can't trust my boss and coworkers, it affects my health, my stress levels, my performance.
personal growth is important to me in a job, and is tied in to learning. I start to feel like I'm in a rut, getting stale, if I'm not getting to stretch myself and learn new things.

A conflicting set of goals for me is competence (which ties in with knowledge) and challenge: I need people around me (bosses and coworkers and any reports) who are competent at their job. I find it hard to respect people who are incompetent at their own jobs, and I find it hard to mask that. I don't expect them to be competent at the same things I am, just at the things *they're* supposed to be doing. I do, however, like being surrounded by people who are knowledgable, and having knowledge myself. To me, those are two sides of a coin: knowledge is knowing stuff, competence is being able to apply knowledge effectively. I value being challenged: I love problem-solving, and tend to be a bit of a bulldog about problems. I like having to stretch and put in effort to figure out things.
The conflict I'm having about competence is that I value my own competence highly (and need to be treated as competent). This leads me to question whether or not I should be pursuing jobs that are a stretch, because I worry I might not be sufficiently competent. This provides for a conflict between challenge and competence for me. Of course, that conflict is part of what fuels personal growth, so a company that supports personal growth is necessary for me to be able to properly balance competence and challenge.

My biggest challenge in picking my concentration in my major is, I think, that conflict in values. I think I would be quite competent as a researcher in CogSci or Neuroscience, but more challenged working in HCI out in the field. I'm equally passionate about all three, in different ways. I think my trouble picking has been the conflict between challenge and competence presented by the choice. Am I going to actually be good enough at it to pursue it? Or is it going to be wasted effort and embarrassment? If I pick something where I don't doubt my competence, am I going to get bored after a time? Will I feel sufficiently challenged or have enough opporunities to apply my knowledge? These are the kind of questions I'm wrestling with.

Next week, I'm going to take another assessment, this one on skills. It'll be interesting to see what comes up with that.

Widening the gates

As a geek and a female, I had to have the lack of women in IT brought to my attention by others, specifically, by male geeks. I have spent so much of my life pursuing interests where I was the only female that I stopped noticing a long time ago. I was the only girl in my electronics and small engines class. I was the only girl in the miniatures gaming group (Napoleonics). I was the only girl in most of my RPG groups (Traveller, Car Wars, ITL, etc) at the local gaming shop. I was the only girl in the computer lab at school. I was the only girl I knew who, not only owned a Commodore 64, but had done some programming on it (a program in BASIC for calculating sidereal time.)

I've spent my life being the go-to person in the office for computer-related questions (from "why doesn't my password work": check your capslock, to "someone needs to move and administer our NT network": I guess I'm someone, to "we need a website for the office fitness group":I can do that). Yet, I never thought of myself as being "in IT" until I got involved in the Python community. I jumped in with both feet, starting to present to conferences, and advocating for everyone I knew to learn Python, the typical response of a new convert. I was thrilled to have found a language that seemed simple enough to use without having to know a lot first, but that was also really powerful, that kept growing with me as my tasks and requirements and skills grew more complex. Yet, it wasn't until I'd been to several conferences, and been asked by guys why there weren't more women at the conferences, that I even noticed that the lines *were* pretty short to the bathrooms at tech conferences.

So I started researching the question. Because, I couldn't imagine why there weren't lots of other women here - after all, I'm here. At first, I blamed the women. They're too self-involved, too shallow, too interested in shopping etc. But, I knew that wasn't really the case - I've met a lot of incredibly hard-working, intelligent, deep women in SF and other areas of life. They're just not interested in computers, just like they're not interested in cars. Well, most women I know drive. Most of them use telephones, fax machines, copy machines, and major appliances every day. Most women I know use computers every day nowadays, so it's not unfamiliarity. With a lot of new web apps, women are increasingly using social software, creating websites, etc etc. I realized I had prejudices about "normal women" (meaning non-geeks) and that I had to confront those prejudices. And one of the things I came to realize in investigating this lack of other women was how similar I am to other women in IT.

It's not been easy to admit to myself that I suffer, like many women in and out of IT, from low self-efficacy (perceived self-efficacy is defined as people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance), from imposter syndrome (inability to internalize successes, fear of being caught out as a fraud). I tend to view computers more as means than ends. I entered the IT field via a non-traditional pathway (I didn't go into CS in college, I kinda came into IT sideways). I value the community aspects of programming as much as the language itself (a less welcoming community might easily have turned me off to programming), and I considered programming to be incredibly difficult (most non-CS-major women undergrads rated CS as more difficult than becoming a surgeon! I wasn't quite that bad, but I did consider it more difficult than, say, a psych or biology major.) I tend to define IT as "stuff I don't do" (even though I'd created databases, administered an NT network, created a website, etc, I hadn't considered myself to be "in IT".)

Realizing these things about myself has been difficult, but enlightening. I am more willing to accept the barriers that other women face in getting into IT, now that I've acknowledged those barriers and obstacles in myself. I am more motivated to find ways to overcome those barriers, through scaffolding (starting with a simple language like Python to learn basic concepts before diving into the complex language issues of C); emphasis on pair programming and sprints and other social aspects of programming; acknowledgment of non-programming aspects of IT; etc. I have heard these described as "sexist" or "dumbing down". Having lived through the obstacles and experienced the positive effects of these methods in my own life, I don't accept that. Presenting IT as something that only the most motivated, self-confident, autonomous individualists can really be into and everything else is "dumbing down for the ladies" is precisely why we don't have more diversity in IT. It's this attitude (from both women and men) that keeps many of us out, and keeps us feeling we don't belong here. Providing pathways to entry for those who are less self-confident, for those who value usefulness or social interaction, is not "dumbing it down". It's widening the gates, and opening up IT to a more diverse group of women and men. If that's sexist, then I guess I can live with that.