Interview the person below you

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Wandering over a beach, almost certainly Blackpool, early 1960s.

Do you remember you first day at school?

Blackpool

Yes, on my first day of school my teacher picked me up by my ponytail and spanked me for playing with a toy train.
She said it was a boys' toy and I should have known because it was blue.

She humiliated me in front of the whole class.

I didn't tell my parents because I thought they would make me quit, and I'd never learn how to read.


Same q

I remember the classroom and the fact that I cried for several hours, or even the whole of the school day.

Do you remember the names of most of your fellow classmates at primary school (in UK age 4-11) or equivalent?

Yes. I was just telling my psychologist that I feel like those children are my closest / most recent set of peers.
I can still look at school photographs from primary and name almost everyone, good or bad, as if they are my current social circle. (This isn't meant to imply I was friends with many of them, but I knew them all). After age 12 - 13 I started to seclude myself and hide in libraries, so I didn't meet any new people. I didn't know anyone's name at all by graduation.

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I remember the names of almost all my contemporaries at primary school, and could recognize just about all of them if shown a photo today. I also became much more withdrawn after age 13 or so.

Did you feel comfortable when first arriving at university, if that is applicable?

It's applicable. Yes, I went to Uni for two degrees.

Did I feel comfortable arriving? Not at all. It didn't help that I was assaulted during orientation week, either. Did I feel comfortable ever? Maybe a tiny bit, sometimes, because I liked the learning. But, I still hid in libraries. I didn't know more than about five people. I had many implosive relationships and terrible problems with flatmates. I had no accommodations and no idea I was autistic. I was obsessively perfectionist but it was hell having to type everything on a typewriter and re-do entire pages because of one punctuation error, for example.

Same q

LOL, snap! I'm probably the only person in my year group that doesn't appear in our college matriculation photograph - that's because I was hiding in my room and watching the process taking place across the quadrangle from behind the curtains. I never attended my degree award ceremony either. When I had to live out of college in my third year, I did a 'midnight flit' after about four months because I couldn't deal with living with other people - luckily a spare room in the college had just become available.

Did you find it easy to get a job after university?

No, it wasn't easy.

Interviewer: How would you organize your work?

Me: What do you mean?

Interviewer: You know, organize what you do?

Me: (panic) (blush) (stammer) (stim) (look at floor) (stutter)
Do you mean organize my time? My belongings? My thinking? My papers? My priorities?

Interviewer: ?

Me: (goes on a ten minute off-topic rant about how to arrange my pencils and pens without stealing any from the company, while still having materials to complete work at home, and did they know I won a bookmark for nice penmanship when I was ten?)

Interviewer: Thank you, Isabella. Next person .... ?

I was 'lucky' in a sense, in that I got a job in education after only two or three interviews. It became clear soon after that the reasons I got the job were:

1) The post had come up at short notice, and had to be filled quickly. I think I might have been the only applicant.
2) As a newly qualified graduate, I would only cost half as much as a more mature person in terms of salary.
3) The guy who interviewed me thought football was more important than education, and he'd been told by my former headmaster that I was a big football fan.
4) I had a degree from Oxford, the Head thought this was a far bigger deal than it was.

I turned out to be pretty hopeless at the job for the first two or three years, and only survived because the Head was about to retire himself and couldn't be bothered to sack me!

Wait, are those all true or did you do truths / lie?

I was told after one interview that I couldn't continue to the next round because "the other employees" wouldn't like me.
For real. They said they couldn't see me fitting in.

All true.

(Ahem!) Are you having a good weekend?

Thursday was rocky (in a horror sort of way). Friday was tedious and overwhelming. Saturday was lovely and relaxed. Sunday should be equally brainless. I have nothing planned other than perhaps some reading (who, me?)

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I have two cats! I'll have to check which is where but yes, they are most definitely inside somewhere.

Same q