Like many recent graduates, Teresa Oliver encountered a tough job market when she finished her master’s degree in applied developmental psychology. Previously a teacher and tutor, Teresa had been inspired by her own son’s struggles — and the many students like him — to go back to school and study psychology to help children who feel out of place. But after a year of job searching, Teresa was still unemployed.
Undeterred, Teresa took an alternate route: she simply created a job for herself. She wrote her first children’s book, Again David’s Having Distractions (Nov. 2013), about a boy who has trouble fitting in at school and now travels to schools to share her book and speak with students and teachers about neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is just a fancy word which describes the diversity in our brain make up. For instance, we, as a society, will acknowledge cultural and racial diversity, but we haven’t begun to acknowledge the differences in neurological differences without adding a maladaptive label. Luckily, it’s morphed into a job that both fits her passion and her life as a busy single mother.