The interview

Monday night I was kind of bad. I skipped my Portuguese class. Because I was busy with my interview to become a mentor.

It was time to fill in those gaps from my application. I went in knowing that I should mention that I am a Bay Area native. I've learned over the years that we are not as common as I had thought previously.

I talked about the things many of us take for granted -- applying for college or finding a job and an apartment. If you've never had a support system, do you really know how to do these things?

And college? Well, we all know that the SAT and other standardized tests can be culturally biased. If one has never been exposed to these things, then how can one answer questions on these topics?

The last part of the interview was answering questions about certain scenarios. The first was one in which the young woman was involved in risky behavior -- sex, drugs, or some combination of the two -- and how you would respond. And so I was honest. "I am not necessarily trained to deal with these kinds of situations but there are lots of people out there who are." I then went on to say that I would tell the young woman how her behavior is jeopardizing her future and that I can help her find someone to talk to. The program director loved how I said, "We can go and make an appointment." She said that her experience has taught her that while these young women will say that they will do whatever it is that you have asked of them, they rarely follow through with the actions. Just by my saying "we," I was holding this fictional young woman accountable.

The next step is to go through training. Part of this training is setting boundaries. Funny, but during the interview, I mentioned how there is often a lack of boundaries in these young women's lives. I gave a concrete example from my teaching years of how to be supportive yet set firm boundaries at the same time.

Basically I totally rocked the interview process. But from y'alls comments, I think you already expected that. I just wanted to let y'all know that I lived up to your expectations. And now I'm totally excited about getting my match.

And no, I don't see any problem with this post as a follow-up to yesterday's. Because I'm all multi-faceted and shit.