The Part of the 99 Percent the 99 Percent Probably Forgets About

by Kersten Wehde

Inside our silver mentor folders are handouts on conflict resolution, business attire, networking and job shadowing. The mentees have slick three-ring binders with our biographies, headshots and business cards. They are way more prepared than many of the would-be mentors, with questions about workplace challenges and strategies for J.D.s and MBAs. I’m wondering if the executive director lured me here as a kind of confidence-boosting ringer: “Watch, I bet there’ll be a few self-proclaimed ‘career women’ here who you should be mentoring.” Hi, girls! I’m Kersten! I’m a Planned Parenthood fundraiser and a freelance writer and … wait, come back!

This was last Saturday’s mixer for the Career Horizons for Young Women program, run by Just In Time for Foster Youth. JIT equips foster kids aging out of the San Diego system with the support they need to succeed in college; find steady, meaningful work (Remember “steady, meaningful work”? Remember “work,” for that matter?); secure stable housing (remember … oh, forget it); and successfully manage their finances. Career Horizons pairs young women with successful females in the community, as well as females like me, who think that by becoming a mentor it will turn four years as a fundraiser into a capital-C career, and by saying I’m a writer, I’ll feel empowered to write. Why did I think that? I don’t know. I’m a fundraiser and a writer, not a psychologist. I would have been more popular with this group if I’d been a psychologist, and if I’d been a psychologist I’d tell myself that it was obvious and not a little sad that I was seeking validation from a bunch of strangers.

You hear a lot of crappy things about the foster care system. There’s this and this and about 200 Law & Order: SVU episodes. Far less attention—and far fewer resources—are given to emancipated foster kids. Here is some fun dinner party talk that will make you psychologist-popular: Within two years of the ripe age of 18, over 50% of former foster youth are jobless; 60% earn annual incomes at or below $6,000; 40-50% are homeless; and 20% are locked up. They are the 99%, and they are in the part of the 99% that I’m guessing most of the 99% has a tendency to forget about, a problem that looks too big to solve. Among the girls (and despite the maturity with which they’ve learned to carry themselves, they are girls), 60% will be mothers within four years. Think, for a second, about what you didn’t know and couldn’t do at 18. Think of the mistakes you’ve made since then, and think about the means—family, money, appeals, an inside guy—with which you righted them.

In spite of having seen Escape to Witch Mountain and maybe half of those Law & Order episodes, I’m not an expert on foster youth. A few months ago, I went to the JIT College Bound awards ceremony, where kids collected laptops and basic dorm furnishings so they could start their emancipation (often less a freedom than a maze of burdens, as those dinner-party statistics show) on the right foot, with a printer and a mattress, and my bleeding heart gushed and melted, and I signed up for everything, and I called my mom to tell her I loved her.

One reason I love my mom is that she had me dressing like Sandra Dee by third grade, and it stuck. I wore my most responsible-looking blouse to the mixer, which is silk, so the nametag sticker went square on my bare chest. Business attire tip No. 1: There is no better way to ruin the impact of a silk blouse than by sticking a nametag on the skin revealed by its neckline. Write that down, ladies!

One way I might love my mom more is if she hadn’t nurtured my tendency to say every stupid goddamn thing that comes to my mind during small talk. For the icebreaker, you had to guess the celebrity written on the sticker on your back—or, if you were wearing a silk blouse, on the back of your skirt, in a region usually reserved for tramp stamps or whale tails or meat seats or whatever rhyme children use for the low back. Probably meat seats. When a sullen girl told me my meat-seat was a leader of the Black Power movement, the game ended pretty fast (great game). I helpfully filled the silence with the sort of banal trivia that keeps my brain from having room for French. “Did you know Malcolm X tried to memorize the dictionary in jail? That would have been a funny thing to say. As a hint.” You know that blank stare Jon Stewart makes after an especially WTF Fox & Friends clip? Business networking tip No. 1: A useless fact can just as easily be a conversation non-starter. Always have a handful at the ready, girls!

Shari, a pre-law Career Horizons graduate, kept me company. During breaks, I tried to convince Shari to travel to Spain, to take time off studying, and to treat herself to more ice cream. Do they give out mentoring Ph.D.s? Not anymore, because I earned them all during those breaks. The other girls speed-dated, interviewing prospective matches about their professional experience and education, and just how much debt they could expect to be in. They were double majoring in business administration and women’s studies; they weren’t going to let their wheelchair stop them from being a nurse; they were studying for the LSATs while planning their wedding; they were choosing between photography and child development; they were trying out junior college; they were balancing kids on their knee; they were laughing easily and taking notes; they were just trying to figure it all out. They were earnest, not the least entitled.

I realized three things:

1. I am a fundraiser and a writer, and there is not a single citizen of the world who grows up wanting to be a fundraiser, and very few writers make any kind of living by writing. The Career Horizons girls know this.
2. I work for Planned Parenthood, which is an awesome agency (the whole world agrees) with a history of undeserved controversy and constant threats and battles. It is so weird that a girl who’s spent years in foster care would not want to jump into that!
3. Oh god, I desperately want to be a mentor! Choose me! Give me one of those roses!

Five days later, and no word yet. I’ll be disappointed if no one picks me for their team, but I’ll understand. It’s selfish; I want to be inspired and energized by these girls. And sure, I want to feel like I’m somehow a part of their success, and to make sure they know they’re awesome, and that they have so much to offer. I want to spend so much time with them that empathy is my knee-jerk reaction to everything.

A couple of nights ago, pre-law Shari emailed me to say hello, and to tell me I’m an awesome person with a lot to offer, to say she’d be happy to help with the mentor/mentee process, to tell me to keep in touch and to thank me for “being part of the Just In Time family.”

And my bleeding heart gushed and melted, and I signed up for everything, and I called my mom to tell her I loved her.

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