I can’t believe it but it’s already week 12 of my blog!  This will be the last one for awhile.  I've enjoyed sharing my thoughts and experiences with all of you.     It’s back to the waiting game for me- the interview last week with the Rehabilitation Services Commission (RSC) went well but I won’t know anything about whether or not I’m a newly employed man until after September 17th.  Again, waiting is hard but I’m not sitting still- I’m continuing to look for other opportunities and applying for anything I’m remotely qualified for.     The interview with…

Hello all- Last week I told you that I might have some good news for you come this week. Well, I had my first interview on Monday of this week, and it went relatively well until the discussion about entering people’s homes.  In the original job posting it did not list this as a requirement for the job. If it had, I would have never applied because of the general inaccessibility of most people’s homes.    Some good did come of it though—first of all, I got through my first interview! I was sweating bullets all day up until the…

Editor’s Note: Sorry for the interruption folks, but it has come to my attention that, in trying to make my blog as readily available on the internet as possible via search engines such as Google,  the availability has invited a plethora of site-spamming bots that have begun to leave hundreds of inappropriate comments and advertisements on my earlier blogs. Neither myself nor the Achievement Center’s for Children endorse these ads, so please do not click on them if you can avoid it!   Also, a quick retraction from my last blog; I recently was under the impression that Microsoft’s new…

  Hi everybody- is it week nine already? Wow. It certainly doesn’t seem like it, but believe it or not, it is. In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about the ADA and the implementation of it, but this week I found some real life examples of how there might be some room for improvement. On Saturday, I went to the Cleveland Browns’ Stadium for their annual Family Day and Brown and White Scrimmage game (side note: I think our quarterbacks could use a little more practice before the season starts, guess we’ll see next week in the first preseason game…but…

Hello everyone! This week I continued my (what feels like never-ending) job search. My Resume Specialist, Martin Jaffe, suggested that I trim my resume down to one page. He told me that employers usually have multiple, if not upwards of hundreds, of resumes to read from qualified candidates every day. This is why he suggested that my resume be short and to the point, as this makes sure that the employers don't get impatient or bored while reading mine.  For me that was a real challenge because I do not have a lot of work experience. Most of my resume…

Hello Everybody, This week I went to the ADA Day I had mentioned last week, hopefully some of you had a chance to come out.  I was a part of a panel that dealt with the history and founding of the ADA, I figure this would be a good chance to look back at the beginning of the law and why it was introduced.  Before the ADA there was no legal protection for people with disabilities regarding discrimination specifically.  In 1990 there were 43,000 people with disabilities in the United States.  This population could not necessarily always enter buildings because…

  Hi everybody! This week I met with my Job Developer that I am meeting with through BVR’s partner JFSA, and it was an intriguing but scary process. While it is nice to get the ball rolling finally, it means I have to actually put some effort into trying to find a real job <shudder>. Together we went over the accommodations I am entitled to, such as, the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking™—a speech recognition software from Nuance—as well as an accessible workspace, and other reasonable accommodations specific to the job.  Honestly, this meeting helped to ease some of my…

  Hello, I know most of you, like me, are sad to see LeBron James go to Miami, and while I could probably rant and sulk about it all day long, I think we all need to just move on and continue to support our Cavs this season. So, anyway… I just recently went to the Vans Warped Tour, an all day concert in Cleveland at the Time Warner Cable Amphitheater. This national tour features over 100 bands in one day, and this experience was the best concert I have ever been to, and I was surprised by how helpful…

Hi everybody! Reality has set in- I received my official Social Work License in the mail this week.  I’m official-it’s exciting and frightening at the same time. In other news, I have recently been participating in job training. This has given me the opportunity to practice my interview skills and learn things that I sort of took for granted i.e. how to dress for an interview, how important eye contact and handshakes are etc.  I realize now how I can’t take for granted my initial impression with a potential employer.  Considering I have yet to have a typical 9-to-5 job…

Hi everyone, and welcome to week 3! This week I started preparing for job interviews at my designated job training center that BVR helped me choose. We talked about things such as the importance of appearance when it comes to interviewing, as well as skills and other attributes that employers ask for when they are interviewing an applicant. Right now, I’m taking a week long course which will end with a mock interview- I’m nervous but pumped to get the process started. When I was going over the information on how importance appearance and eye contact and a firm handshake…