Nincompoop.

I had a revelation this morning sometime between snooze button hit number 3 and snooze button hit number 4.

My supervisor at work doesn't know what he's doing. "Bumbling fool" comes to mind.

You know, for most people, that tidbit of information would have been "DUuUh!" from jump, however me - being the undercover optimist that I am, can always find an excuse for why things aren't what I planned.

For one thing, both me and my husband sacrificed a lot by me taking this position. It's not that I was earning my worth at my previous job, but if you know anything about AmeriCorps or Peace Corps positions, you can guess that I'm earning approximately $diddlysquat right now. Part of what made leaving my last job so painless was that my standard of living wouldn't be effected all that much.

People in their right minds don't job shift when they're pregnant. They stick it out until after the baby is born and then just don't come back after maternity leave. I knew that this would be an easy way for me to jump ship and move into a position where I could actually put that experience on my résumé and at the end of the service year I'll have proof that I can do this job.

I have to make you understand that my learning curve is typically super-short - even in situations where I have no contacts, limited resources, and no supervision. If someone gives me a task to complete, you'd better be damn sure that by the time they come back I'll have found a way to get it done. I don't make excuses. If I can't figure out how, I figure out who to call. If something is impossible to do, I want to be able to tell my supervisor why.

Now, how does that go back to my supervisor not knowing what he's doing? There are several little incidents that have occured and mini-realizations I've had over the past couple of weeks. I'll give you an example.

Last Wednesday, we went out to a company to give a presentation to some people who were potential middle school student mentors. He had asked what I wanted to talk about during the presentation, and I was like "Huh? I don't want to talk about anything - I have no idea what's going on, so I'm just observing." Seriously. I said that. Dude knows he hasn't specifically trained me on anything. I ain't psychic. I don't know what promises he's made these people (that's another whole bag of worms I'm not even going to talk about right now - promises he makes people that I find from those people) I'm not going to go out running my mouth. Anyway, we get to the company, and the way the session was ran was sort of like a question-and-answer roundtable. I don't think that man answered a single direct question. In fact, there were a lot of statements he made that made my eyebrows shoot up "Whaaaaat?"

I'll just say that the conversation was about mentoring in specific and after a while it became apparent that this man had never mentored a student one-on-one in his life. I have. Rather than say anything that was contrary to what he was spewing, I kept my mouth shut for the sake of professionalism. Most simply: privileged students don't need the sort of mentoring we're tring to foster. You don't skirt around that fact because you think you'll be able to get a couple of more volunteers out of it. Let's cut the bullshit - this is Durham. In some of our schools, 80% of the students can't afford to pay for lunch.

You have to be upfront and say that chances are good they'd be matched with a student whose teacher has a REASON for referring them to the program. It ain't because that kid is interested in what the mentor does for a living, but it's not necessarily because they're little gangbangers. It might just be that they've discovered a new group of peers who for some reason have caused their grades to slip from one year to the next. That's how I was matched with my last mentee - the enrichment teacher wanted to find out why the little girl's grades had slipped. I found out from the girl's mother that she'd starting hanging out with some girls who were criticizing her for making good grades.

I'm rambling at 7 a.m. Lord.

Point is, I can't go to this dude and tell him he's got to change his style or else I'm out. Ultimately, he's not even my supervisior - a woman in the state office is. Today I have to get in touch with her and make sure she has an understanding of what's going on. I know the guy had a VISTA last year that he inherited from the previous director. I don't want it to seem like, "Well, she stuck it out - she did the job. Why can't you?" when the reality is that the woman didn't have a car and spent most of her time in the office doing clerical work (poorly).

I'm evaluating some options right now, but first and foremost is telling my state supervisor my grievances soon as possible. That way if I find something else in the meanwhile, she won't be put off because she knew I had beef.

I'll let you know what she says.

Posted by Tiffany at August 28, 2006 06:43 AM | TrackBack