Page 28 of Last Chance Love

“Interesting. Is it effective or worthwhile?”

“Could be,” she said with a shrug. “It was an idea of mine that I put into effect a handful of years ago, and have been refining it as best we can. The snag is that it can be difficult to get proper measurements from the evaluations; some things are just hard to put into question form when you don’t have the knowledge, which these experts do, or the experience, which they do not have.”

“Sounds like you need to get someone who has both.”

Her eyes flicked to me, a smile reappearing on her face. “As a matter of fact, we might have just that sort of thing in the works.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“No, that’s got a lid that’s staying firmly on top.”

“Okay, so what are you telling me?”

“That even by the constantly refined measures, both those done before they enter the program and those after they’re here, we’re able to have at least an idea of the progress they’ve made. We can even put it on a graph and trace it.”

“O…kay.”

“Which we need. It’s good for those suits who want to stare at numbers and graphs so they can have their assistants read it off to them without needing to read all that text. Those reports are necessary and come from everywhere, including our mentors.”

“Ah, well, that would explain why a mentor is such a trusted position. You need to know they can accurately assess their mentees.”

“Indeed. We emphasize that these evaluations are meant to allow us to understand their mentees' strong and weak points, to bulk up the former and shore up the latter. It’s meant to give everyone the information necessary to pick the tools to help them.”

It was a lot of babble, but I understood what she was getting at. Simply relying on people wasn’t Mona’s style, and having a system in place meant she could keep an eye on things without interfering. There were probably also systems in place that alerted her if any of the mentors started fudging their numbers too much, though there wasn’t much incentive to do so…or was there?

“Oh,” I said with a laugh, setting my glass down and snorting hard. “Those aren’t just measures of the mentees. They’re measures of the mentors too, aren’t they?”

“Right you are,” she said with a wink. “Not that you’d be the first to figure that out. A few of our mentors over the years have done the same, and the others? The others either can’t figure it out, or something keeps them from doing it.”

“Not that you’d know. Some people are good at hiding things, even from your keen eye.”

“Mmm, and which do you think Leon is?”

“Really?”

“You can choose not to answer.”

I rolled my eyes. “He might figure it out by accident, but he would never try to figure it out.”

“Why?”

“You know why. You just want it confirmed by me.”

“So confirm.”

For someone who didn’t want to play games, she was certainly doing a damn good job at the moment. “Because Leon is sometimes too damn serious for his own good, and other people too. He would take the responsibility you gave him to heart because he believes in the program. So, he’s just going to be the mentor he thinks he needs to be, and while he knows he’s being watched and evaluated, he wouldn’t think to look beyond that because he believes in the job. In his case, he’d think of it as a duty.”

“Well,” she said with a chuckle. “When you confirm something, you put your whole heart and soul into it.”

“Right, and now you’re going to tell me what? Because this seems like a lot of information I don’t necessarily need. So, why?”

“Because, as far as evaluations go, mentors and mentees are all over the place, with most in the middle.”

“Mode and average appear in any data points. I assume you probably also measure a mentor's final grade based on their mentees' progress or lack of, as well as other factors. C’mon Mona, mathematics and statistics is standard fare for a burgeoning medical student.”

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