My name is Peter Hacking and I am 25 years old. I have been diagnosed with Asbergers (of the Autistic Spectrum) for 14 years, though I wasn’t told until I was 17 because they felt it was wrong to ‘label me’.

I joined the Work Placement Project during my third year in Aspirations, just before I left altogether. At that time I was working on a website for the ‘Heritage Lottery Fund’ that was a Roll of Honour for the town of Bottisham, Cambridgeshire for WWI. Even though it took me many months to do, it was a very rewarding project in general for all the knowledge I picked up about the various regiments and soldiers who served in them.

Though I was a little wary of attempting work, I was willing to give it a try in the hope of moving into the rat race some day.

I was hired as an IT Assistant, with the general aim of helping develop Red2Green's official website, the design of a website for the Grundtvig project, and several other smaller but no less important projects.

As my first day approached I found the thought of working in an office to be a challenge since I hadn’t been a member of the general workforce for many years, but over time I was able to find a niche for myself. It definitely helped that I was allowed to work on what I wanted, at my own pace, at my own discretion.

When I began work I actually didn’t know anything about web design, I didn’t know HTML, css or JavaScript or any other type of programming language, I was completely in the dark. I was allowed to track down the information (either through books or the Internet) that let me learn the basics of programming a web page.

Although the Red2Green website designer and I don't always agree over style, the Grundtvig website has been a breeze since I am the only designer.

In truth, my first week was very fortuitous in that it was during one of the meetings where all four of the member countries of the Grundtvig project (England, Greece, Portugal and Slovenia) were getting together to discuss the progress each had made. Which meant I went along also, which was so hard for me since it meant I had to fly all the way over to Greece where the conference was taking place and enduring a week of staying at a five star hotel; yes it was truly terrible for me.

After meeting with the other members and going over the plans for my work on the website, I found myself back in the office but now with a group of people I had gotten to know socially which made a lot of difference with how relaxed I was with them and how well I could work along side them.

Though it took me several months to understand enough HTML to fully understand what I should be doing, I eventually found myself able to create the website with only the occasional hiccup.

In mid October I found myself travelling to another gathering of the partners only this time it was in Portugal. However, I found myself less at ease about this meeting since I was going to have to stand up and be counted. I had to display the website I had created and get the first real feedback from the partners on their thoughts on what I had created.

Luckily they seemed to like what I had done and there were only a few minor disagreements over the layout, things which I was more than willing to change for the betterment of the partnership’s overall mentality.

To read about Anna's experience, click here.