Took four psychiatrists to actually get a diagnosis of Aspergers, rather than just ADHD and a Ritalin perscription. One diagnosed me by "How I walked across the car park", I had short calf muscles at that point, so rose up onto the balls and toes of my feet. It's just more comfortable for me, even now if I'm barefoot; I do it. Apparently that's an ADHD diagnosis. What I don't understand is how a Head Mistress can leave a high-performing secondary school, then start on a somewhat failing Primary school and earn more money. I fail to see how that's even possible. Considering the complaints I've heard about teachers pay anyway; How on earth can you go to a school with less students, less funding, and worse scores in the league tables and then somehow earn more?
Usually it is a poor performing school and the new head is from a higher performing school that was once poor performing and has a track record of excellent management/motivation of pupils/staff/parents that gets this sort of gig - either that or they are leading a federation where a high performing secondary school oversees a number of poorer performing primary feeder schools in order to raise attainment levels across a wider area - in which case the added management load does justify the increased salary as managing 2+ sets of staff/pupils is harder than one. Teachers pay may *seem* high in comparison with private sector but believe me when I say this the stress caused by everyone having an opinion/media/lack of parental support and blame transference means that it needs to be commensurate with those things and the fact that afaik in actuarial tables for pensions teachers have one of the shortest life expectancies post retirement of any profession and regularly place highly in lists of the most stressful jobs. You do need to be a special kind of masochist to do the job though
Something about this thread reminds me of this video: If you don't have Aspergers, you might just have cancer - or worse.
I don't believe that I do, I'm just ridiculously single minded and frequently need a nudge to get my attention if I'm working on something. My environment has to stay the same though, changes to that make me very uncomfortable. The paranoia I was born with, I just made it worse with the drugs many moons ago. However, one of my brothers has been diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome and two of my nephews are autistic. We're not talking Rainman levels here, just that they have their ways. One needs to be given something to do and then you leave him the hell alone, the other needs more attention but it's so rewarding when he gets it. I understand the former and appreciate the latter.
I don't believe the AQ test is quite accurate. In my case I took it out of interest after hearing of it and I scored 36. I'm pretty sure that I'm not autistic. If I am it must be one of those high-functioning varieties.
