Sleep disorder doesn't derail intern's path

Photo By Eric Crosby | Summer intern Jazmine Bowens is working with the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Headquarters in Indianapolis this summer after graduating college and before she heads to law school. Reasonable accommodations can be made for people with narcolepsy and any of the other Schedule A conditions (DoD photo by Eric Crosby)  

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, UNITED STATES

08.01.2018

Story by Christopher Allbright 

Defense Finance and Accounting Service

INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 1, 2018 - By all indicators, one Defense Finance and Accounting Service summer intern seems unstoppable. Yet, the 18-year-old has experienced a mix of accomplishments and struggles over the past six years.
At age 12, Jazmine Bowens took two college entrance exams - the SAT and ACT - and she did so well on each that she was recruited by prestigious colleges and universities. After one year of high school at Beech Grove in suburban Indianapolis, she graduated at age 14.
She spent a year at a private school in Virginia before transferring closer to home to another private university. Now, at age 18, she's a college graduate working for the DFAS Office of Equal Opportunity Programs.
Currently, she's working on a project to get the word about the Workforce Recruitment Program. The WRP "connects federal and private sector employers with highly skilled and motivated college students and recent graduates" for internships and permanent jobs, according to the WRP website.
Special hiring program
Bowens has a personal connection to the WRP. She was recruited through the program to DFAS by Cynthia Ice-Bones, OEOP deputy director.
Ice-Bones went to the WRP registry to find a qualified person for an internship from a list of potential candidates who have "severe physical, intellectual or psychiatric" disabilities that qualifies them under the Schedule A hiring authority under Office of Personnel Management regulations.
The summer intern program is paid by the Defense Department or its service components. "One key element to this program is that DFAS does not pay for the interns' salaries," Ice-Bones explained.
Besides funding, another advantage of WRP internships for employers is they can determine if the summer intern, whose term is 14 weeks, is a possible fit for a permanent position. If there's an opening, the person can be directly hired under Schedule A hiring authority guidelines. There are also potential employees looking for permanent positions in the database.
"I don't see any reason why hiring managers at DFAS couldn't go to the same database and find someone who matches their needs," Ice-Bones said. "When I was looking, lots of accounting and finance students were in the WRP database."
Ice-Bones said many slots go unclaimed every year because there are not enough government employers who take advantage of the program.
Road to diagnosis
For Bowens, her meteoric journey from secondary school to college was sidetracked during her year at Mary Baldwin University. At age 14, she was in a program 500 miles from home with others like her from all over the world. She was taking psychology and pre-medical school classes on her way to becoming a doctor.
However, something else was happening. She was tired. It was impacting her classes and her life. Bowens said doctors initially thought it was due to puberty, but it was more than that. It wasn't homesickness or depression, or a host of other issues that this condition can be misdiagnosed as in people.
Bowens had narcolepsy. The limitations created by this sleep disorder can range from daytime drowsiness to full-on paralysis.
Classmates at school started finding out about her condition and actually how young she was. She began to feel smothered and mothered. She made the decision to return to Indianapolis and she enrolled at Butler University to be closer to her support system.
Bowens' father, Luther Bowens, is the information technology operations manager for the Indianapolis Public Schools, and her mother is an accountant at a software company.
"My father's been a role model for me, because he didn't graduate college, but he made something out of nothing," Bowens said proudly. "He publishes white papers and gives talks about information and technology."
Bowens wanted family support, but also independence. While attending Butler University, she lived in the dorm and became a resident assistant for an all-women's floor. She started an online creative-writing women's magazine for non-journalism majors. Later, she became a community assistant in the university apartments where she lived the last year of school.
Shouldering all that responsibility was not easy. She manages her condition with medication and dealing positively with high-stress situations. Her age, she said, is not a factor.
"People don't care about how old you are, they care about how you act," Bowens explained. "It's not about age, it's about maturity."
At DFAS, reasonable accommodations can be made for people with narcolepsy and any of the other Schedule A conditions. Depending on the situation, accommodations may include flexible work hours, scattered breaks, or special equipment.
Making a change
Last summer, she completed an internship with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Chicago. She said that is when she "fell in love" with working for the federal government.
"The people were amazing," she said, adding that she maintains contact with many of her FDIC coworkers.
During her final years at college, she no longer liked the idea of becoming a doctor. She decided to go to her back-up plan and applied to law school in Oregon.
"I've always wanted to be a lawyer and I could picture it since I was a kid," Bowens reflected. The areas of law that she'd like to study are environmental law and criminal justice.
"I like the idea of being a judge, too, because people have to stand up when I enter the room," she said.
When she finishes her internship later this month, she will have a four-day break before heading west to Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
She encouraged others to take advantage of opportunities wherever and whenever they can.
"Don't shut the doors for yourself," Bowens said. "A lot of people think they can't, so they don't try. If it's a 'no,' they'll tell you, but don't say 'no' to yourself."

• Date Taken: 08.01.2018
• Date Posted: 12.31.2018 18:01
• Story ID: 305942
• Location: INDIANAPOLIS, IN, US