Job interviews, motherhood, and the "real world"...

My first real world, grown up job interview was today and for the most part I think it went really well. Although it was incredibly long, over 2.5 hours. If nothing else comes from it, it was great practice and experience for future job interviews. So not a whole lot to post about it.  I loved the guy I would be working directly with and overall it seems very promising. I'll guess now I just wait and see if anything comes out of it.

Which brings me to my next thought motherhood and working. I'm new at the whole motherhood thing and being a working mother (outside my internship and grad. school) is completely unchartered territory. It also brought up a great deal of questions for me in navigating that aspect of my life during interviews. I know that legally jobs cannot discriminate or ask certain personal questions. However, as a women and given some recent less than supportive members of my supposedly progressive and liberal university, and society I have in many ways been conditioned to assume that my children are a detriment to me and may potentially be used against me (whether these fears are valid or not I cannot fully say).

I know that even among others at my university I have had to defend my choices, decisions, and future plans where my husband has not and this is directly related to my being a woman. So during the interview with 10 people I was left in an odd situation wondering if and when I should mention my family. The people interviewing me all went around the room and introduced them selves and each of them mentioned their families etc. So when the first question was to tell them a little bit about myself it just didn't seem as though I could omit two important pieces of my life. So at the end of my long reply about my education and background I mentioned that I was also the mother of 10 month old twins.

And thankfully there were no further follow up questions about that (which again has not been my experience at my university where meetings turn into inquisitions about my personal life choices. The other day a woman wanted to know if I had break-downs, when I mentioned that of course I did, she followed up with, "Okay so what are we talking about every minute, every day, once a week, one a month...etc?" she just couldn't drop it. What I felt like telling her was everyone at this university has breakdowns even without twins because it's exhausting, competitive, and at times intense). Sorry that was a random tangent.

Anyways, I basically guess I have no real point except that this new chapter of my life in the "real world" is so totally unfamiliar to me. Especially learning how to navigate family, work, and motherhood. I suppose I won't really know how to do it until I start trying.

All grown up in my suit!