I don't want this to be long winded so I am going to give the abridged version here.

I was able to figure out part of my issue with workplaces in the past had to do with a few things:

-I am an introverted female and people expected me to be more gregarious
-I am very professional on the job and I came across as intimidating
-My analytical and logical personality made people think I was a b-word
-I work best with order, sound decision-making, and some independence
-I am very direct but I know how to communicate my point without being malicious

My personality really confused a lot of people. Previous supervisors didn't get why I needed to have some sense of order and organization. They seemed to like chaos (even though it was destructive) and thought I was too uptight even though they themselves, were control freaks (more details later). At my last job, a supervisor didn't like me because I held my ground and there was no real reason for me to ever be disciplined (I never was, but she'd assign me extra work to "test" me). The job before that, my supervisor hated my guts. Not kidding. She didn't like just about everything I did, even though I received positive remarks on my work and communication from many people. My coworkers even threw me a party when I left and gave me candy because they said they were sad I was leaving That tells me I wasn't really a problem for the workplace as much as my supervisor didn't like me.

I should mention the sector I was a part of seems to thrive off of some sense of chaos or at least accommodates to it a lot because it heavily involved people. I went into document entry for a short time after that until my job was eliminated.

Now, I'm in school finalizing a course of study in something completely different but I think it's for me. I went to counseling to figure it out and even met with a career advisor to help me out. I really enjoy what it is I do now, but I am still scared of the workplace. The number one pattern from the past was my personality and someone always found an issue with it. It was almost always the supervisor. I am really afraid when I get a new job, I'm going to end up in the very same position with my supervisor finding me irritating, hating my guts, or something else going on even though I will enjoy the work a lot more.

How do you even find out what kind of person your supervisor is going to be? How do you get along with a supervisor who finds you irritating in spite of having done no harm? It's something going on in my mind for a while and it makes me nervous to think about with graduation coming up soon.