Writing this a little bit later than I would have liked, as it had slipped my mind over the weekend. This week’s experience was much better than the first week, and I think a significant component of the experience was a much more individualized process. The folks who we ended up working within the Post D program ended up being some of the kids I had the first week, namely J, J, and another, while I met a new student named R.

I ended up working with R with Kristine through the discussion and getting to know him was much easier and much richer. It became clear through our discussion that he very much loved his family, his sisters, and his nephews especially whom he pretty much equates to his own kids in a sense of closeness. He tells about the car crash he was in, and he expresses regret over the “stupid” decisions that he made that brought him here, but he also seems to have many hopes and dreams and plans for when he gets out.

He discussed how he wanted to go to college, possibly for engineering — and how he wanted to also go to trade school, how he wanted to fix cars. When he envisioned his future, he pictured a happy family with three kids, many cars, an amazing man cave, and a career as an athlete. His superpower was to Rewind Time, which would essentially give him all the time in the world to make his dreams come true.

He was quite friendly, and he seemed pretty invested in the storytelling component. He had some difficulties in terms of a train of thought, often repeating certain lines that he had already stated, and I learned in the aftermath that he has certain difficulties in terms of writing that will require assistance from the teachers as he goes through the project, but I really like him. He is a friendly kid, and he talks about starting a clothes-selling business once he graduates.