Ooof, I feel that. I’m being held up on a single metric from my next raise by a single supervisor. Every other manager says I’m ready, but this one person won’t give me points for “professionalism responding to feedback.” Key to this, I held a meeting months ago discussing the limits of my disabilities (autism, which is ironic since the job is educating autistic children) but this one manager was late to work that day and missed it. Everyone who attended understood and have been really supportive.

It was a difficult talk for me. I wrote an essay to read off, talking about the support I need and even included visual illustrations of what it feels like when I get overwhelmed. Although I implement changes immediately, it takes me time to mentally adjust and my tone goes flat when I’m overwhelmed. I suspect the way changes initially throw me off is the reason this particular manager thinks I’m “not professional enough.” So it looks like I’m going to need to hold another meeting, with her specifically, and bare my soul all over again. I’m not looking forward to it.

I hate having to completely humiliate myself just to be accepted, let alone to move up professionally.