I’m a chemical engineer. I’m AuDHD but I HATE working at home. I want to be out in the field looking at stuff. Luckily there is no dress code (apart from safety gear lol) and I’d like to see someone try and tell me my fidget toys are unprofessional…

I would probably not do well in a lot of traditional engineering environments but I have managed to carve out a niche where I am basically the troll in the basement people come to with their problems. Let’s just say neurodivergence is over represented in my field 😅

Unfortunately we (and my part of the industry) are terribly understaffed so I’ve been working myself death for the last couple of years. This has lessened my ability to mask/cope. Some of the main challenges I have are:

• supervising people: most people I have supervised are super awesome and I’m happy to go to bat for them but once and a while I’m not so lucky.
• delegating and saying no: for the most part no one is overseeing my work so it’s really hard to get support prioritizing. Again, there is more work than any of us can do and this leads to conflict when my peers want someone from me and I have to say sorry, we’re not going to do that.
• over stimulation/slow processing speed: 9/10 times I manage to attempt to chair hybrid meetings in a large board room with people having side conversations and take minutes without crying but sometimes I don’t 🤷‍♀️
• inability to lie/unbridled rage at being lied to: I work with contractors and consultants and I absolutely cannot play the game - I call out lies without realizing that’s what I’m doing and you can imagine how well that goes over. Especially from a woman. Not lying also means adding tonnes of caveats to all of my answers because if I don’t give all the context that’s lying right???