No sooner, the party ended than my life returned to its usual self. I went back to my job as a warehouse associate, missing absolutely nothing. Waking up at five in the morning, work for ten hours a day, and I’m still not social worker.

Unfortunately, my situation was not uncommon among my peers. Scores of my coworkers were also college graduates not working in their field study. As much as I can complain about the unfairness of it all, I knew for a fact that my fate could have been worse. I have heard of stories about individuals struggling through life because of a bad luck of the draw. I was lucky; I still had my parents’ support and my job offered insurance and benefits.

It didn’t really sink in that I was not alone until one day I was helping Hand in Hand Ministries with a load of donations from a popular toy store-chain. The task required at least two trucks to go collect the bounty from the store and bring it back. Libby recruited a volunteer with an SUV, and I volunteered with the Ford Ranger that I bought right before my Belize trip.

As we were waiting for the toy-store manager to gather the goods, one of the cashiers struck up a conversation asking who we were and what we did. After we explained the HHM mission, the cashier revealed that she was social worker and worked part time with an agency I applied for years ago. After explaining I was a social worker, too, the cashier started to tell me that her introduction into the field was no more forgiving than mine. She had a diploma, but she was not given a free ride. She had to jump through all sorts of hoops and difficult entanglements before she for just a part-time gig.

These notions alone made me feel much better about my own vocation circumstance. It proved that autism was not the only thing that was tying me back and that there are others in my field that struggling just as much as I.

This chance meeting had convinced me that my efforts in college were not to be in vain. I would just need to do a little more work to convince my future employers that I have something to offer them. If a Bachelor’s degree in social work won’t open a door for me, maybe a Master’s degree will. It would take a while yet before I could take on such a challenge. I still had thousands of dollars’ worth of loans from my first go through college, and I wanted to kill off three of my four loans before I try again.

But before I settle down to my studies, I was still restless and wanted to add some community service points to my resume.