Published on 12, July, 2020
Our daughter has just been provisionally diagnosed with High Functioning Autism. She is struggling at school and to take the pressure of she is now studying 2 A levels (and supposedly an EPQ for extra UCAS points)
We are very near UCAS applications but she is struggling (as are we) to get her head around what to do. She had always set her heart on a caring profession (and has flitted between a midwife and paediatric nurse). She has now decided against this and is thinking of Sociology (mainly driven by the fact is a vocational degree and doesn't want to make the wrong choice too early)
As parents we are concerned about the whole process - and worry that her degree choice is being made on a whim - her strengths are not in self-study, organisation and interpreting facts and forming opinions. She is very good at fact-based stuff - and seems to prefer learning by doing - so a more practical subject ought to be better. We even worry that University is the right thing for her to do at the moment - the diagnosis is very recent and she has had mental health issues over past year severely affecting her education
Would be interested in anyone who has (or is) going through the same thing
I couldn't deal with staying in academic when I was young. I really just wanted to play music but that wasn't "a proper career" and wasn't allowed, so I ended up rebelling completely and dropping out.
I did do very well as a care assistant (unqualified) at an elderly nursing home and learned a lot there. It inspired me to pick up studies again and train as a nurse, but I burned out halfway through the course, probably mostly because I was working far too many hours and had over-reached.
I was lucky to find an entry point to what ended up being a very successful career in behavioural research and design, initially by joining the design team of a bank but it eventually led me to travel the world doing fascinating projects in healthcare. At 38 I decided I was finally ready to go back to academia, and am now considering starting my PhD alongside working.
Of course everybody is different, and the UK is a little different now to what it was 20 years ago, but in case it's any kind of reassurance to hear a 'success story' that doesn't follow the standard convention of school - university - job.