what would be a good job to study for?

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I know I am never going to get a better job with a highschool education. What are some good jobs for a female aspie with ADHD. Desk jobs are out of the question, as are industrial jobs with lots of noise and chaos.

I like kids and wonder if I could be an OK teacher. But fear interacting with parents and being assigned to a highschool. Plus I am afraid field study might mean substituting, and I could not handle a new school every day.

Also I want something quick to learn. Part of the need for a better job is so I can make the leap into single parenting if need be. But if it takes to long to learn, well, I am not exactly young. I am 31, we all know things go rapidly down hill after 35.

Does anyone know any careers that are fairly quick to learn, pay a decent wage with sane hours, and is low stress enough for an aspie?


Does anyone know anything about becoming a teacher?

I have heard phlebotomy (expert in drawing blood) is a six week course, does anyone know anything about that? Like how much time you spend with patients?

Any other ideas? I am no good at math by the way, so accounting is out.

I don't have any ideas for careers, but it does not go downhill so fast after thirty five. I was a grad student and a load of people were over thirty five.

Factor in this though. If you are single parenting, you can expect to pay seven hundred a month in daycare for infants if there is no family around, at least here in Canada. It's expensive. I don't advocate daycare work. Underpaid and lots of stimulation.

That being said, my best friend from university has both AS and Adhd too, and is doing well as a librarian. I can't say I am superbly paid in libraries, but we both got coaching or mentoring. I haven't got adhd but do have executive functioning issues and have the social description from coworkers that you would hear of an ADHDer, and got coached in keeping a neat office and I am turning thirty, so not much younger than you. I just want you to take heart and not be too down on your skill potential. I just discovered mine in the last twelve months because of my learning disabilities association.

Look up your local learning disabilities association. Some help adhders in employment and training and give coaching for a fair inexpensive price. I can't speak highly enough of mine.

You might want to consider jobs involving creative design work or a quieter job in the trades.

I love my job because there are so many parts and it is flexible.

I too considered single parenting but was really thrown by daycare costs out here.

Whatever you choose, remember the good things in yourself and that changing workplaces can be the best thing for you. I lost my job once over a lack of attention to detail, and was so sensitive and disheartened. That was a hellish year of being reminded how cr!p I was. My new job boosted my self esteem. Different is good.

What is your work background?

I used to want to be a teacher. But found it very stressful as a camp counselor. I was able to learn to read kids body language. But have more of an issue with parents. It can be chaotic. I have spatial issues so organizing and catching social cues is an issue.
Being organized takes a lot of thought on my part. I just was concerned how slow I would be at everything.

There are lots of jobs that invoke teaching, like public health nurse, company trainers, charity workers.
So you might wish to find out about those other jobs too!

If you are interested in free online learning, though it is not certificate courses for a diploma, try coursera.org.

I hope the best for you.

I would recommend becoming a medical tech (x-ray tech, ultrasound tech, phlebotomy...the list goes on). Typically they get paid very good salaries, and they don't require much education at all.

I wouldn't recommend becoming a teacher. They get paid practically nothing and require a four-year degree, so I don't think it would be worth it in your case. I remember when I was in high school, I made more than some of my teachers with my job at a convenience store. If you're going to go for a four-year degree, I would look into more lucrative options.

Similarly, I recommend medical transcription, also called medical language specialists to women on the spectrum. I am a guy doing this, but I recommend only for women. You get to know all those vocabulary words and now most work from home for a service such as Nuance. www.nuance.com You don't have supervisors all the time, but they will know what you are doing all the time. Anyway, there are some pitfalls you should know about. It is an industry where firing is very common so not much job security (it seems to be the nature of the industry). The work is tedious and there are many ways to make a mistake, although most are not life threatening. There is a lot of criticism, rarely from the doctors who are the customers but from the QA people and supervisors. In fact, Nuance had something called quality mentoring. That is, you are on the phone for an hour with a "super QC" who criticises your work, it was very demeaning. I have since told my supervisor that if I have to go through quality mentioring again I will refuse and I don't mind if they fire me. If you work in a hospital office, there are often a lot of b*****s who hate guys, which is where I have trouble. It is easy to burn out doing this work and people often quit but hopefully, you will have some money by the time that happens. You may have to look into some business or vocational training for this but it could work out for you. Oh, wait, I meant to encourage you.

Oh and please, do not have children to be a single parent, every day I thank myself I do not have children. No way I could deal with it.

Sorry that I made the assumption you did not have kids. If you do, then considering career options is smart on your part so you can be financially more secure if a split happens. I just assumed you were like me, single, but still wanting to parent.

Nope, I am single and childless and that pains me every single day. All I have ever wanted to do was be a mommy. Every time I go to Kmart I torture myself with a detour down the baby aisle.

To be honest I don't want a career. I have no love of money or stuff. Getting more money is all about supporting a baby if mister right doesn't show up soon.

Medical transcription sounds like a living hell though. Might look into X-ray tech or phlebotomy though.

I didn't mean to make it sound like hell, though it is for a guy because a lot of the women hate guys. Please check out www.thechildfreelife.com to find out that life without the kids doesn't have to be bad at all. Are you sure you aren't being pressured by society and your family to have kids?

No pressure from anyone, I've wanted children my whole life. Childcare and development has been one of my obsessions since I was a very little girl myself. I can remember being obsessed with babies when I was 7 years old. Even then I knew I wanted to be a mommy someday. I can remember being 8 or 9 and studying pictures of fetal development in a book I was not even able to read at the time. (I didn't read until 3rd grade, once my mom taught me herself I picked it up quickly and could read at a 12 grade level going into the 6th)

In 6th grade I gave serious thought to being an obstetrician but realized I couldn't do it because the first time I lost a patient I'd lose my mind. And even thought about being a midwife, but don't have a car and suck at driving so getting to patients homes would be impossible.

No, no pressure from any external force to have a child. Children are my passion and the thought of one day having one is the driving force for even getting out of bed in the morning. If I never have one my life will forever be pointless.

I do not know the salaries of these jobs, but you can be an educational assistant, fulltime camp director, recreation leader, etc without too much education. And secretary does not necessarily mean doing only office things all day, so less tedious. Have you ever done a career test to figure out what jobs you might be good at? By career, I do not mean allconsuming of your life type thing, just something that pays well enough to get on with everything else in your life. I worked in a call center getting people's addresses updated and the money was not horrible though not always awesome. It was fairly mindless work and you could enjoy life after.

I feel your pain, or at least a similar one. I am a children's librarian, and do a lot of work with children, infants and parents. People ask me, which is your child, and I have to say, I have none. It sucks. But I console myself with the knowledge that my job does a meaningful thing in improving the lives of children. And parents. By offering my programs for free, kids, some of them Aspies, have a safe place to be. Also, some parents can't afford books or are not comfortable with books, so it makes reading a more friendly activity when I show parents books are more about the time spent looking through them and having fun together.

Whatever you do, be sure to take a look at the cost of training vs. Salary vs. Living costs and see whether or not it would be worth it. Yeah, pragmatical, nitpicky, and I likely sound preachy and less than fun. I made my career choice a bit too quickly and while I came out on top, it has cost me.

My mom recommended that I look at being a dental hygienists, are those still in high demand? That would be office hours so childcare wouldn't be a problem. And I can handle people one at a time, especially if they can't talk to me because their mouth is packed with gauze someone on another forum told me phlebotomy is often part time so that doesn't work, I need something at least two people can live with.

You might want to check with your local dental association on that one, as that is something I don't know too much of. Also, see if your library has access to Career Cruising, as that is a database that is updated regularly, and gives salary info. You might want to look into being an optometrist's assistant, or even an optician, especially if you do not have to own a clinic, just work in it. I know a coworker's niece who got into it fulltime and it did not take too long, a year or so tops. I don't what your spatial skills are like, but it might be something to get into. I know that some posts say something about basic math skills, but to me, it looks like with a calculator it can be fixed. I googled it as a career on indeed.com.

Do you have a local employment resource center? I used mine, and they were really good at helping me when I was in a jam. I did not use them when I was making my original choice, but getting me into paying jobs and helping me on the way with resumes, searches and stuff was so helpful.

Plumber, electrician, carpenter, ventilation specialist, etc. Work for yourself, fix people's houses when they call you. You will always be in demand.

None of those are very good options for me. I I am slow, clumsy, terrified of injury and sensitive to smell. Plus if I had to go in a house's crawlspace... Game Over!

Plus I have extremely intellectual inclinations and would prefer coworkers with IQs of around 110 and higher.

[quote="managertina"]You might want to check with your local dental association on that one,

Do you have a local employment resource center?

How would I find these? Also do colleges have anyone who can help you chose a suitable career? Or do you just pick one and go into it blind? How much help am I allowed to ask for with only a diagnosis of ADHD? Asperger's was unknown when I was in school so I was never properly diagnosed.

You can get help for many disabilities from university or college student resource centers. So, when you are looking into colleges in your area, and you have a bit of an idea as to what you would like to do, there are counselors at many colleges and universities career resource Centres and they can help you determine your personality style and different types of career offerings. You can also get help with just adhd, and some will even help cover assessments of ASD. Autism spectrum disorders. So, you can look and see ... do they have a student help center? What sort of assistance services do they list there? You might even wish to call that center up, say that you are interested in being a student at that place and want to make sure that you have the right services in place before applying and ask what questions you have related to accommodating your needs.