12:40 p.m. - January 08, 2004
On the mentee and becoming an official mentor
Met with my mentee this morning and folks, it�s going to be a long 6 weeks. He is doing the first phase of his internship under me, so he will go where I go, work where I work, shadow me where I walk, for 15 hours per week, with an additional 5 hours of related mentoring (skills, ethics, legal aspects) on top of that. I�m going to call him Steve.
First thing he does is squeal. A literal squeal. Expresses how happy he is he got his first choice (me), how much he�s looking forward to shadowing me, how he had a great New Year�s, how he�s finally found a cheaper place to stay and thankfully rents are decreasing, about his visit home for Christmas (someplace in Illinois), about how interesting the articles I�ve written are and he�s excited even though he�s heard I can be intimidating and exacting, and this is his name sign because he likes to dance � isn�t it cool? � and is it true I took and passed all three national exams on the same day, in a few hours? And what was it like to be a coda, he�s going to enjoy getting to know me, he�s seen me work and how exciting to meet me, he�s seen my father do storytelling competitions and he�s so good, and my mother, he�s never met her but would like to � oh, she doesn�t live here? That sucks - and how cool to have Deaf grandparents and �
All this in about two or three minutes.
Steve talks far too fast for any sort of comfort on my behalf. His paperwork says he�s 23 but he strikes me as a very young shade. I�m making the effort to be nice, supportive, professional and keeping my eyes on the clock, not a good way to start off.
Damn professional obligations. Damn agencies and training programs� collusion. Damn people who think ASL and interpreting is sooooo cooooool.
Stimuli overload!
I am sorry to note that perhaps a major source of my antipathy arises from his flamboyance. I was embarrassed sitting across from him in the caf� � what if people thought we were together? In that regard, this mentee may be able to teach me something, but I�m not going to broadcast.
