How AS Affected My Radio Career

A Past "Uncommentary" From 2003

How Asperger’s Syndrome Affected My Radio Career

After graduation from Emerson College in 1986, I had the knowledge and experience to pursue a radio career.  However, as the rejections from desired radio stations became more frequent, I noticed that something was wrong because the feedback I was getting was irrelevant having nothing to do with the job I was applying for.  Some of the feedback was about my not being able to relate to people and couldn’t connect with people.  In my opinion they were talking nonsense because they were not vital requirements and other disc jockeys that I listened to here in Boston seemed as good as I was.  It seemed to me that the program directors were making things up to keep me out of radio.

Little did I know at that time that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological condition that impairs social skills.  It’s also a communication disorder.  There’s no cure for it.

I had to take speech therapy while I was a college freshman because my voice was flat with no inflections.  My Public Speaking teacher sent me to Emerson’s Speech and Communications Disorders Department where my voice was tested.  They put me with a Speech Pathologist to work on my speech.  The following year I was in the Voice and Articulation class.  The next year after that I was in Radio Performance.  I also worked at both WECB-AM and WERS-FM during my years at Emerson.

With a tape and resume, I landed a disc jockey job outside of Boston that lasted a few months because the radio station went off the air due to a lack of funds.  I looked for more work in that field, but the rejections were harsh and difficult to understand because some of the program directors wrote in their letters that I had no experience whatsoever!  Others would just say that I had “potential but need more experience” and nothing else.

On two occasions did I try to give up my pursuit of a radio career, but other radio professionals convinced me to keep trying after they heard my tape and looked over my resume.  They said that I did have experience but just needed a little bit more to succeed.  In October 1994, WBCN-FM in Boston hired me as a weekend listener line volunteer for Melissa, one of their weekend disc jockeys.  I was there for almost six years answering telephones and writing down names of callers for contest prizes and song requests.  That’s all I did there and wasn’t paid for it because the job was a non-wage position.

Trying to find the right career path at WBCN was difficult.  Whenever I asked for an informational interview with the program director, Oedipus, he would refuse and get one of his assistants to tell me to get more experience instead.  Even having WBCN on my resume didn’t matter at all when I applied for radio jobs.  In April 2000, I left WBCN for good because whatever the criticism that was keeping me out of getting radio jobs didn’t exist to me.

Two years later, I started going to a neurotherapist for EEG Biofeedback therapy to treat a mental disorder that I was diagnosed in 1989 called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, an impulse control disorder that causes anger outbursts.  She realized that my real mental disorder was Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), a mild form of autism.  After I got the results of my tests from another doctor who is a neuro-psychologist, I had confirmation that I do have Asperger’s Syndrome.  That doctor explained that I do not perceive everything around me, and it’s been that way for most of my life.

That statement made me realize that I did lack something that the radio people were telling me about, but I am unable to perceive it because of Asperger’s Syndrome.  It will never exist to me at all, but at last I know that something kept me out of the radio business.

© Uncommentary, 2003