Trying to clean off my desk this afternoon and came across two curiosities. The first is this article in Wired Magazine  about Thorkil Sonne, an IT worker in Denmark who decided a few years ago that people with autism and related conditions like Asperger’s would be great for jobs requiring total concentration and near-total recall —- jobs like software engineers.

In most countries, a diagnosis of autism means a lifetime of struggling with social and people skills. I know two young adults with high-functioning autism, both at the University of Arizona. In social situations, they stand out like clothed people at a nudist colony. They are kind and intelligent, but their obsessive focus on minute details in a conversation makes relating to them difficult.

No surprise to that, says Sonne, which is why most folks with an autism-spectrum disorder don’t fit in at many jobs – they don’t “do” social interaction. However, they do do persistence and structure and routine in a way that would drive many workers batty, which makes them perfect as software engineers. In 2004, Sonne founded Specialisterne (Danish for “specialists”), an IT consultancy firm that hires people with autism-spectrum disorders. These consultants work for places like Microsoft and Cisco, finding software errors missed by those companies’ designers, according to the Wired article.

The consultants do well, staying focused long after most of us with our 7-minute attention spans have switched gears and gotten distracted talking about last night’s episode of The Office. “This is not cheap labor, and its’ not occupational therapy,” Sonne is quoted as saying. “We simply do a better job.”

Item 2: Parents of students at the UA received a plea letter this week that looks like it is from the Alumni Association. It is actually from a “Final Exams Service Program” in Trenton, NJ, that partners with heave knows how many Alumni Associations to provide heavy-fat, high-sugar “care packages” for students during finals week. So, first point is, don’t they know we have an obesity epidemic among young people? And the second point is the tone of the letter. Take a peak inside the one I received:

Two students showed up to get their Care Packages. One beamed when she received her package. The other, whose family had not reserved a package, immediately used her cell phone and called Mom with a plaintive, “You didn’t send me a care package?”

First of all, why would the kid have shown up at the UA Alumni Association building to get a care package if her parents had not sent one? She wouldn’t have been notified. Secondly, I’ve received these letters before and they just been an offer (”You too can spend even more money on college!!!”), not a guilt trip. It seems odd, especially during this economic downturn, that any university would pair up with this business and allow pleas such as the following:

Because so many students receive Care Packages during exam time, it can hurt if a student is left out. This year, we have a solution to make sure every student feels supported at this critical time. The enclosed free gift card is our way to help. Please send it even if you don’t plan to reserve a Care Package. Of course, it will be more appreciated if it comes with food.

Of course! Good gravy. Parents have enough guilt as it is and they are paying through the nose to get their kid a degree and, in their minds (c’mon, admit it), that kid needs to buckle down during finals with or without the Pop-Tarts and Andy Capp Cheddar Fries.

I happen to send my kids my own version of a care package around exam time. There are homemade chocolate chip cookies, but then its fresh fruit or veggies and nuts and maybe a coffee card. I’ve done this for too many years to remember, since I tend to believe a good salad cures all ills and all greens should be washed down by chocolate. But I don’t like being guilted into thinking that if I don’t cough up $25 to $60 for an “Exam Survival Pack” or a “Wildcat Spirit Care Package” I’ll somehow be causing my offspring to feel excluded. We’re not talking 5-year-olds here, people, but young adults who (one would hope) have a sense of perspective. But maybe I don’t know as much about this age group as the Final Exams Service Program does. After all:

If you’ve sent (a care package) before, you already know how much it helped. If you haven’ts, you can be sure your student will appreciate receiving the same kind of support other classmates receive.