PERSPECTIVES: Channeling Our Abilities
The purpose of a competitive and meaningful workplace is to provide an opportunity for someone with developmental disabilities to channel their abilities and thrive in an environment where they can learn new skills that can carry over into everyday life.
The competitiveness helps the person to deal with obstacles that require them to learn new skills and knowledge – especially those involving communication and thinking outside the box. It allows them to function better outside the workplace as well – such as in social situations and daily living.
These skills were what I improved upon while working as a data analyst for a financial firm in Dunwoody, GA. It was meaningful in that my efforts are acknowledged and I am contributing to a bigger picture. An employer willing to give me a job that has positive challenges gives me the chance to improve myself. The greatest accomplishment for people with disabilities is overcoming challenges and becoming better than we were the day before.
Jobs that require learning and improvement are meaningful because they allow the person to generate productivity or value for his or her employer. I helped my firm generate cash flow that benefitted the agency, the people we do business with and, of course, myself.
The skills I learned have also helped my coworkers learn new ways of doing business – giving them a chance to learn from me as I have learned from them. The skills picked up by people with disabilities can also be used to help advance the workplace itself by allowing colleagues to learn new skills or ideas to become a more thriving place of business.
The key is having a workplace that allows people to get used to the challenges in their environment, and also provides a supportive network for accomplishments and success.
Gratitude. Opportunity. Moving outside the comfort zone. Adapting to new situations. Pushing forward. And finally, the support of those around me. I have suffered tremendous hardship since I was child because of my autism. I was supposed to be spending my life in a community home. The only jobs I would have would be terrible ones, laughable. I would spend the rest of my days in a slow repetition.
But I wanted more out of life than that, and thanks to the people around me helping me to build the above-mentioned qualities, I kept surpassing people’s expectations of me. I have transcended what I was before, and become an entirely new being altogether.
For the past year and a half, I have been with many different organizations and communities telling my story of how I became a self-advocate. My intent is to lead everyone into the possibilities of tomorrow by giving them two important things: the Will and the Way. When people have both, their future is already open to them.
Moving outside the comfort zone, albeit gradually, will lead to progress for others.
Eren Niederhoffer is a 2012 graduate of Marshall University and the first individual diagnosed with autism to graduate from the university’s Honor College. When not serving as a self-advocate on autism-related activities in Georgia, he works as a data-mining analyst with a financial firm in Dunwoody. Niederhoffer is also a member of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities.
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