Vision Teachers and Vocations

I went to elementary school in the Fairfax County Public Schools system, which I recognize now was integral to my success.  FCPS is among the best public school systems in the country, probably because it’s just outside the Nation’s Capital and is a county flooded with tax dollars from wealthy residents.  In addition to the wonderful teachers I mentioned in The Eggshell Egghead, I also had one-on-one instruction from low-vision specialists who met with me once a week.  These specialists provided a wide array of training, both scholastic and vocational, which helped equip me with the skills necessary to take care of myself.  

Syd Wharton was a kindly middle-aged man whose body weight fluctuated by more than 90 pounds in either direction during his tenure as my vision teacher.  Remember how Oprah Winfrey couldn’t pick a body type in the 80s and 90s and seemed to balloon up and shrink down almost overnight?  Syd was the same way, sometimes svelte, sometimes enormous.  Given his struggles with body weight, it probably won’t surprise you to learn Syd was big into computers.  Syd understood the importance of technology, so he made sure I knew how to touch type by the time I was eight.  He taught me how to use software, including early versions of MS Word and dictation programs.  He also taught me how to use an abacus, an ancient type of calculator which uses beads for counting and has not come back into use since technology is not cyclical. The instruction I received on technologies which were still emerging proved incredibly helpful.  Because of Syd Wharton, I was comfortable working on computers before computers took over the world.  

In addition to the weekly visits with Syd, a couple of times a year I received mobility and vocational training.  In these instances, a different teacher would show me how to get around the world, usually a woman with a last name I can’t even begin to guess how to spell – it sounded like an eastern European sneeze.  Her first name was Caroline and she was very kind.  She taught me how to look both ways when crossing the street, find a crosswalk and read crossing signals.  When I was older, she took me to the mall and taught me how to find my way around by using the mall directory and reading signs, skills which translate to airports, hospitals and casinos, or any other large building which is difficult to navigate.  At the time I thought it was weird, but the most-used piece of information I remember learning on these vocational lessons was how to find a public restroom.  I don’t know if my vision teacher had a personal problem or she was just way ahead of the game on the idea that everybody poops, but an integral part of my lessons was learning how to find a bathroom in public. For the uninitiated, restrooms are usually near water fountains or restaurants, for example, and if you can find the women’s room, the men’s room is probably close.  My vocational education wasn’t all outdated arithmetic technologies and public bathrooms though; as I got older, these vision teachers also helped me find a job.  

My Dad had been telling me to get a job since the first grade, so when I was 14 and the opportunity presented itself to work, I took it, even though I was only paid $3.70 an hour.  The opportunity came via my vision teachers and it allowed me to work at the Dunn Loring Center, a school for the blind.  I was there during the summer, so I had little interaction with blind students.  Instead, I did administrative support work for the County’s staff of vision teachers.  I did mailroom duties, answered the phones, got lunch, photocopied and assembled large print textbooks and novels. I got to test an early version of Dragon Dictate dictation software and rate the effectiveness of various magnifying glasses and telescopes, the types of low-vision aides the state had been providing for me since I was young.  The ten hours a week I worked felt like an eternity, mostly because there were only about six hours of actual work to do each week. I had to kill four hours a week on my own in an office before the internet existed.  I walked laps around the school, let my imagination wander and sat in the bathroom just staring at the door of the stall to kill the time.    

When I was 16 I was eligible for job placement through my low-vision vocational teacher.  Caroline set me up with the opportunity to be some executive’s assistant but when I went to the interview his handwriting was so small and illegible we both agreed I’d be a terrible fit for the job, which consisted largely of transcribing his chicken scratch.  Instead, I ended up landing a cushy summer gig processing catalogue orders for the Government Services Administration. I took phone orders for government agencies which needed new office supplies, copy toner and toilet paper and made $17 an hour, which to a 17-year-old in 1997 was all the money in the world. In fact, I wouldn’t make $17 an hour again for another 14 years.   

These early work experiences provided by my vision teachers equipped me with on-the-job training and other tools necessary to have the self-confidence it required to enter the job market and find work on my own. During the school year, I got a job as a part-time janitor at my church on Tuesdays and Sunday afternoons.  Very early in my cleaning career, my vision was an obstacle because one of the Sunday School teachers didn’t think I’d done a good enough job. What I saw as clean, the Sunday School Teacher saw as dirty, which was probably true of more than just her classroom.  In any event, this experience taught me how to inspect things closer and that my standards weren’t always good enough.  Overall, my lack of eyesight was a gift as a janitor though. See, many of my custodial duties involved dealing with grossness, like trash and all the exciting things we flush down a toilet. When dealing with these elements of the job, the fact I couldn’t see the disgustingness of what I had to mop up or scrub down was a definite plus.  I also worked at a video store, where my vision was a bit of a setback when it came time to shelve tapes because I couldn’t always read the titles from afar; but, I almost never had to touch feces, except when customers rented FORREST GUMP.    

In high school, I also babysat a boy with Down syndrome and I felt comfortable around kids, so during college I babysat my younger brothers and sisters, who ranged in age from newborn Luke to preteen Matt with Brianna in between.  I was a steal at $12 an hour and working with my brothers and sisters was good in the sense that it connected me to my family and it was incredibly effective birth control. I also tried to work at a big DoD contractor called SAIC for a summer as an intern, but even the $16 an hour wasn’t enough to keep me there. On the third day of my employment, we did an off-site team building exercise during which every single member of my department burst out crying.  After two weeks working in a cubicle, I understood why. My team was insufferable. Everyone worked at a snail’s pace until it was discovered I had a zeal for getting the job done and then they started giving me all their work. I could do a week’s worth of this one guy Alan’s tasks in about two hours and when I tried to explain how to use the computer program SAP to be more productive, he scolded me for working too hard. I loved quitting that job.  While these jobs were fine during college, my limited work experience was terrible when it came time to find a job after I graduated.  I had no relevant experience in any field and my only long-term employer had been my Dad.  

When I moved to New York after college to sell a novel I thought was a comedy but was too dark to be funny, I picked up all kinds of jobs. I worked as a bar back, which was a challenge because a big part of the job was going around and grabbing people’s empty mugs and glasses. Well, in a dark and crowded East Village dive bar, I couldn’t tell when a glass was empty or full so I ended up trying to clear away unfinished cocktails more than a few times. I also got my Real Estate License and worked as a real estate agent, showing units and leasing properties as Real Estate Nate.  This experience was akin to running my own business and gave me my first sense of being truly self-employed.  I met a ton of interesting people and saw some gorgeous apartments and some total dumps. I made decent money and had keys to a lot of vacant units around downtown, which gave me access to a ton of clean, private bathrooms in Manhattan. 

After New York, my Dad gave me a job at his company, which was generous of him and gave my life some much needed structure.  During my tenure at his company, I was proactive in asking for new duties and learned a bunch of marketable skills like bookkeeping and inventory management.  Nonetheless, after 18 months of landscape maintenance I was bored intellectually and creatively.  More importantly, I felt trapped.  Other employers did not think my work experience in college was valid partially because I worked for my Dad and I feared my work experience in my 20s would be seen the same way.  If I didn’t make a change, and fast, working for my father was going to be the only career option available to me and I didn’t want to be in my late 20s and still living off paychecks signed by my Daddy. I was raised to take ownership and accountability for myself and my own happiness.  Having worked on my own and worked for my father, I vastly preferred the former.  Jobs are hard enough without adding a layer of family bullshit to everything.  So, I split town and went to graduate school.

During grad school, I was an intern at several production companies and NBC, all of which were great jobs and none of which were impacted by my poor eyesight or albinism. Although, my own personal myopia kept me from accepting a job offer to be an assistant at NBC because I didn’t think I’d enjoy being a suit.  In hindsight, though, I should’ve taken this job as I’d make an extraordinary television executive.  But, at the time, I thought myself an artist.  My subsequent work as a screenwriter and freelance writer, while not as steady or lucrative as the NBC gig would have been, was also not at all impacted by my condition, except as I expressed in Wrong Man for the Job.  When I took work at a liquor store to make ends meet, my poor eyesight was a minor setback because I couldn’t always see labels, prices or IDs and my albinism was sometimes noticed or mocked by customers.  But I had allies.  One time, some jackass asked my work best friend Mac, “Hey, what’s up with that Albino weirdo?” so she ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of wine, shattering it and spraying Cabernet all over this asshole’s shoes and pants. 

When I came to teach college, I didn’t expect my albinism to be a setback and, in most ways, it has not been. I rarely take time to think of my teaching as paying forward the work of my teachers, vision or otherwise; however, when I do think of my work in these terms, I find my eyes get misty and my heart gets warm. Although, since I’ve been teaching my weight fluctuates 20 pounds in either direction during the school year.  As an adjunct professor, even though I’m often the smartest person in the room, I’m also the lowest rung on the higher education ladder.  As such, I’m in a position where I am overworked, marginalized and under-appreciated.  For no reason other than my adjunct faculty status, I’ve been taken off committees I’d served on since their inception, I’ve been asked to leave faculty meetings and a panel at a conference I helped create has been taken from me and given to a full-time faculty member.  I sometimes wonder if I intentionally put myself in a position where I’d be overlooked and undervalued or if that’s just how the life works and we find places for ourselves which resemble situations we recognize.  The indignities I’ve endured as an adjunct professor have nothing to do with my albinism and everything to do with the flawed nature of the higher education system in this country. The reality of life as an Adjunct Professor is one of little institutional support, development or encouragement.  Disappointed with the treatment of adjunct faculty at the university where I teach the bulk of my classes, I have taken ownership of my situation and I’m now Chair of a first-of-its-kind Committee charged with improving working conditions for Adjunct Faculty. While the work of this committee is helping me feel empowered, the reality of life as an adjunct is most like life as a real estate agent: I need to think of myself as a business to be successful.  To that end, I’ve begun working for myself, acting as a freelance educator, teaching multiple courses at multiple institutions. Thankfully, the vocational and technological skills my vision teachers equipped me with, coupled with my own work experience and ambition, have prepared me to succeed in a changing job market. These teachers couldn't improve my eyesight, but they certainly helped focus my vision, allowing me to function in the world with a greater sense of clarity.