Latest / Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors / Meet a GenX Expert Turned Author

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Meet a GenX Expert Turned Author · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Elsa Barbie.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what's really going on, including at work.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Every episode, we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Equal Parts Informative and Tittling.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you everybody for joining us today.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: We are super excited about this episode.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have an author.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Her name is Latanya Reese Miles.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So let's kick it off.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start off with our very first question that we always pose to our great guests, and that is tell us about the beginning.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: What was your first paying job?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so my first this is very much related.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: My first paying job, I believe, was washing dogs at a pet grooming store during high school.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: This was in Alexandria, Virginia.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: This was a pet shop like a couple streets away from my high school.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: And like someone I knew on the cheerleading team also worked there and I needed to make money.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so we would go there after school.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: That was my first, not professional job.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: You said first paid paying job.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's my first paying job was washing dogs, you guys.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us what you do now, and then if you don't mind, bring us up to date from the dog washing days to how you got where you are today.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: I do a lot of different things, and I think happy to share that because especially for women and other folks, like understanding how does that work?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I teach part-time, I'm an adjunct faculty member at Santa Clara University, and I teach graduate students in the school of education.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: So folks wanting to go on to get their master's degrees or doctorates.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: I also now run a nonprofit organization called My Tribe Media, which is focused on media representations of post-secondary education.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then I've got this book out, you guys.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, today is the one-year anniversary of the book's publication, and it is called Smart Girls.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been touring, talking about those experiences that I write about in my book.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So is some if somebody were to ask you, what is your profession?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is your career title right now?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is it author, professor?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's all the things, and I think that's one of the things that people get uncomfortable about is what's your one job or your one title?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm starting to lead with like founder, curator, expert on the first gen experience, which encompasses a lot of different things.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's honestly something new for me.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like I have to get used to thinking that way because I didn't grow up that way.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: To this day, my mom doesn't know all that I do.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So Latonya, bring us up to the point when you ventured out to 20 million jobs.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: When I ventured out to 20 million jobs, yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I can tell it this way.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: I at some point was exposed to research and going on to graduate school.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh my gosh, I can go to grad school and someone can pay me to do research and to teach.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that's when I went off to UCLA, which is how I met Elsa here and got earned my doctorate in literature.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I was an administrator at UCLA.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I was creating programs mostly for first generation college students and students of color.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was doing administrative work.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: At one point, I thought, oh, my trajectory is like dean, VP, like this linear hierarchy, so to speak.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I just kept getting, I kept creating things, no lie.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: I just kept creating things, and I can talk more about that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just there's things I wasn't seeing, and I was like, you know what?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Let me just build it myself.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: At a certain point, though, when I had a dean's role, I thought, I do not love this.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And these students deserve someone who loves this job.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that's after this was after 15 or 20 years, and I moved what we'll call higher ed adjacent.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I started working for an ed tech company.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what do you call it?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: The subject matter expert for a small comp a small ed tech company, moved to a bigger ed tech company, moved to a nonprofit.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: So after I left higher ed, I just kept moving jobs like every year or two years.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: People are like, oh my God, but but what about the retirement?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And here I am, here I am, just creating new lanes for myself.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say is the best part about what you're doing now?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: This is such a great question today, because if you asked me this question last week when I was like laying on the floor crying, thinking, oh my gosh, what have I done?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: But today, but I get back up, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I get to determine what's the priority.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: I get to talk to different people.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: I literally get to create and build things and not worry about, is it okay if I run to Trader Jones in the middle of the day?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or if my day doesn't start exactly at 8 p.m., those types of things.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, there are stresses, but like the creativity is the best part.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: The creativity and the freedom are the best parts for me.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: You you mentioned a couple of times about being first generation.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: What is your passion about that?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here's what's crazy.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And by first generation, students whose parents are caregivers haven't completed a four-year degree, in this case in the US.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't even know I was first gen.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I completed my whole PhD before I realized, oh, that's me.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Someone told me.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like this moment where it where it explains everything.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, when I look back at my K through 12 schooling and all the colleges that I went to, and I think I was internalizing some of those struggles.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, my family is just crazy.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was more than that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's some things happening, there's some support I really should have had, and some trauma I experienced because I didn't have I my mom could only help me so much.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: She was super thankfully I had a really supportive mom, but she just she hadn't been there before.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: So once I understood that identity, I thought my goal is to help students who are going through something similar to and also celebrate it, not feel like, oh, don't say anything about it.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: So necessary.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges in what you're working on now?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe even just being your own boss.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is the hard part of if you have multiple streams of income, they don't come on the first and the 15th of every month.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And constantly generating for me like what that income is and how to go about and get it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so that yeah, that that's been the hardest part, honestly.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then just thinking, you know what, let me be kind to myself, let me come up with a plan.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, that that was the thing that turned me around this week was say, okay, let me step back.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: What's my plan?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: What do I actually need?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Stop just checking in, just going by my feelings.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's actually true in this moment?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then being able to breathe and have a new day, start with a new day.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to being an author and writing your book, what was any, if there were any challenges about writing your first?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because you only have one book outright right now.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: One solo book.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got I've done, I've co-edited before.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, here we go.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: The challenges of writing a book.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, first of all, I had to decide to write a book because I resisted it the whole way.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no, I don't want to write a book, no one cares about me.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Accepting the fact that my story was worthy of being told was number one.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then once I committed to it, I was pretty good at that part.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I will be honest with you, I mentioned some of the challenges that I faced in my personal life and also as a student, and some things I hadn't thought about in a really long time because they were traumatic.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had to tell it to other people.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: And in one instance, there was a story where I literally had forgotten because it's trauma, you don't you repress it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to reach out to other people who were there and recreate it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: So just from a storytelling perspective, like how do you tell something you don't really remember impacted you?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that and that ended up being like a narrative challenge for sure.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then putting your family's business out in the street, there's that too.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ask for permission or did you give everybody the heads up?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Some people I asked for permission.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Some people, like my grandfather's passed away, and he's a villainous figure in the book.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: But the main person was my mom.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: But even still, I was like, this is my story.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And she actually didn't give me a hard time about it at all.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: She she was like, You go ahead and tell your story.
• 10:33
  unknown: Love that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I can imagine right now, our listeners are probably wondering, what is this book about?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: The book is called Smart Girl, and it tells the story of little T, me, working class kid from DC, who loves sports and video games, and was called the smart one in the family, and how I got to college, right?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: As someone who loved basketball and didn't play.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't play, right?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, before that, I went to nine different public schools by 10th grade.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do the math on that, nine schools, 10th grade.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: I actually had no business graduating high school with those kinds of odds.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I tell the story of what that was like, and then on to getting a PhD at UCLA.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: But honestly, it's really fun.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's a celebration of pop culture and sport and fandoms, and shout out to Gen X.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Gen X isn't represented enough, so there's a lot of like Prince and Madonna mentioned in here.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's up our alley.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a playlist, even too.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I think for folks who are looking for like a fun but also impactful coming of age story for a young woman, this is a good one.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know you mentioned the nonprofit part of what you do.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us a little bit more about what kind of nonprofit is it?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: How did you start it?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And more importantly, what are the challenges?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the nonprofit is called My Tribe Media.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: I co-founded with another one of my best friends, Heather's fellow UCLA Bruin.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And we've been working on it for a really long time.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: It just wasn't called My Tribe Media.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was the director of first year experience at UCLA, so all new students, and she was the director of the transfer center.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so we just, as you can imagine, had a lot in common.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: We were both transfers, we were both adult learners at a certain point.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a passion.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the things we enjoy doing was is watching TV shows and movies about these populations.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they're usually not that explicit.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: But so we start, we would text one another about these shows, and then we started doing things on Twitter.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about the show Cheer or Last Chance You or this book that just came out and decided that we wanted to formalize it.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: We were very inspired by GLAD and the work that GLAD does for the LGBTQ community in terms of representation.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that was our North Star.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we've been doing this work for almost 10 years and then decided to formally make it a nonprofit and have an official board and all of that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: You asked about challenges, finding like how people see things and imagine that they're overnight successes.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: There's rarely an overnight success.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: People doing a lot of work for free for a really long time.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we're so grateful to have folks who are helping us out, who are doing work with, like I said, getting paid nothing or next to nothing with the hope that we're going to manifest the funding to come.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's always a struggle, but we're just all really passionate about the work.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what keeps us going, keeps us getting up every day.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: You just have these moments.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have this annual award for like best storytelling about first gen or adult learners or community college students.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: And we just are releasing the winners.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's a whole panel of national judges.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And one of them, I woke up this morning, and one of the writers for best fiction had like she's not on Twitter, Blue Sky, like started resharing because she won.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, oh my gosh, I feel seen and validated.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why, like, okay, this is why I do the work.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: And what kinds of people are you helping with that work?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that is such a great question because I think immediately people would think it's students.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: And while they are helped, I think it's the people who support students who are helped the most.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because really, this work is about changing narratives and changing perspectives so that we're not infantilizing transfer students or community college students, for example, always thinking that community college students are broken in some ways, or looking at first-generation students where they're spending so much focus on struggle and strife and hardship and going from homeless to Harvard.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Most people fall somewhere in the middle.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Most people have not been homeless and don't go to Harvard.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're just right in the middle and they go to a regional public school and life moves on, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I think shifting those pers perspectives ultimately helps students, but I would say our most immediate impact is with faculty and staff and administrators.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: What's the hardest part of your job?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Other than not knowing when you're gonna get paid.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Other than that, I guess I'll just speak to when you're a founder is deciding what your priorities are on a given day.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, what has helped is I literally have my calendar because I could spend a whole lot of time like doing stuff that's just fun all the time.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't like doing administrative work, I hate doing receipts, I hate like following up with invoices.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to like put that in my calendar.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, I'll just kick it down the road.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't do that because there's this thing called taxes that comes around.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: So just have you gotta have it's important to have that kind of to know what your strength.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's not my strength.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And because it's not my strength, it's something that I know I have to do first thing in the morning because I am a morning person.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: So okay, when my energy is highest, let me do the thing I don't want to do.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so that what do you call that?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's a level of discipline that you need to have.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say is a myth that people believe about your job that drives you nuts?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is what I was saying.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna speak from this perspective of being a founder that there's this idea, like I told you before, that oh, suddenly you just came out of nowhere.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: I rarely find that to be true.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: That usually people are doing some iteration of their current job until it hits.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you just have to have so much belief in yourself.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I get told no a lot, and I just I don't even it it doesn't even mean anything to me at this point.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's like okay, that just means not right now.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I think this is actually one of my new projects, given that I'm in Silicon Valley, and when you look at these shows about who founders are, it's guys, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the bros.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so I really want to challenge that that myth.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many women founders and founders of color that don't get recognized.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I feel like that would be a follow-up to our question that we love asking.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's if you had a magic, if you could wave a magic wand, what would be something that you would change about the industry that you're currently in?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: That would be it is it feels that's the thing, it makes people feel like they they can't do it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't go to Stanford.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And going to Stanford helps only because of the network, not because they're smarter.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's just people get to know one another and they hire they hire their friends.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how Facebook got started.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: They're not smarter.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Zuckerberg is not smarter.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So waving the magic wand to like demystify it, there's definitely has to be more targeted incubators and targeted spaces for for folks who we traditionally don't see in like founder spaces.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would be so great.
• 18:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think, Elsie?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Time for the money question.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this yeah, here it is.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's coming.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So as we know, you have held many positions and you're not done yet.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: But thus far, we would like to know, of course, the juicy part.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is the whole, what is the wildest, the weirdest, the most unforgettable thing that you've witnessed at any of your jobs.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's not even gonna be something I witnessed.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is something I did, you guys.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is something I did.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm dead serious, though.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was I left higher ed for a reason working at a college university.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: There was just the burnout was so real.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And this was probably during COVID, I think.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I was just I was working in a department where I was just so incredibly frustrated, even though I had a female supervisor, women buy into the patriarchy too.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: So she was very my senior administrator was very much favoring the guys, the boys.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: Here I was like the hard worker juggling all the kids and making less money, and I would ask for a raise, and it was like, no, but the boys were the pets.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember I was so frustrated one time.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we were in a we're on Zoom, we're having a staff meeting, and I just could not control myself.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: I kid you not, I faked an emergency, so I faked that there was something happening off cam off camera so that I was like, oh I was doing this whole thing so that I could leave.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I faked an emergency on Zoom during a staff meeting so that I could leave that meeting because I was so pissed.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's sad that it came to that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's sad that I was that frustrated that I had to perform an emergency.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: There was nothing going on over off camera as I was looking to my right, there was nothing there but the front door, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I pretended like I was getting like someone was calling me off camera.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was not that level of horrible performance.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that was what that's what it came to.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it came to.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh my gosh, I was just so frustrated, and I knew myself, I knew that I wouldn't be able to control my emotions, and that was my way.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to just rudely in the call, but it was yeah, it was the the drama, but I want to speak to a lot of folks who were going through uh that that level of burnout at that time, and not I'm speaking for the higher ed folks, it was across industries, but there I think we were bumping up against how do we stay there for the students.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: versus our own livelihood.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that was, I think, the tension that I know I was going through.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, I was like, I gotta put myself first.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I ended up leaving.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up leaving higher ed.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Goodness.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So what was going through your mind?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously we know, but what was going through your mind at that moment where you were like, I literally have to fake this?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just can't show my emotions.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell anybody.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I can't show anybody.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I literally have to fake leaving a call.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Make an emergency.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Make an emergency in order for you to gain some type of peace.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I just that was really but it was a good wake up call for me.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And Don, thank you for pointing it out.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Probably the fact that no one followed up either was another sort of that's another sign.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was like it's time to go.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: It it is literally time to go.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope this I hope someone that needs to hear this message today that it lands with them.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: There was a time when I in my next role when I became the dean and there was this young there's a student who was delivered the mail every day.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: She was so sweet.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And at one point she even said to me Dean Lt have you thought about leaving the student said that and she said we love you so much and you do so much for us but I feel like I forgot exactly how she put it but she said oh you it had more to do with like how much I was doing and was I taking care of myself and I tell people I was like you know what if a student can see it if a student said wow you're headed to burnout imagine and and so that was like the validation I needed to actually go right so because I went the role the faking I was still in higher ed and stayed in higher ed and then but when that student said DNL T you should think about leaving is when I left higher ed administration altogether.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great segue into generational diversity.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh here you are you your book is about being Gen X and that's a really unique and I think understudied generation in the work thank you yes so we hear a lot about what the Gen Z workforce is like and they're all about boundaries and self-care to the expense of everything else.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then we know a lot about the boomers who just sacrificed everything to just work the grind was the point of it all.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: But what are we?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: What is what is Gen X?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Where do we fit in all of that and what can we learn from both ends of that generational spectrum I guess you'd say that's such a great question.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think we overlooked the adaptability of Gen X when I think of when I started college where I literally like the thing that set me apart was having my own word processor.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: You might have to explain what that is for our younger audience it was an upgrade from a typewriter but essentially a typewriter that had a printer in it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I was the only one who had one in my dorm room so people would pay me to type their papers which is so like to even say it out loud right now just sounds like the craziest thing because at that time there wasn't even computer labs I think I'm not sure but definitely people didn't have their own laptops.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: That just wasn't even imaginable.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where I started with undergrad and then by time I got to graduate from college and definitely grad school is having a gateway computer right desktop but just in terms of what Gen X had has had to learn and had to navigate every generation is learning something so we don't want we don't need to like hype that part up but there is a level of certain kind of technological adaptation that we've had it's typically the boomers that are actually running many leading programs and businesses right now definitely get overlooked but it's going to be sad.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Someone told me the other day that we're unlikely to have a Gen X president that the president of the United States will most likely be in the millennial generation and even Kamala Harris isn't a Gen X or she's a young boomer.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's so sad that we're the overlooked generation just oh we were the ones drinking out of the water hose I was just gonna say we were overlooked from the beginning our parents didn't care where we were you know what's funny though when I've gone around the country and I even I might even open up when I'm talking about smart girls hey where's Gen X and it's crickets I'm like wait a minute I know Madonna I know you're but not even clicking with that it's almost like being first gen.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're like oh wait there's me oh there's a term for us I was like yeah there's a term for us we're not boomers oh my god we're not boomers so it's it's been fun to to connect to connect with the with my fellow Gen Xers they love our music and pop culture but they don't give us any credit for it coming from our generation where do you think Nirvana came from Kendrick Lamar where did Kendrick Lamar's music come from I'll tell you I'll tell you a story a related story real quick about that that Elsa's heard so I have a 16 year old and a 14 year old both boys and one day I was in the car and my 16 year old he was probably 14 at the time he goes Mom there's this song out you have to hear it it is so amazing it's like the best song I've ever heard it was Careless Whisper.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god I was like do you know how old this song is they had not heard Careless Whisper before I learned it because it hasn't been remade because they they haven't copied the riff oh my god I died laughing I was the late great George Michael and I remember it so like clearly I remember that album it was my freshman year but okay by the way for folks there's a chapter called Billboard 1988 it's so gen X right the fact it was called Billboard 1988 but it's about my first semester in college and it's a series of vignettes and every chapter every section is named by a song named after a song from 1988 which it includes it includes a few songs from George Michael in fact not careless whisper hand to mouth and another one and Bobby Brown and on every little step you take my prerogative it was like my prerogative of course it was on time exactly exactly and fast car and things like that but yeah this is the soundtrack I do get sad when I hear our music on these bounce commercials and target commercial so from washing dogs on your first job to what you do now any correlation between the two by the way a secret of washing dogs is that they wash the dogs in joy liquid detergent by the way so just so you know there's not some there's not some special detergent there's not some special shampoo joy detergent putting all those dog washing companies out of business like that's all they're using is liquid joy I I I was a scrappy kid right and just always trying to figure things out and my mom was very supportive but not really involved right it's not like my mom got that job for me or made the intro or anything like that.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said it was I was on a cheerlead JV cheerleading squad with a homie and we both found out about this job and went over there and you know I I didn't just stay as a I didn't just stay as a shampoo girl like I worked my way up to cashier and this was a really good time it was right before I went off to college and the pet grooming store was super supportive of me they were so excited that I was going to go off to college a lot of the a lot of the dog groomers did not go to college right it's a very blue collar hands-on type of job you don't need a college degree for it but I remember them throwing me a little party before I went off to college and I'll never forget it it's just really nice to be in that type of environment environment where I felt supported and seen and they were just excited for all my wins I think they would tell you like oh yeah of course she went on to get a doctorate she was so smart that was my story where it's called for pet's sake oh my gosh we love a good pun.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: I love it oh for pet's sake for pet's sake oh dear were there skills that you developed when you were in that business that you still use today or you that you think about this was a really transformational transitional period for me because I had been really I don't think I'm naturally shy.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: I told you from the start I went to nine different schools I think that was a big part of it.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: So by the time I got to that job in that school which was 10th grade things started to settle down for me and I started to feel some stability.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: I to work my way up to being a cashier required more confidence right in my ability to interact with the customers and not just be behind the scenes because if you're watching the dogs you're in the back and I think the owner saw in me my ability to be front facing right and to schedule the appointments.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was a different skill set scheduling the appointments and hanging up the displays and things like that was just diff was just different.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a good period of time where I was starting to like I said just be more comfortable in my own skin.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: How's your support group now?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Just in general I I have I think like most people like friend groups from different eras of my life whether it's grad school or work friends and there's also a core group of friends I have from high school we've been in this group chat for I don't know how long now they're like my sisters basically and even though I was moving in and out of schools they still remain my constant friends to this day.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's been nice like people who actually known you for a really long time but I'm also a person that picks up friends along the way too so a lot of strong women friends and then of course some friendships based on basketball and sports too nice of course of your fantasy leagues and fantasy league go ahead and name the Don yes the fantasy league you can just refuse to answer but I'm thinking about the uniqueness of this time when you're Gen X you're coming up at a time when women are becoming far more prevalent in the job market at all levels in grad school at all levels.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: When I went to law school half of us were female so that's a big deal that felt like progress compared to like my mom's generation right where in my family people didn't go to college.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Now today and you can take it forward even to 2020 social justice movement there were hallmarks up and down but in a general upward direction.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Today we have record unemployment for African American women we have an administration that is actively you might say violently anti-diversity equity and inclusion and hundreds of here you are you're a PhD you're an off you're highly successful and have had all these prestigious jobs and went to prestigious universities and you're an African American woman how does that sit with you what are your thoughts about that and how do you not hide under your desk because I feel like doing that sometimes it's so funny my best friend Heather that I mentioned before we're doing my tri media Heather is white and she grew up in Maine and I remember just how devastated she was when Trump won and she was like how are you not more upset I was like because I'm a black woman Heather I've seen some stuff I've seen nothing yeah yeah it's really crappy but but one of the things unfortunately does things don't really surprise me just the things that people have said to me and even to my kids we're talking about another generation like it's just really sad.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think the one of the challenges is just how emboldened embrazen it is right now but for sure like the time when Elsa and I was hanging out like when I when my kids were younger there was a time where my they we were asked to it was Black History Month and every family had to bring something for the potluck and we weren't asked we were told you're bringing the fried chicken didn't even eat meat oh my god just that's probably the next book honestly which is really sad my son received a citation for inciting a brawl when he was eight years old what yep at school it was on the playground and he was like hey that's funny and then the vice principal broke it up and sent him home with the citation for inciting a brawl they're like no get this out of his file we're not starting this prison the pipeline right thing for some nonsense on like what eight this is what eight year olds do just silliness silliness no no one was hurt it was just like whatever it's just some nonsense and and people who would say that they're very well meaning that they're not racist and all that type of stuff so to me it's I actually can I actually tune it out I honestly have to tune it out because I know it's not sustainable.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna we're gonna go through it as a we are going through it as a country and as you mentioned very violent but this that's the root of the country that's who the the country is exposing who it is.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: The nonsense right now is just completely unsustainable and we've got to give future generations something to look forward to yeah definitely well speaking of future Latanya where do you see yourself in about five or ten years that's a really good question.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: My hope is to hand off my trap media to someone else who could run the day to day I have several books in me for sure.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: I like solo authored books but also some companion ones too so in a couple years I'll probably have published about three more books honestly I need to make up for our family trip to Tokyo that was delayed due to COVID.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm hoping to check that off my list I need to go to Puerto Rico what else am I missing are these solo trips or is this family trips Latanya I think these are those are some family trips I think I really I like my kids yeah they're cool yeah they're cool they were cool when they were younger I don't know how they are now they love me again so that's really nice when you're 15 your parents are worse people but they're just a delight to travel with so we'll probably be I'd probably have done a couple of those things those are some things on my bucket list.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: You love it it's been such a pleasure to have you today I can't wait congratulations again on your one year anniversary of your thank you so much that is huge for being a dog washer confessions of a dog washer yeah confessions of a dog walker if you can see her now but they knew that they knew they knew so once again thank you so much for all of these great stories and as always how we end our episode is you've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold and we thank you so much for that.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you incredibly for having me and I'm such a fan and was so excited when you reached out and we need more women podcasters.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for the work that you're doing.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's it for this week's confession we've laughed cringed and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a workplace confession of your own we're all ears hit us up at our email address.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to subscribe rate and share your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time keep your badge clipped your coffee strong and your stories wild this is Workplace Confessions behind closed doors