Victors in Grad School

In this episode of the Victors in Grad School, podcast Dr. Christopher Lewis interviews Dr. Grace Carey about her educational journey and career. Dr. Carey began her academic path at the University of Michigan Flint, earning a bachelor's degree in anthropology and sociology with a minor in international and global studies. She later pursued a Ph.D. in anthropology at Princeton University and currently works for the Michigan Municipal League Foundation.

Dr. Carey's decision to attend graduate school was influenced by the mentors she had at the University of Michigan Flint who provided her with guidance and support. She discovered the possibility of receiving financial assistance for graduate education, including stipends, housing, and health insurance, making the idea of graduate school more feasible.

The conversation then touches on Dr. Carey's transition from a regional institution to an Ivy League institution. She mentions the challenges of overcoming preconceived biases and narratives that regional institution degrees are less valuable. However, Dr. Carey found mentors at both institutions who supported her journey.

The discussion emphasizes how Dr. Carey's undergraduate and graduate degrees have prepared her for her current career. Her background in anthropology allows her to interpret complex legislative issues, mediate between local communities and governments, and create community-driven programs.

Dr. Carey provides valuable advice for her younger self and prospective graduate students. She highlights the importance of openness, vulnerability, and open-mindedness when entering a new academic environment, as well as the benefits of conducting informational interviews with professionals to explore potential career paths.

The episode concludes with a message about the University of Michigan Flint's graduate programs and encourages listeners to explore their graduate education options.

Overall, the episode covers Dr. Carey's educational journey, her transition from a regional institution to an Ivy League university, the applicability of her degrees to her current career, and her advice for those considering graduate school.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Victor's in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victor's in Grad School. I'm your host doctor Christopher Lewis, director of graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, you and I are on a journey together. We are talking about the graduate school journey that you are on, Whether you're already in graduate school, whether you're just starting to think about graduate school, whether you've put in that application, you're waiting to hear, Every person is on a little bit different path. Every person is on is at a little bit different place in that journey. But It's important to think about the end goal, which is graduating from that program, but also at the same time, thinking about what you need to do now To prepare yourself for the journey and prepare yourself for finding success in that journey.

Christopher Lewis [00:01:05]:

Every week, I love being able to bring you different people, different guests, people that have gone before you, That have gone through graduate school, have been successful, and can share that journey that they went on with you as well And provide you along the way with some hints, some tips, some things that they learned that may help you In the journey that you're on as well. This week, we've got another great guest with us. Doctor Grace Carey is with us. And, doctor Carey started her educational journey at the University of Michigan Flint where she got her bachelor's degree. She got a A bachelor's degree in anthropology and sociology with a minor in international and global studies. And from there, She went on and she got her doctorate degree. She got a a doctorate degree of philosophy, a PhD in anthropology From Princeton University, and she currently is working for the Michigan Municipal League Foundation. And we're gonna talk about that in kind of the the journey that she she was on because she also worked at Princeton University for a while as well.

Christopher Lewis [00:02:20]:

And with that degree that she had received, so we'll talk about that as well. So I'm really excited to have her here, For her to share her experience with you and to learn more about the journey that she had. Doctor Carey, thanks so much for being here.

Grace Carey [00:02:36]:

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Christopher Lewis [00:02:38]:

It is my pleasure having you here today. Really excited to be able to talk to you and to learn more about your own journey. I guess, 1st and foremost, I'd love to go back in time because you did your undergraduate work here at the University of Michigan Flint. And at some point during that educational journey, you made a choice. You made a choice that you wanted to continue your education After you got that bachelor's degree, and it was about a year after that you started your degree. So talk to me about what were the reasons that made you decide that you wanted to go further and go and get that PhD.

Grace Carey [00:03:15]:

In a way, I'm kind of a first Generation graduate student in my family. My dad was actually the 1st generation person, but he didn't start college till I was older. And then he also went on and did a master's of Fine arts, and we were almost doing our graduate programs concurrently, so we were both, like, figuring this out at the same time. So that was a really interesting journey for me. And Because of him doing that while I was midway through my undergraduate, I started thinking about, like, wow, graduate School. Like, what even is that? I didn't really know. And I have to say I got phenomenally lucky at U of M Flint with the anthropology department we had, Which is still a phenomenal department. I know a lot of the current faculty, but 6, 7 years ago, the folks who were there were just incredible mentors.

Grace Carey [00:04:00]:

And, I mean, they truly dedicated so much of their day and so much of their time to the group of us who are going through the program at that time way beyond The classroom setting where we would have lunch together regularly and phone calls and getting sent home with books from their personal bookshelves over the the breaks of, Oh, I heard you were interested in this. Here's, like, my 6 favorite books on that. And it was really from them that I started to realize graduate school was an option because I I grew up very working class. Even going for my undergraduate degree, I I did work study the entire time. I worked outside of that as well. So I actually worked about 15 different positions at U of M Flint, during my tenure there, and one of them was actually as a career counselor and academic adviser as one of their peer advisers and kind of the Inaugural wave of that. So I got thinking about grad school through that a little bit as well as I was advising other students about what do you do next? Like, do you start looking for a job, or Do you consider, you know, going on for more schooling? And if so, like, what is your reason for going on? Sometimes we're looking at a professional degree. Right? Like, I I need a JD so that I can practice law.

Grace Carey [00:05:08]:

It's very practical. But for something like anthropology, that's not the easiest trajectory. Right? Like, Constantly being asked, what do you even do with an anthropology degree? What would you do with more of an anthropology degree? It was like an insurmountable question. Right? So having these Very strong mentorship relationships with folks in the anthro department was the reason I moved forward with what I did. Being able to Talk to them about things in my field that really sparked my interest beyond the classroom and realizing the way I was thinking about things Was interesting. It was valuable and that there was other people who would see some merit in that to go on and do research and actually go and Practice being an anthropologist, which you don't get a lot of opportunities to do outside of the academic sphere. But the tipping point for me was when I got sat down because I'd started looking at graduate school, and I was also thinking again, how how am I going to afford this? Seeing what my dad was going through As a a master's degree, you don't often get offered something like a stipend or housing or health insurance. He was working full time, raising a family, Doing classes at night, paying a lot for a master's degree, and I was like, how could I afford this? How can I manage this? And to have someone sit down and tell me, oh, no.

Grace Carey [00:06:30]:

If they're not gonna pay you to go do a PhD, it's not worth your time. I had no idea. I had no idea that you could get Paid to be a graduate student. I didn't know that you could get housing and health insurance included in that. That really, really changed the way I was thinking about it and whether it was Oh, good use of my time for starting a career, because it's also it's a big commitment. Right? Like if you do a PhD, you're looking at anywhere from 5 to 8 years of Time that you're looking at your peers who are going out and they're starting a job with their bachelor's degree. And by the time that you finish your PhD, Steve, they're already going to have 6 to 8 years of work experience under their belt. And even if you're looking at an academic position, you're Trying to catch up at that point.

Grace Carey [00:07:13]:

Right? Like, you've just spent 6 to 8 more years. So really sitting down and thinking about, wow, this could be something very very worthwhile and thinking about grad School as a step in my career and not still being a student, I think, was a big shift for me as well. And that was, again, having those mentors to Walk me through that process that, like, it's not the same when you're in grad school. Right? Like, you're not just coming to classes and learning. You are actually the ones starting to produce the ideas. You're writing papers. You're working on a project. You're going out.

Grace Carey [00:07:46]:

You're doing research. That was, I think, Really critical for me. It felt like I was moving forward with my trajectory, with my career, with actually, like, doing anthropology. And so, yeah, that was What led me on this path and what led me towards Princeton as well, I think, with many different degrees that you look at for graduate school, There's a lot of variants. Some of them are very independent in the work that you do. Some of them are very much like you go and you join a project that's already happening, especially in some of the harder sciences. Right? So that process of also finding the right fit for grad school was really interesting and definitely strongly aided by the mentors that I had to be able to find who is this, like, 1 person that has enough of a similar research background that they could actually assist me through my Graduate journey, that's what led me specifically to Princeton.

Christopher Lewis [00:08:37]:

That was actually my next question because, you know, you went from coming from The University of Michigan, Flint, a very regionally based institution that has a lot of students from the Genesee County and surrounding areas To a nationally known Ivy League institution, very different, very different Scope very different way of thinking, very different way of teaching. So talk to me about that and how you came to the realization that that was a school, 1, that you wanted to apply to, but 2, that that was the school that you would ultimately end up attending.

Grace Carey [00:09:17]:

Yeah. That was a very emotional process, I'm gonna say, because, especially, I was starting at U of M Flint 2011. There was a lot Happening politically. When I moved and started graduate school, the water crisis was just starting, and that was also really difficult to deal with. But Through all of that came a process of having to come to terms with the power of some of the narratives that we have in Flint about ourselves and our community, and how detrimental those can be to us actually seeking out opportunities. So I don't know if things have changed a little bit recently. I'm I'm back in the the area now, but definitely at that time, that idea that, like, Flint's been abandoned, we've been left behind, and there was, To be honest, some tension between the Flint campus and our, you know, colleagues at Ann Arbor and how we didn't feel entirely included in the The University of Michigan kind of family, which I know that, like, 1 university movement's really taken hold since then. But There was a lot of talk by my peers and other folks of like, oh, well, you have a degree, and your degree says Flint on it.

Grace Carey [00:10:25]:

Like, It's not gonna be worth as much, or it's not gonna matter as much, and that couldn't be more wrong. It couldn't be more wrong at all because before the water crisis happened, Nobody outside of here even knew where Flint was. And if they did, they'd be like, oh, it's that Michael Moore movie. Right? Like but we had this narrative constantly going that Because it says Flint on our degree that we can't get into a place like Princeton, or we can't get into a place Like other Ivy League schools or what have you. And so, again, having the mentors that I did who sat me down and they were like, Don't listen to any of that. What you do is good work, and what we do here as an institution, as a university, is good work. That was really a big kind of, I think, emotional step that I had to take to realize, like, I can apply to Princeton, and I can get in there because there were Some other folks, even some other faculty who would tell you the opposite at that time, and that was something I had struggled with. I had 1 professor in particular who would tell their Students like, oh, just apply for a good state school.

Grace Carey [00:11:27]:

That's that's all that we can really get into. And I know for a fact that that's not happening anymore. That was a situation at the time, but that was really challenging. And I'm very glad that I had the people at the inter department that I had who made me realize, like, Princeton isn't this Unachievable pipe dream. Right? Like, you can go there and, yeah, like, having them help me write the applications. We spent months Going back and forth, writing my application, realizing that you don't have to do that whole process in a vacuum, that I am kind of the sum of All of my mentors and the things I learned from them and the things that I grew and developed from them, like having them helped me write the statements and that kind of idea of what my project was going to be like. That didn't have to happen alone because that learning didn't happen alone. And, Yeah.

Grace Carey [00:12:16]:

That's what led me to Princeton and getting in there, and I'm I'm so glad that I took that leap. And I would really like to see a lot of other students feel like what they're doing at U of M Flint is is valuable because it truly is. And having been in a couple of different university settings now, I can tell you That, like, the educational experience that I got at U of M Flint was so unique in that my professors actually took the time to know me, to know my interests, and that does not happen at a lot of places.

Christopher Lewis [00:12:47]:

Now you did find success. You you got through the the graduate degree. You finished the doctorate degree. As I said, you know, doctor Carey, you made it. And with that, and with the transition that you made from the University of Michigan Flint to moving to Princeton, There are definite things that I'm sure that you had to do to be able to, 1, set yourself up for success as you transition into the program, but Things that you had to do to maintain that success throughout the many years that you were at Princeton And you are working on your doctorate degree. Talk to me about that and what you had to do to not only set yourself up for success, but also to maintain that success throughout the entire time.

Grace Carey [00:13:32]:

Yeah. No. That's also a really good question, and I know that this is super cliche, but it really boils down to, like, Building strong networks. I got into Princeton because I had strong networks in Flint, and that was those mentorship relationships I had. And then once I was there, I didn't I didn't just drop those relationships. I made sure that I nurtured them and kept them strong, and I tried to build new types of relationships in my graduate program as well. So, while I was there, I spent a lot of time really networking with my professional association, which I had done a little bit throughout my undergraduate degree. I'd been going to American anthropology conferences every year, but it was kind of a different beast once you're into grad school.

Grace Carey [00:14:11]:

Right? Like, I'm I'm going as a presenter now and not just as a student attendee, and I'm going there to meet what I thought at the time were potential colleagues because I when I first started, I was very continuing in the academic trajectory. I was like, I'm gonna teach when I'm done. This is A 100% what I wanna do, but about halfway through because I'd started, you know, I took some internships with a journal, really started to try to build Experience and networks outside of the classroom setting. I realized during my fieldwork where I spent over the course of, like, 4 years, I ended up Spending around 24 months doing intensive on-site field work in a town in Florida on kind of political legal issues and the building of a privately owned and privately governed I started realizing what I actually liked doing on a daily basis was this kind of mediation or facilitation between the community I was working with And their local government are helping them understand these very strange pieces of legislation that had made a privately owned town possible and, Yeah. Helping them understand why they couldn't elect their city council members and all these kinds of comp complicated things. Right? And it was like halfway through that I realized Maybe I don't wanna teach. Maybe I wanna be in a practical space when I leave. And so that was like a moment where to kind of do a 180 and I had to start Seeking out other folks who had left academia for lack of a better term, which is very, very unusual.

Grace Carey [00:15:35]:

So that was very complicated and difficult. Like, pretty much everyone's like, oh, you have an anthropology degree. Like, you're gonna teach, and that's what Princeton's department sets you up for. And even my other faculty there, like, they didn't know how to prepare us for success outside of the academic space. So those resources were not available to me in program. They were all like, this is fantastic, and we support you on this. We don't know how to help you. We all have 25 page CVs.

Grace Carey [00:16:01]:

We don't know how to make a 1 page resume anymore. You know, like these kinds of things. Right? So I actually started doing a bunch of informational interviews, and I wish I would have started a lot sooner. So if anyone's listening to this, like, start I'll start in your undergraduate degree. Just, like, call up folks who work in a field that you think you might be interested in. Ask to do a 20 minute phone call and just ask them about, like, what do you do on a daily basis? What does, like, a daily routine look like for you? What What does your job entail? Do you like it? How did you get there? Because that helped me realize, like, what's out there? What can I do with my degree? And at the same time, I, Again, built up that network so that by the time I was looking for the job I'm in now, I had a whole bunch of people who understood really well What I did, which is, again, hard if you have an anthropology degree. Nobody knows what it is. So to have that group of people who understand Not just the term anthropology, but what I do specifically with it, and to help them find the right place for me.

Grace Carey [00:17:01]:

Like, that made the job search So much easier, which can be a little challenging if you have a PhD and you're going into the job market. I think for a lot of places outside of academia seeing that PhD is maybe a little daunting, and people don't understand it. So talk to people. Build some networks.

Christopher Lewis [00:17:19]:

I was going to ask you because you do have a doctorate degree, and you're working outside of academia because in a lot of times, a PhD He does prepare you for that teaching experience. So talk to me about the degree that you got at the undergraduate level, the degree that you got at Princeton, And how you find that graduate degree truly prepared you for the work that you're doing on a daily basis.

Grace Carey [00:17:45]:

Yeah. I use my degree in absolutely everything that I do, and part of that boils down to anthropology is the study of people and how we build systems and culture and shared knowledge so that is applicable to everything. But beyond that, in my undergraduate, I realized really quickly that I loved how anthropology looked at things, but I liked that sociology looked at the US and looked at especially, like, political legal stuff. So I had also, I think, maybe had enough classes for a minor in political science. My my whole degree was a mess again. I worked in the advising center. So I found all of the classes that, like, doubled and triple counted, and I had way too many things going on. But I realized then that that That was kind of a combination that I liked, which is why I ended up with both of the degrees for anthropology and sociology, and that was, again, a The challenge for grad school, anthropology is a very outward looking field, and that's something that internally the field is trying to problematize and fix that, like, we can't keep studying the quote, unquote other and the exotic, and we need to turn our own gaze on ourselves.

Grace Carey [00:18:49]:

But that being said, there's still very few anthropologists who actually study culture in the United States. So that was, like, A challenge, I guess. Finding the grad school fit, but I'm digressing. So in my graduate program, I, again, was like kind of bridging together, like, political science and sociology and anthropology into this really unusual space that had started from Ann Arbor area, there was a lot of funding from Catholic, like, intentional communities there to go and start this privately owned town in Florida, and it's Yeah. But taken over by real estate developers. So people that live there lost control of over their community entirely, and it's kind of this weird mixture of space where anthropology is, like, really helpful for helping people interpret things like legislature legislation and how that actually affects you in your daily life. Right? Like, it has a lot of impacts on us, whether it's how tall our grass can be or who can vote, who can't, these kinds of things. So that That led me into the space I'm at now or at the Michigan Municipal League, which is a very strange organization.

Grace Carey [00:19:54]:

It is a membership association of 530 municipal governments across the state of Michigan, and we are kind of in that same weird mediation space as an organization that I was in as an individual in my fieldwork. So we kind of mediate between Local communities and local governments and the state, the federal government. We provide education. We do advocacy. We, do technical assistance, all these kinds of things. And so in my particular role as a program officer, I design programs that are community driven. So one of the programs I run is called My Water Navigator. When I first started it, the first thing I did was basically field work.

Grace Carey [00:20:36]:

I went out and I talked to village and city Managers from across the state, and I asked them, like, what are the barriers to how you're accessing funding to fix your water pipes in your community? I didn't know the first thing about water infrastructure. What I knew was how to figure out what the barriers were. So I went out and basically did field work, designed a program that was actually based off of the needs that the communities told me they had. And from there, I've been able to bring on a team of folks who do know the engineering, and my role Side of that is to, you know, distill kind of actionable insights from all of the data that we gather. So taking everything from qualitative Interviews from communities or feedback from workshops that I'm hosting or trainings or things like this and being able to steal that down into things like policy recommendations so that we can actually fix the application for funding at the state level that's Causing the problems, all of that is anthropology and anthropological thinking. Right? Like, being able to take a systems view or systems approach and to drill it down into simpler ideas. That's that's what we do, and so I'm still doing that on a daily basis. And right now, I'm actually working to establish New learning and evaluation procedures across my whole organization, which, again, is a lot of what anthropology does.

Grace Carey [00:21:55]:

We have a whole field of organizational anthropology that looks at, like, how organizations function and how do we communicate better with each other and make spaces more equitable, all these Kinds of things.

Christopher Lewis [00:22:06]:

I really appreciate that because it makes a lot more sense, and it really allows me to connect the dots of how That PhD and your undergraduate work led you toward working with people and working, you know, within this governmental agency, See, I'm an organization to be able to assist the masses in a different way. So, you know, I really appreciate you sharing that. Now, I guess as you look back and you think of that younger self, that younger person that you were when you were going through that undergraduate degree And you look back now at the experience that you had as you went through that graduate education. What would you say to that younger self that would have prepared her better For that graduate school journey. And 2, what are any other tips that you might wanna offer others that are considering graduate education that'll help and define success.

Grace Carey [00:22:57]:

That's always the hardest question, isn't it? Like, what what was the number one thing I would like younger me to know? I think in many ways, my first Couple of years of grad school, I could've made more of the experience. I think part of it was me being, again, kind of held back from these narratives that we had in Flint about, like, who we were as Flintoids and how we thought the world looked at us, which, Again, was just not true. It's just how we kind of got our minds. And definitely my 1st 2 years at Princeton, I had a lot of my own biases about, like, oh, this is a really affluent place, and I don't know how to navigate the space and just, like, assuming that I I didn't belong there because I was very working class or Just where I came from, it took me a couple of years to realize that nobody cared. Nobody cared, like, how I grew up or where not that they didn't care, but, like, it didn't stop people from having engaging relationships with me or from being interested in my work. It was me holding myself back because I was feeling out of place, and it took me, I think, far too long to get outside of that. So I would definitely recommend trying as hard as you can to Be as open as possible when you go into a grad school space because at the end of the day, like, openness to us having a new worldview, having a new learning, like, incredible new things. Like, it all boils down to allowing yourself to be vulnerable and open in that space, Especially if you're moving to a new state and you're doing you know, you have to find all new friends and everything is kind of starting over.

Grace Carey [00:24:31]:

That can feel really daunting. So So I think that's that would be my number for one thing. Yeah. Do these informational interviews. I wish I would have known about those, like, a 100 years ago. That was something, like, I was finishing up my final year of grad school. I was writing my dissertation, and I finally found, like, a couple of colleagues who now, like, worked for or worked for, like, these really strange spaces, people that worked in user experience and just odd places for anthropologists to be. And one of them, Peter Kurie, he was like, you know what? You need to do these informational interviews.

Grace Carey [00:25:02]:

I was like, what in the world is that? And he's like, oh, well, you know field work. Right? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, it's It's fieldwork. You go and you you do an informational interview. Like, oh, okay. I wish I would have been doing that through my whole bachelor's degree. Through my Entire career as a graduate student, I had to boil basically what should have been years of learning about myself And what I wanted from a career into, like, 3 months as I was like, my fellowship is ending. I need to find a job.

Grace Carey [00:25:28]:

Like, what am I gonna do next? So, yeah, I think that would be the number one thing. And, again, like, the advice I was given was, like, it's casual, but, like, you don't Ask for a job during the informational interview at all. You just ask someone to give you 15 to 20 minutes of their time. They wanna talk about themselves. They wanna talk about what they do, and you just start to learn, like, what's out there. And at the end of it, always ask them, like, is there anyone else that I should be talking to? And that's gonna lead you on some journeys. It took me to where I am now. I did not even know what the Michigan Municipal League was until I was doing these informational interviews.

Grace Carey [00:26:01]:

And now I can look back, and I can trace The exact, like, 7 people who connected me to each other and got me to the this place where I am now.

Christopher Lewis [00:26:09]:

Great advice. And I will say that throughout my entire career, there have been many opportunities where when you ask that question, should I talk to next? It can lead you in a whole different direction. So I appreciate you sharing that, for saying that because I think it is so important, Whether it's in a professional journey, whether it's in a personal journey, no matter what it is, as you meet new people in your life, You can always ask that question of thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Is there anyone else that I can talk to that would help me better understand this in a different way. And so many people are more than willing To offer up other names, other suggestions to help you as you move forward. So so I really appreciate that and appreciate you sharing your own journey today. It has been eye opening for me and definitely eye opening, I'm sure, for everyone else, And I truly wish you all the best. Thank you.

Christopher Lewis [00:27:12]:

The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms To find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon As we embark together on your graduate school journey, if you have any questions or want to reach out, Email me at [email protected].

Welcome back to the Victors in Grad School podcast! In today's episode, titled "Advice from Admission Professionals on Succeeding in Graduate School," we bring you a unique and insightful perspective on graduate school success. Our host, Christopher Lewis, attended the NAGAP conference in New York City and had the opportunity to speak with admission professionals from various institutions across the United States. These experts shared their valuable advice and recommendations for students navigating the graduate school journey. Join us as we dive into their thoughts on finding balance, choosing the right program, utilizing resources, and building a support system. Whether you're a current graduate student or considering pursuing higher education, this episode is packed with practical tips to guide you on your path to success. Stay tuned and get ready to absorb the wisdom of these seasoned professionals. Let's jump in!

Guests

1. Christopher Lewis, University of Michigan-Flint
2. Stanley Kania, Drexel University College of Medicine
3. Lucy Holecek, Russell Sage College
4. Taylor White, Ohio State University
5. Amanda Selby, AT Still University
6. Jennifer Nyeste, New Jersey City University
7. Adeel Ahmed, University of Colorado - Boulder
8. Sherry Quinn, Wayne State University
9. Seth Gummere, Study Portals
10. Taylor, Western Michigan University
11. Aisling Sive, University of Rochester
12. Jared Pic, Georgetown University
13. Channing Ford, Jacksonville State University
14. Ashlee Hanley, Jacksonville State University
15. Jamie Kainz, International Institute for Restorative Practices
16. Jeremy Mixell, University of Chicago
17. Alaina Coe, Bowling Green State University
18. Aaron Coffey, Wichita State University
19. Aaron Berger, Kent State University
20. Raymond Herrera, Washington Stat University
21. Ken Lundy, Stetson University

Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad school podcast where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:

Welcome back to Victor's in grad school. I'm your host Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. This week's a different type of episode. I attended the NAGAP conference in New York City this spring. NAGAP is the National Association of Graduate Admission Professionals. And at that conference, I talked to quite a few different admission professionals about Some of the things that they recommended, some of the things that they encouraged students to think about when thinking about success in general. And these individuals come from many different institutions from all over the United States, and I wanted to be able to bring you their voice to share some of their thoughts and perspectives from working with many different graduate students over the years because I know that their voices and their thoughts and ideas can help you again to find success in the journey that you're on. I'm really excited to be able to introduce all of them to you and have you listen and learn from them and be able to take things that you can implement right away. Enjoy.

Stanley Kania [00:01:33]:

So the name is Stanley Kania, Drexel University College of Medicine, Assistant Dean of Admissions, and my advice to graduate students on How to be successful is definitely finding what I call the perfect balance. And that's the balance between your personal obligations professional obligations, your academic obligations, graduate school, no matter what level, if it's a bachelor's or a doctorate, it's certainly a marathon. It's not a So what students need to do is they need to ensure that they have time to fill their bucket with all the responsibilities and attention that they need to give educational experience and help them want to be that advocate for their friends, their family, their spouse, their children, what have you, to pursue a graduate education and to understand the value in that type of investment.

Lucy Holecek [00:02:35]:

My name is Lucy. I'm the associate director in the graduate enrollment management office at Russell Sage College in both Albany and Troy, New York. And I would say the top piece of advice I give to any student I work with is to make sure that they find the best fit for themselves both financially and time wise as at my institution have many online and in person programs. So I work with a lot of adult learners who have children and full time jobs. So definitely finding some thing that fits their schedule, I'd say is the best advice that I would give.

Taylor White [00:03:16]:

This is Taylor White Graduate Program Manager at the School of Environment And Natural Resources at the Ohio State University. I'd have to say that The most important thing for ensuring success in graduate school is finding a good fit with a faculty member. It may not be important for every type of program there, but especially for your STEM based programs. It's one of the most important things, if not the most important thing. Depending on the admissions process of your program, you may need to talk to a fact team member before you apply, or it may be a connection that's made after you're admitted. So make sure that you check-in with the application website, graduate program staff, and make sure that you understand what expected of you during that process because that fit with the faculty advisor is going to carry you through all the way up through graduation and beyond when you're out on the job market.

Amanda Selby [00:04:06]:

Hello. My name is Amanda Selby. I'm the assistant director of admissions at AT Stills University. My piece of advice for a student to be successful would be to be willing to use the resources that are provided to you and remember the reasons why you're pursuing graduate degrees because it's gonna get really hard and you've gotta keep that passion alive. So remember why you're doing this, use the resources Be flexible. That's my advice.

Jennifer Nyeste [00:04:38]:

My name is Jennifer Nyeste. I'm a director of admissions at New Jersey City University, and one piece of advice I would give to a student looking at graduate schools is to keep it open mind, there is a fit in a place for everyone. It might not be at my institution, but you have a lot champions out there trying to help you find your path. Just keep an open mind and ask all the right questions, and you'll find the resources available to you. Hello.

Adeel Ahmed [00:05:08]:

My name the Adeel Ahmed. I serve as the senior graduate recruiter at the University of Colorado Boulder. One piece of advice I would give to anyone looking into grad school is try to figure out your long term career goals. Before you decide on what program, what school you want to apply for, this will make it a lot easier in the long run if you kind of a sense of what you wanna do with your masters or doctoral degree. This will save you a lot of stress and just time in figuring out kind of where to go after that degree because you really should think about your degree as a stepping stone to something greater beyond grad school, not just as it ended in of itself, but it means to an end. So that's kinda one piece of advice I would give as you're looking to applying to a master's or doctoral or other graduate program.

Sherry Quinn [00:06:14]:

Hi. This is Sherry Quinn. I'm with Wayne State University Graduate School, director of graduate admissions and enrollment management. And so today, I like to give some advice to prospective students on the success in their journey. I would say what you need to do is to stay the course. Be persistent. Stay the course.

Seth Gummere [00:06:32]:

I am Seth Gumry, Senior Vice President, the North America for study portals. My one piece of advice would be to find where you fit, not just academic and program wise, but where do you see yourself as a good fit with the other students who are at the institution? The faculty members just the overall culture. Academic programs are incredibly important, but sometimes we can get too caught up in the details of what we were gonna be learning and who we're gonna be learning from and forget about our own personal connection to the school and to the other students who are in the classroom with you.

Taylor from WMU [00:06:38]:

My name is Taylor, and I'm from Western Michigan University. My advice for incoming students considering graduate school would be to get to know not only the school that you're applying to, but the community that you're gonna be living in. Do they have the resources that you need in your community? Do they have your interest groups. Are you gonna be able to make friends and make valuable connections in that area outside of your program and go out and find things to do that make you feel valued supported and having a good time in the community that you live in.

Aisling Sive [00:07:13]:

My name is Ashley Sive. I work at the University of Rochester. I am the director of graduate admissions for our art sciences and engineering programs. I think one of the biggest pieces of advice that I like to give both prospective students, but also our current students is once you arrive on campus to find your partners and find your support system, I think graduate education can be isolating some times it's different than undergrad that you're not as integrated on campus. So you kinda have to do a little more leg work in seeking out those support systems and seeking out those people, but it's really important that you do because you're gonna find that you want them at some point along the road because it is a hard road, particularly if you're pursuing a PhD, and you wanna make sure that you have those people that you can go to and and seek support from.

Jared Pic [00:08:47]:

My name is Jared Pic. I am the assistant director of admissions and alumni engagement at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Center for Security Studies. I'm a biggest piece of advice would definitely be writing skills. I mean, what I mean by that is especially if you've been out of school for a while, maybe it takes some time to learn how to develop your writing skills through the writing talk with professors, citations, and such, how to research properly, how to quote things properly, paraphrasing, etcetera, really take the time out side of just the lectures to really meet with faculty and writing services to really develop those skills because you could use them outside of work and also into future academic things such as BHGs and such. So definitely make sure you're taking the time to hone your writing skills overall.

Channing Ford [00:09:38]:

I'm Channing Ford. I'm Dean of Graduate Studies at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama. And my advice for a prospective student would be to identify a great mentor that understands you as a student that understands what you want out of your academic journey and who's gonna be your touchstone during that process. Mentor can be anyone within your program can even be a professional that you're working with in the field. It's just important to make sure that you look to them to kind of help serve as your inspiration for what you want to do once you complete your program.

Ashlee Hanley [00:10:18]:

I'm Ashlee Hanley, the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies at Jack Cymbal State University, and Jack Cymbal Alabama. And my advice would be to find a way to balance your life early on. Sometimes the course load and your assignments can get a little overwhelming at times, and you have to find a way to balance your work life, your home wife, and your school, all at the same time. And when you find that balance, you're able to be successful in whatever you do, and you're able to push yourself further in your education.

Jamie Kainz [00:10:53]:

My name is Jamie Kaines. I'm the dean of student services at the IIRP Graduate School And my one piece of advice to a prospective graduate student is to believe that you can do it. Believing yourself, you're stronger than you realize.

Jeremy Mixell [00:11:13]:

My name is Jeremy Mixell. I'm from Loyola University, Chicago. I think that I would recommend for graduate students just to put yourself out there. I think the faculty may seem distant at first, right, to get a hold of, but I think definitely reaching out to them, working with them as mentors, and really getting to know them, getting to know their interests brought them to the field will help inspire your own passions and really help you, make the connections that you're looking for in order to be successful.

Alaina Coe [00:11:46]:

My name is Alaina Coe. I work with Bowling Green State University as the graduate admissions counselor in the graduate admissions office, and I believe for a student to be successful on their graduate school journey is to make connections, build bridges. It is better to know many people with different backgrounds and ways that they have done things and hear about their stories and to know how to apply that your own life and to really make those connections in those bridges so that you can then for later on possibly use those for your own experience. So that's what I would say is the most successful.

Aaron Coffey [00:13:08]:

This is Aaron Coffey, the assistant Dean of the school at Wichita State University, when thinking about graduate school and how to be successful, graduate students really need to remember why why they're making the decision to pursue what they're pursuing and what their goal is, they're going to experience so many challenge is during their education. They're going to question themselves. They're going to face imposter syndrome. They're gonna question the outcomes the application of what they're doing to a future career. But at the end of the day, they started this journey for a reason, and they need to remember why they're doing what they're doing and how it's going to impact them going forward through the the good things and the bad things that they experience if they are going time, part time, and have to take a break continuing with no breaks or coming back after after starting 2 years ago and finishing, the goal will be the same. The impact them would be the same. And they're gonna have other people telling they can do it. They just need to remember that they can do it, remind themselves that they can do it and that they're doing it for a reason and that's to achieve something they set out to do with the start.

Aaron Berger [00:14:21]:

Hello. I'm Aaron Berger with, Kent State University. I'm an associate director of graduate recruitment. My piece of advice for somebody looking at getting into graduate school, best piece of advice to be successful in that environment is to realize that you're not on an island that other people around you, I think sometimes it can feel kind of isolating that you have other people who are in the classes with you and inform a community, even if a formal one doesn't exist, seek that out, and you're gonna find strength in numbers.

Raymond Herrera [00:14:58]:

Hi. My name is Doctor Raymond Herrera. I'm an associate vice provost for the graduate school at Washington State University. My one piece of advice for our prospective graduate students is to get involved with research as an undergraduate. It's super important to get your hands in the lab or in the library, what have you, and get involved with research outside your regular coursework. Factory are often looking for folks who have at least some experience, maybe a little bit of knowledge about how to conduct research. So get involved in research as an undergrad if you can.

Ken Lundy [00:15:28]:

My name is Ken Lundy, assistant director of graduate admissions for the College of Arts and sciences at Stetson University, and a interesting question was posed to me in what advice would I give to a graduate student, basically, that would help them on their journey. And I would say to make sure that you find your community and when I say community, find your safe space so that when there are those time stress those times of need that you have folks or individuals or a per or a group of people that you can go to confide in. They can coach you up. You can coach them. And at the end of the day, they may you a better person because what is said is that iron sharpens iron. So I would suggest that you find your community and work within those finds to be the best graduate student that you can be.

Christopher Lewis:

The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the university of Michigan Flynn has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.eduforward/ graduate programs to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in Grand school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, Email me at [email protected].

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast! In this episode, our host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, sits down with a special guest, Lora Phelps, an early college dual enrollment coordinator. Lora shares her journey from undergraduate to graduate school, discussing the pivotal moments and decisions that led her to pursue further education. As someone who worked full-time while pursuing her graduate degree, Lora provides valuable insights on how to set oneself up for success and maintain that success throughout the demanding graduate school journey. Tune in to this episode to gain valuable tips and inspiration for your own path in academia.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, each week I love sitting down with you, talking with you about the journey that you're on. I say it every week, but this is a journey. It is a journey that you will be on. You may already be an applicant to grad school, you may be in grad school, you might just be thinking about graduate school. But for anyone that is thinking about graduate school, the most important piece is having a plan. Having a plan to find out how you can be successful in this journey. And that's what this podcast is all about. It is here to help you to find success. And how do you do it? Well, you do it from talking to others, from listening to others, from learning from others. And that's why I love every week to bring you a new guest, someone that has gone before you, that has done this graduate school thing and has had their own experiences, both positive and negative. And you can learn from what they learned and make some similar mistakes, hopefully miss some of those mistakes as well and be also able to then set up that plan like I was mentioning, that will help you to be successful today. We got another great guest, laura Phelps is with us today. And Laura is a early college dual enrollment coordinator with the Shiawassee RESD. And she has had a long experience working in education and ended up doing her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint, getting her Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Communication. And then she went on from there and ended up getting a Master's degree in Public Administration in nonprofit agencies. And so I'm really excited to be able to have her here, to have her share her own experiences with you so that you can learn from them. Laura, thanks so much for being here today.

Lora Phelps:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Christopher Lewis:

It is my pleasure having you here today. Love being able to talk to people about their own experiences. And I guess first and foremost what I want to do is I want to turn the clock back. I said, you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint, you got that bachelor's degree, you went off, you worked for a few years and then ended up coming back to the University of Michigan Flint and working. But you also decided to make that next step and work on a graduate degree. So talk to me about what was going through your head, because at some point, either during undergrad or during that period where you were working, you made that choice that choice that you wanted to continue your education. What made you decide to take that leap?

Lora Phelps:

Yeah, so during, I would say, my senior year of my undergraduate experience, I came to the realization that I was probably going to continue on to graduate school. I was getting a bachelor's degree in communications and I didn't exactly know what pathway I was going to take, but I was actually able to do an internship during my senior year with University of Michigan Flint and I worked in the student life office. And that's when I kind of fell in love with higher education. And I loved my experience in higher education at U of M Flint. And so I wanted to kind of figure out how I could turn that into a career. So that senior year, I kind of researched different higher education programs all over the place. I looked at the Hale program at Michigan State. I looked at higher ed at Eastern Michigan University. I even looked out of State. I had looked at Ball State. And I at that time landed on attending Arkansas State University, which is where I first thought I was going to go. They had a student services program. During spring break of my senior year, I actually went down there and interviewed. I had a graduate assistantship set up. I had all this that's where I was going. I had family in Arkansas, so there were some connections there already. And shortly after graduating, I had continued to apply for various jobs. I was offered a position in admissions. And so I actually worked at University of Detroit Mercy for a couple of years. And so I kind of shifted my mindset and was like, okay, let me get some experience before I jump into that graduate school experience and commit to higher education. So I worked at University of Detroit Mercy for a couple of years in admissions, was able to gain some experience there, was given the opportunity to travel all over the state of Michigan recruiting students to attend University of Detroit Mercy. And I always say I loved schools so much, I just continued to work at schools because I enjoyed my experience. And it was while I was there that I kind of decided, okay, I know I want to go to grad school, but I don't know that I want to go into higher education. I want to perhaps broaden my experience and broaden what career pathway I could go down. And I looked at the community development program at University of Detroit Mercy as just as I was going to start beginning courses there. I had been at Detroit Mercy for a couple years. I was given the opportunity to come back to U of M flint and work in admissions there. So I moved my way back to the Flint area and came full circle and started working right where I fell in love with my higher education experience. So I was very excited to move back there and start working and had wonderful opportunities while working at the university. And while working, I discovered we had tuition reimbursement as a benefit while working at the university. And I thought, okay, what programs make sense for me to go into? I could have went elsewhere at another college or university to get my Master's, but I said, let's see what Yubon Plant has to offer here. And that's also when I decided perhaps higher education wasn't the route I wanted to go, but something a little bit more broad, but was still applicable to what my career goals were. And that's kind of how I landed on public administration. So I was able to kind of bring my communications undergraduate experience working in admissions and higher education, and also my desire to work for another organization or work in education in another field and landed on the Master's of Public Administration. So I had been working at U of M Flint for a couple of years when I started that program and did a concentration on nonprofit agencies or nonprofit administration, which really opened my eyes to all of the opportunities that that could lead to. That wasn't just in nonprofit. I was able to take classes in budgeting and accounting and strategic planning and so many things that could be relevant to so many careers. But that's kind of my pathway to ending up in a Master's of Public Administration at the University of Michigan Flint. So I went a couple different avenues before I kind of landed back home.

Christopher Lewis:

As you were going through that graduate degree, you ended up you finished the degree you were successful and ended up finding success in that journey that you went on. As you think about the journey that you went on, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout your graduate school journey?

Lora Phelps:

Yeah, so it was definitely a different experience than undergraduate because I was working full time. And so it's kind of a whole new ballgame when you're working 40 plus hours a week and you decide to tack on a couple of graduate classes, why not work all day and take classes all evening? What I found was so motivating is that the topics in classes were so relevant to your career. You were taking classes that in a subject area that I wanted to learn more about. So it kind of made those longer days easier to move forward with and also excited about what I was learning because they were new topics that I wasn't necessarily exposed to in my undergraduate experience. And again, they were just so relevant. I was also traveling for admissions at the time, and so there was a lot of balancing, and I kind of had to relearn what study habits looked like as a graduate student because of all the various things you're balancing in life at the time. My pathway while I was in grad school, there was a lot of kind of monumental things that happened in life. I got engaged, I got married, I bought a house, I got pregnant with my first daughter. All of these things happened while I was in graduate school. And it was like, how can I navigate through this and get done and relearning? Those study habits was definitely one of them. Because there is a lot more reading that does take place and there's a lot more focus. On writing, and you're taking a deeper dive into subject areas that you're likely more passionate about because you have sought out that master's degree for a reason and being able to look at the end goal and figure out, step by step how to get there. So for me, it was one or two classes at a time. That's what I could do while I was in graduate school. And working full time and taking classes for me year round is what made the most sense, because the summertime I had more time available, I wasn't traveling for work, and I could be on campus and I could stay after work and take those classes. And I had some really awesome professors in graduate school who wanted to help their students succeed, who wanted you to come talk to them about the subject areas, but not just that. What are your career goals? What can I help you connect within the community? And there's really awesome people that are going to grad school too, that they may have 25 years of experience in a career field, and they decided to come back and get their master's degree for whatever reason that might be. There's really great connections and networking opportunities in graduate school that are just an added perk to the subjects that you're learning. And those professors that can connect you with people who have experience with community members that they know just other ways that you can kind of expand your opportunities and expand your horizons with various career paths. So different than undergrad, because I think it is much more focused on your interests. You can really create some long term connections with your classmates. Learn about careers that you may never even have been exposed to or didn't even know existed. Because there's people in your classes that have worked in those career. Fields for so long, and then there's other students who I was kind of on the other end of the spectrum, that I only had a few years of full time work experience before I went to graduate school, so there was a lot to learn, and I just wanted to soak it all in.

Christopher Lewis:

Soaking it all in is great. And I think that there is definitely opportunities to be able to learn so much in that graduate school journey. I mean, so much from your faculty members. But as you said, the really interesting people that also surround you in your classes, that you interact with and the experiences that they bring into the classroom as well, really push you to new heights in your own understanding. Of the experience that you've had, but also to new heights in the experience that you are having in the classroom and that you can take into the work world beyond. Yes. Now, as I said, you were successful, you completed your degree, you stayed working in higher education for a bit and now are working, I'm going to say tangentially to higher education, working in K Twelve, but helping with students to make the transition into higher education. And I guess as you look and think about the degree that you did get and you think back to that education and the work that you're doing on a daily basis, how do you feel that your graduate degree prepared you for the work that you're doing?

Lora Phelps:

Yeah. When I was in grad school, there were so many classes that I didn't realize were going to become so relevant in my career field, especially when I like to use the term, I'm on the other side of the desk. Now I was on the higher education side, and now I transition to being on the K Twelve side. So I'm kind of on the other side of the desk. But also the added responsibilities that I had gained when I made that transition to be on the other side of the desk. The strategic planning that we were able to do in graduate school and some of my classes that was so relevant and real world experience, we were looking at real organizations and partnering with them and saying, hey, can we create this strategic plan for your company or your organization? Will you provide us this information? We're students, we're working on it, but we would love to help build your company or build your organization. So learning step by step how to go through a strategic plan with a company and looking at those long term goals, and then I was able to shortly after well, right after I left higher education, I worked for a nonprofit. I worked for a community foundation as well. And I had been exposed to grant writing and grants administration in graduate school. Again, I had no previous experience, but because my degree was in public administration and I was taking grants administration coursework and nonprofit agencies, and I was given the opportunity to do some grants administration as a program manager for the community foundation. And it was directly related to what I had learned in graduate school. If I had not taken those graduate level classes, I wouldn't have known anything about how to properly write a grant or grant administration. And it was just kind of priceless to have that experience. When I went into the community foundation. Same thing with budgeting. Budgeting was something I did not have experience with. Prior to grad school, I was a communications major I did not take many higher level math or finance, quantitative literacy, any courses like that, even statistics. I took a quantitative methods class in graduate school, and I thought, what have I gotten myself into? And I had an amazing professor, Chris Douglas, I believe he's still with the university. He was a fantastic professor who really put those of us in the class who had never been exposed to quantitative methods, statistics, economics, anything like that. He really put us at ease and said, I am here to help you, and this will be applicable in many career fields. And imagine that it is. I have to look at various statistics for my programs to make decisions about what makes the most sense to when I was at the community foundation creating a strategic plan, we went through the strategic planning process when I was there and creating one and working with a consulting firm. And I was able to play an integral role because I had experience and knowledge about the strategic planning. And now shifting to the K Twelve side, I was able to learn about kind of the structure of schools and administration when I was in graduate school because of the public administration piece. My professor that taught the budgeting and accounting, he was actually a former superintendent of a very large district in the state of Michigan, and he had a laundry list of experience and knowledge, and he wanted each of us to succeed. And that's what he encouraged us every single time. He's like, I know you probably have no experience with looking at a budget like this. You don't even know what each of these account numbers mean. But I'm here for you to learn that, because in so many jobs, you're going to learn how to not only look at a budget and understand a budget, but to create a budget. So there were so many courses, and those are probably the ones. My strategic planning course, my grants administration course, my budgeting, and my accounting classes were probably the four that stick out the most to me that I have taken so much knowledge that I learned there and applied it to my career field in higher education, in working for a nonprofit, and now working on the K Twelve side. It's just so transferable, all of that knowledge.

Christopher Lewis:

Appreciate you sharing that. I completely agree with you that there are so many transferable skills that you can learn along the way. And sometimes as you're going through, you don't always realize what they're going to be. And day by day, as you're going through your work, there's going to be times as you progress through your career that you are going to be like, that's what that meant. Okay, now I get it. And so just know that that's going to happen to you as you go through your graduate degree. Now as you look back at your graduate education, you look at the person that you were as an undergrad, who you were at the end of your graduate degrees, is there anything that you wish that someone would have told you prior to starting grad school that would have helped you to find success sooner?

Lora Phelps:

Honestly, the study habits and the time that it takes to be successful in graduate school for me was completely different than my undergraduate experience. And I even tell my students now, my undergraduate experience, I was that student who was and again, I talked to 15 1617 year old students, so I break it down for them. I was that student in undergrad that I was the procrastinator. I thought, I'm going to wait till the last minute and get this done. And for me, it was fine, it paid off. I did well, but I knew at some point that was going to come around and it probably wasn't going to pay off. And that's when I realized it was in grad school and I said I had to learn those study habits. I had to set a time side to do the reading. I couldn't just kind of fly by the seat of my pants and think, I got this. I'm going to do fine. I can throw out this paper in a night and be good. No, I needed to work on that paper. I needed to start it early. I needed to get feedback on my writing, because the writing level and the expectation in graduate school for me and my experience, it's much higher than my writing experience was during undergrad. There are higher expectations for students as there should be. But I was someone that had to learn that. I had to relearn all of those habits or learn them in general. So for me, it was I had to set aside time. I had to say no to still going out and doing things in the evenings because I had grad school, I had classes on the weekends, had to say, no, I have to stay home and work on these papers. Like, for me, because I was still very early on in my career, I still had to kind of make that shift from the undergraduate life, having a little bit more free time to, okay, I got to buckle down. I work full time. I'm in graduate school, taking at least two classes at a time. Sometimes there were three classes, and then in the summer, I took at least one class. But it was carving out that time that I wish somebody would have told me ahead of time I needed to do. And, hey, you need to do this reading before you go into Dr. Dyson's class because she's going to expect that you have all this done before you arrive. So those are things I wish I would have known going into it versus learning kind of the hard way and saying, like, pump the brakes a little bit, Laura. You've got to set aside some time to actually be successful. So for me, it was learning study habits that I probably should have learned during undergrad, but I didn't until grad school.

Christopher Lewis:

As we finish up today, are there any other pieces of advice you'd give to anyone, whether they're studying public administration or they're studying any graduate degree that would help them as they start and go through that experience for themselves?

Lora Phelps:

I think looking at what your ultimate goal is in figuring out your career path and finding a graduate program that can help you excel down that career path. For me, I knew I wanted to work in education and I looked at higher education, but I wanted something more broad. So doing your research to figure out what is going to be applicable in any of your career interests, not necessarily just one area, a traditional one that a lot of students think about is a Bachelor's in Business Administration and a Master's of Business Administration. But your pathway doesn't necessarily have to be that you can have a completely different pathway for your Master's program than you did for your undergraduate. And for me and what made sense for my career field was to get a little bit of experience first, to be able to make the decision that was best fit for me because I had more of a realization of what I wanted my career to look like. A few years after my undergraduate program was completed, I could make a better decision for myself. And I think it allowed me to be for my experience. It allowed me to be more successful in graduate school because I had to figure out how to balance being a student and working full time at the same time.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, Laura, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here today, for sharing your story, and I wish you all the best.

Lora Phelps:

Thank you.

Welcome back to another episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast! I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, and today we have a fantastic guest joining us. Scott Gifford, a Principal Engineer at Amazon, will be sharing his journey through graduate school and his success in the field of computer science. Scott started his academic career at the University of Michigan Flint, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. After gaining valuable industry experience, he made the decision to further his education and earned a Master's degree from the University of Michigan in Computer Science. In this episode, we'll dive into Scott's experiences, the benefits he gained from pursuing a graduate degree, and the unexpected lessons he learned along the way. Join us as Scott reflects on his time at the University of Michigan and shares valuable insights for current and future students. Get ready for another inspiring episode of "Victors in Grad School"!

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs for the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. Thanks so much for being here because, you know, every week we have an opportunity to talk with one another about the journey that you're on. You may just be thinking about grad school, you may already be in grad school and looking at that light at the end of the tunnel or at some other point in that graduate school process. And I love being able to talk to you and share the stories of others as they have gone before you. And that's what we do. Every week I bring you a different guest, someone new that has gone to graduate school, has experienced graduate school, has learned from that experience both positive and negative about the journey and about what it took to find success. And that's what this show is all about. This week we've got another great guest with us. Scott Gifford is with us and Scott is a Principal Engineer at Amazon, but he did his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan Flint getting a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and then went on from there to get a Master's degree from the University of Michigan in Computer Science. So we're going to be talking to him about his own journey and learn a little bit more about his success in that as well. Scott, thanks so much for being here today.

Scott Gifford:

Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm really excited to be here. I really loved my experience at U of Influent and so I'm excited to get to talk to you about it and talk to potential future or current or other students there. That was such a great part of both my learning and then also my personal growth and my social life and stuff like that. So excited to have a chance to be talking to you and be thinking about my days at Urban Flint.

Christopher Lewis:

So let's turn the clock back in time. I want to go back because I know you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint and at some point during that period of time it might have been during undergrad, but you also went on from there and worked and you were able to get a job and worked after getting your bachelor's degree. But at some point you made a decision that you needed to go further or wanted to go further and get that additional education and get that master's degree. What was going through your head and what made you decide that you wanted to take that next step?

Scott Gifford:

Well, so like you said, I got my undergraduate degree at U of M flint. I got a Bachelor's of Science in computer science. I went out and got a job at an early Internet provider in the area the Internet ramp and was able to reach the end of that and had some money in the bank. And I have always really valued education. I really enjoyed being in school. I really valued the things that I learned in school. And so when I had the ability financially to do so, kind of as a reward to myself for the success of my first serious job, I decided I was going to go get a master's degree. So I did it because I enjoy learning, because I enjoyed that experience, because I wanted to have it. But it's really benefited me professionally in a lot of ways, some of which I expected and some of which I didn't expect.

Christopher Lewis:

Let's talk a little bit about that. You said that there were some things that you expected and didn't expect and you benefited in different ways. Talk to me about what you learned along the way and what you truly did benefit from that experience.

Scott Gifford:

There were a couple of things that were interesting. So one of the things that I expected is that when I went in to get my master's degree, I really deepened my understanding of a lot of core things in computer science. And part of what I think made my experience so great was that I worked for quite a while, probably almost ten years, before I went back to school. And so I really appreciated the chance to be in school and focused in an environment where I could just learn instead of trying to do my job and learn a little bit on the side, just focus on learning. And I really appreciated the value of being able to put the things I learned in industry context. And so it was fun when I was in a seminar class to be able to stick my hand up and say, oh, actually, when I was working in industry, here's where we found this useful and here's how this worked out in practice. And so deepening my understanding was one of the ways that I expected it to help me, and it did. And one of the unexpected ways was it kind of reminded me how big the world is out there in terms of things to learn and things to know. And it humbled me a little bit in a good way. Like, honestly, I went into graduate school a little bit of a know it all and felt like I kind of knew everything already. And then in the process of doing that and meeting a lot of other students who were smarter than me in many ways and a lot of professors who were way smarter than me in lots of ways, it kind of humbled me in a very useful way. And it made me realize that I wasn't going to just learn everything. I needed to learn how to keep learning and continually learn to be successful and to accomplish the things that I want. So those were kind of the two broadest lessons that I learned overall while I was there.

Christopher Lewis:

Now, I know that I mentioned that you decided to go to the University of Michigan to get that Master's degree. I'm sure that you could have gone to other places and gone and got that degree at other institutions. What made you decide to go to the University of Michigan and get your Master's degree there?

Scott Gifford:

It's a great question. So I really had valued my Michigan education from U of M Flint, and at the time I went U of Mflint didn't have a graduate program or I would have considered that. I think really, I didn't really consider going anywhere else because I had been so satisfied with my undergraduate education. And it really felt like a continuation of that. It felt like taking what I had started when I was younger and just finishing it. I didn't have a specific need. I didn't necessarily need to get a Master's degree. And so, honestly, if I hadn't gone to U of M, I probably would have just done something else. I probably would have just gone back and gotten the job. But that was what I wanted to do, was get a Master's degree from U of M and Arbor. And so that's what I did.

Christopher Lewis:

Now, as you were going through that graduate degree, you found success, you finished, you graduated, you've continued in your career and have flourished in your career. So talk to me about as you made that transition from work into that Master's degree and had to change from your mindset of being an undergraduate student to a graduate student. What did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success as you went through the entire graduate school journey?

Scott Gifford:

Something that I think did set me up for success in grad school was my experience at U of M Flint as a smaller school for undergrad. So I was already pretty accustomed to sticking my hand up and asking questions of professors because our classes were small enough that I could do that. I was already pretty accustomed to just swinging by a professor's office with a question or an idea. I wanted to bounce off them because Unflinton had a small enough campus that I knew all my professors well and had relationships with them when I could do that. And so a lot of the other students that I saw there struggled with that a little bit. They saw this big distance between them and the professors, and it made it hard for them to really engage like the graduate student should. Because to me, that was the big difference was you get a lot more of this direct one on one attention from professors, and you can learn directly from them and ask them specific questions about what you want to learn and how you want to direct your studies versus just going through a course of curriculum. So I feel like that made me very well prepared. I think the two things that really made me successful there, one was staying pretty well organized. I'm not an organized person by nature at all and so I have to kind of make my weakness my strength. At the time, I had a binder with a calendar and all my notes and I kept track of everything and when to do it and stuff like that. And just being well organized is something that's hard for me, but it was something that's worth doing and it was important to me to make it through that. The other thing was to really focus on it and appreciate it. I was glad that I didn't have a lot of other responsibilities at the time because I was able to just go into a lecture and focus all my attention on a lecture and not being thinking about 100 other things I have to do or being distracted by other things. I felt like when I went back to get my master's degree, I really appreciated that I was able to be in a classroom with somebody whose job it was to teach me stuff rather than trying to beg, borrow and steal knowledge like you do in the work world. And so really just sitting back and focusing and enjoying that and focusing all my attention on it, paying a lot more attention to it than I frankly did in undergrad where I was often sort of half paying attention and letting my mind wander in classes. So I really learned a lot just by staying focused on things and paying attention to what was going on and asking good questions, I guess was the other thing that I think made me successful, asking good questions when I didn't understand. And often those good questions led to further conversations with the professors, sometimes led to relationships. Actually my first job after grad school was as a research programmer at the university and so that was developed by the relationships I had with professors by asking them questions and stopping by their office hours and stuff like that.

Christopher Lewis:

Appreciate you sharing that because definitely those are some of the things you definitely have to do. And you mentioned the fact that you're not organized and you had to put some things in place. What did you have to actually do? What are some of the steps that you had to set up for yourself to make sure that you are going to be more organized through that process? Or what did you have to do to force yourself to be more organized in that process?

Scott Gifford:

Really the key thing for me was to think about the organization as a first class concern, like to sit back and make a plan for how I was going to stay organized. Now, the plan that I actually had was to buy a binder and put a calendar in the binder and put separators between all of my classes and keep everything in one place and organize it that way. Probably I would do something a little bit more high tech now, right? That was probably 25 years ago or something, right? So a binder with removable pages in a calendar felt pretty high tech. Now I would probably use a phone or an iPad or something to keep track of that, like I do for work. But really just thinking about whenever something important comes out, knowing that I was not going to remember this if I didn't take some step. And so thinking, what step can I take to make sure I remember that? And really just in my undergrad, I would just try my best to remember things. And honestly, I was a little younger then, so I did remember things a little bit better. But in grad school, I found that you weren't constantly getting reminded of things, right? Your professors respected you a bit more or respected me a bit more as an adult who could manage my own time and priorities. And so they would just tell me something was due in two months and expect that I would remember that. And so just making sure I thought about that date as like a first class thing to keep track of and working back from that date and how am I going to coordinate with my teammates on a group project and stuff like that. Just really thinking about scheduling as one of the primary concerns instead of just like saying, oh, I'll just do it as an afterthought, it'll probably work out.

Christopher Lewis:

Now, I know that, as you said, it's been a number of years since you got that graduate degree. And as you think back to that graduate education and look at the work that you're doing now with Amazon, do you feel that that graduate degree prepared you for the work that you do on a daily basis?

Scott Gifford:

So I use the things I learned in that graduate degree every day more so at this stage in my career. So my role here at Amazon in Detroit is the principal engineer. And the role that I have is to make sure that we're building sort of cohesive architectures where we have hundreds of different teams at Amazon building things. And so I work with about 20 of them and making sure they're all building things that will make sense and work together. And so I need to be able to very quickly drop into some system I haven't seen before and advise teams on whether it's likely to work or not in the end. And so the broad knowledge that I got in my master's degree of algorithms and data structures lets me very quickly analyze those systems, jump in and say where I think they're going to perform well, where I think they're not going to perform well. The deep knowledge I got of databases is something I use every day. Thinking about data management, understanding how we need to store the petabytes and petabytes and petabytes of data, probably exabytes of data that we have here at amazon. How? We need to arrange the parts of the data that I'm responsible for to make sure that we can process them later in an effective way. Use things from the operating systems class that I took just to reason about what's going on under the hood when a program is running, or to look at an architecture and be able to visualize all the way down. To the operating system layer what's going on? And then to be able to use the hardware class I took to visualize what's going on with the processor. Just having the right mental model where I can take a system I'm looking at, read a description of it and then quickly visualize in my head what are the data structures and algorithms that are here, what are the data access patterns, how is this going to interact with the operating system? How is that going to work with the hardware below it? Being able to quickly have that insight and having a framework to plug new knowledge into is probably the way that it's been most helpful to me.

Christopher Lewis:

So as you look back at your graduate education, you think about your younger self even before you got into graduate school. Are there things that you wish that someone would have told that would have helped you to find success sooner?

Scott Gifford:

Yes, there's one very specific example that comes to mind, is that at my very first job, we had a problem where you would press a button to manage an issue in our support queue in software that I had written, and 90% of the time it would work, and the other 10% of the time it wouldn't work. And I had no idea why, and eventually just had to create a way to delete those things that were stuck because they couldn't get out and we didn't know what to do about it. Well, one of my first graduate school classes I took, I guess probably it was my second year, was about parallel computing and learned about concurrency and learned about race conditions. And I had a bit of an AHA moment where I said that's what happened to me five years ago is there was a race condition but I didn't know what that was. I didn't have the right mental framework to be able to think about it. So that's a very specific example. More generally, I would have benefited from kind of the humility that came from being in a larger world and being a little bit less of a know it all earlier in my career, being a little bit more willing to go out and ask questions and learn more and go in depth versus assuming that I already knew the answer. And lots of things that I learned myself in my spare time about operating systems, about hardware, about networking, about databases, a lot of those things early in my career, I kind of learned in the school of hard knocks, right? You create a database and it doesn't work, and you don't know why, and so you go Google for why isn't it working? And you learn about indexes and data structures and efficient access patterns and stuff like that. Those are all things I learned in advance in graduate school, right? And so if I had gone into my first job with that set of knowledge where I could plug new facts into and the right frame of reference for all of these things and even really properly understanding like each of these is a complex field of study on its own. I think I would have been able to approach problems more analytically. And instead I approached them a little bit ad hoc. Something would go wrong with a system I was responsible for, and I might have to pull an all nighter to figure out what was wrong with it and get it back and running. Whereas after my graduate career, it was a little bit easier for me to sit back analytically, spend some time thinking, and say, I have a hypothesis about what this is, and here's how I think we can fix it, versus just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what it stuck.

Christopher Lewis:

Also, as we finish up today, as you think about graduate school and you think about the journey that you went on specifically, is there any advice that you would give to other students, whether they're going for a graduate degree in computer science or just a graduate degree in general that you would put out there that would help them to again find success during that graduate school journey.

Scott Gifford:

I guess I'd have a couple of pieces of advice. One is it's fun and it's not ten times harder than an undergraduate degree. I felt like a lot of people I talked to think, oh, I could never do that. I would never go back and do that. I've been working for too long. I could never get back into school mode. But I found it was pretty easy and actually pretty enjoyable to go from work mode back to school mode. And I really appreciate it a lot more after having been in industry. So if it's something if you're mid career and thinking about going back and getting a master's degree, I think that's very doable. I think lots of people do that successfully. And I felt like I was able to use my skills from the work world to be more successful as a later graduate student than many of the students that I saw who came directly from undergrad and maybe hadn't learned the organizational skills and didn't have the right context to really know how stuff would apply. I think the other thing I would say is sit back and enjoy it. It was an enjoyable experience and I really learned the most when I sat back and paid attention to what professors were saying, engaged in a conversation with them, asked questions, used the office hours, just really took advantage of all the things that were available. Use the graduate library, right, which is one of the best technical resources available. And just really take advantage of the fact that you have access to the resources of a really great institution, including its professors, in a way. That you'll really never have again after that experience because you have a group of people whose job it is to impart knowledge and wisdom to you. And after that, in your career, you'll find that, like I said earlier, you have to sort of beg, borrow and steal that knowledge and try to find good mentors who will teach you what they've learned and stuff like that. So it's a unique opportunity to just really focus on learning and deepening your knowledge. And the more you take advantage of all the stuff available versus just trying to figure out what's the minimum you can do to get through, I think the more that you benefit from it later.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, Scott, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your own story today, for sharing your own journey, and I wish you all the best.

Scott Gifford:

Thank you, Dr. Lewis, for having me on. I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed talking to you and thanks for giving me a chance to relive some of my great memories. From U of M Flint and from.

Welcome back to the Victors in Grad School podcast, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about finding success in graduate school. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, and today we have a fascinating guest joining us. Dylan Straka, the Vice President for Finance at Premier Security Solutions and one of the Greater Flint area's "40 under 40 to watch," will be sharing his experiences and insights with us.

In this episode, Dylan takes us on a journey through his educational path, starting with his undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Michigan Flint. He then delves into his decision to pursue a master's degree in accounting and finance, highlighting the unique situations that motivated him, including the financial support from his grandparents and the opportunity to gain work experience at a local accounting firm.

Dylan also provides valuable advice on managing the delicate balance between full-time work and graduate school. From time management strategies to reaching out to professors for support, he shares valuable insights on how to navigate the challenges of juggling multiple responsibilities.

Tune in to this episode of Victors in Grad School as we explore the journey of a driven and successful professional who has found his path to success by pursuing graduate education. Let's dive into the conversation with Dylan Straka.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome back to the Victors in grad school podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs for the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, we're on a journey together. I love being able to talk to you every week as you are thinking about grad school. You're in grad school looking at that light at the end of the tunnel, or you're just figuring it out as you go along. This podcast is all about helping you find success in that grad school journey. And there are specific things that you can do. No matter if you're going to grad school to get an MBA versus going to law school or med school, there's lots of things that you can do to make sure that you are successful. And we do that every week by bringing on great guests. People that have gone before you have done this, have been successful and are coming to share their own experiences with you. And with every person that comes on, I learn a little bit. I know that you'll learn a lot as well as you listen in. And this week, we've got another great guest with us today. Dylan Straeka is with us today. And Dylan is the vice president for finance for Premier Security Solutions. He also last year was named one of the Greater Flint areas, 40 under 40 to watch. And I am really excited to be able to have him on here today, to be able to learn about his own experience and to have him share that with you. Dylan, thanks so much for being here today.

Dylan Straka:

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, I'm excited to have you here and to have you talk about your own experiences. And I know that what I would love to do is be able to turn the clock back because you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. You got a BBA in Accounting here, and then you went on and continued on to get a MBA in Accounting and finance. And I would love to go back in time because I know that at some point in time, as you were going through that undergraduate degree, there had to have been some point in time where you said to yourself, I want to continue, I want to get that master's degree. What were the reasons that you chose to continue on and to go forward to get that master's degree and go into graduate school?

Dylan Straka:

There were two kind of unique situations, one being I had the funds to cover it. People ask you all the time, what motivates you? And my answer is always my grandparents. My grandma grew up very poor in the south. She had a third grade education. She actually went hungry a lot upon her passing. Her will left money for my brother and I to go to college. She wanted to make sure we wouldn't have to experience the same hardships that she did. I stayed local. I went to Mott for my first year and then U of M Flint. So the money that I would have had to spend on room and board was actually really able to cover over half of my Masters. So I was fortunate kind of in that regard. But the other thing, as you mentioned, I got my undergrad from U of M Flint, and that was partially driven because of work experience. The company I had worked for throughout high school knew I wanted to go into accounting. The owners both went to U of M Flint. They met there, as a matter of fact, and said, hey, we know you want to go into accounting. What if we open up a position here for you? Basically, we know you want a U of M fan, so you'll get your U of M degree and you can get some experience while you go to school. So I worked throughout all four years of my undergrad, which created, because of my age, a unique situation that, to advance further, I couldn't just make up the years. I needed the education. And so as soon as I graduated with my BBA, I went right into my MBA program.

Christopher Lewis:

The fact that you just said that as you were going through that bachelor's degree, you did work full time, and you had to do a lot of balancing, I'm sure, to try and not only do that full time work, but also be able to be successful in your undergraduate degree as well. So talk to me about balance and how you were able to best balance that work that you did as you went through your degrees.

Dylan Straka:

I was fortunate that most of my undergrad was part time. I did take a semester off, and because of that first job, triggered an early internship with a local accounting firm. And so I did have that semester off. But once I went full time into a new role after I graduated with my bachelor's, it was a challenge at first, I'll be honest. I had to figure that out and maneuver that and try a few different things. And one transparently was and my advice to anyone going into a Master's program, you have to do some of the work every single day. You might only have a class on a day or two, and like many of you, maybe in undergrad, I tried to cram it all in on Sunday. That does not work in the Master's program. Even if you can only get in 45 minutes or an hour of work every day, you have to get that in. And with that scheduling and mine was an instant night and day difference from being part time and just having to focus on school to being full time employer and then school on top of it. But many of my classmates also had the responsibility. They were married, they had spouses, they had children. So that created all other schedules. So really the schedule and I'm more in finance now, but the position I was in during my MBA was more accounting based, so I had tax time as well. So where periods I worked 50 or 60 hours a week. So you really have to manage your time properly. And unfortunately, and many people will attest to this, just being transparent, some of your social things will have to you have to give that up for a little while, but the sacrifice is worth the reward 110%. I think the thing too, and I saw an instant transition with this as well, was you're in class with your colleagues and the professors, some of them switched from being Miss Professor So and So to by their first name. We would go out for drinks after class sometimes and things like that. And they saw you more as a peer and a respect came with that because you are a working employee. With that, your professors really want to help you. And so they understand if you have situations come up with work or with family life, so go to them. I think that's the biggest advice I can say. They have office hours that so often go unutilized. And I think people are a little bit fearful at first, especially me, because I was a young MBA student. But they really want to help you.

Christopher Lewis:

Some students are definitely afraid to step out to make those relationships, or they don't know how to create those relationships because there is that power imbalance, we'll say, or a sense of a power imbalance that they have experienced through their undergraduate degree that as you just mentioned many times, will flip or change. There still is a knowledge imbalance, but the power differential is different in graduate school. Talk to me about what you or other students that you saw, what you did to be able to create those strong bonds with your faculty members as you made that transition into graduate school.

Dylan Straka:

The dynamic and the discussions in the classroom were night and day difference. And I was much more engaged in the grad than the undergrad because my very first class, I sat down and transparently. I was the youngest person in that class. It was all working people, most of them. Their company was paying for them to come back to school so they could further advance. And you went from discussing theory to real life problems. Classmates would bring, hey, we're really struggling with this, with work. And if it was applicable, the whole class would try to solve it. Or if it wasn't, it could be a topic that quickly went off that a classmate had had experience within their professional working career. For me, as a young person. It was really educational. They became a huge resource for me and still are to this day. There's a group of us that we still bounce ideas off of one another. And I think just the context of the conversations that the professor and the student can talk on a level that in some shape or form have somewhat each experience with it shifted that dynamic and respect a little bit.

Christopher Lewis:

You just said that you were one of the youngest in your classes and that during those classes a lot of times, especially in an MBA, but in other fields as well, the people that are in those classes are bringing their professional experience and making the learning tangible. Being young. Talk to me about what you had to do to be able to overcome some of that lack of experience, even though you were working as an undergraduate, to be able to feel like you were contributing as much as those that might have been in the workforce for.

Dylan Straka:

Ten plus years or some 20 or 30 I had even found that really wanted to advance for those last ten years. I think I was always respectful of their knowledge. I had still had a few years under my belt and had worked in divisions that others hadn't. So that gave me a little bit of an advantage. But I've always been an advocate for never be afraid to ask a question, even if you think it's stupid, because there's likely someone else that is going to ask it in the room. So have a desire to learn. And I always tried to be a sponge and pick up wherever I could. Probably one advantage I had, especially over some of my classmates, I had worked with some on a team that were in their fifty s and the technology piece of it. Technology was a piece that had to be ingrained into me. It was part of the education system when I went. But my classmates in their 50s, that could be a challenge for them. So that was a little bit of advantage that I had in areas where they had the years on experience.

Christopher Lewis:

Now, you talked about the fact that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. You continued your degree at the University of Michigan Flint. You probably could have gone other places and because of that you still chose to stay and to continue your degree. Talk to me about that and what was going through your head as you were making that decision of where you wanted to continue and get your master's degree and why you ended up deciding to stay and continue your education at the University of Michigan Flint.

Dylan Straka:

That's a great question and I have a few answers for this one. Transparently was proximity. The company that I had started with during my undergrad was a few blocks away. So being close by was very advantageous to me. Another was the hours my advice to anyone is if you can do your MBA in class, in person, do it. And specifically, it seems like the U of M flint's MBA program was designed around working people. They realized that a majority of their people were working professionals. And I had late night classes or mixed mode classes. And the flexibility of the schedule and to actually get my degree done in the time I wanted was very appealing to me. And I don't think Transparently U of Employment gets the credit for the caliber of the professors and then the students that go there. A dear friend of mine, I met him in my first class, my first day in my MBA program his company was sending him back to because they wanted to make him CEO of their company. And that totally surprised me, but didn't, as I learned as time went on, know we had kids that were commuting from Detroit in various suburbs of major cities because they realized the caliber of the program that we had.

Christopher Lewis:

I really appreciate you sharing that as well, because I've seen that myself and I see the quality of instructors here. And I guess as you think about success and you talked about a success in a number of different ways, but you were successful. You got through your master's degree. And as you made that transition from your undergraduate degree into graduate school through graduate school, and you think back on it now, what do you feel that you had to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your graduate school journey?

Dylan Straka:

And this was also kind of part the surprising piece that I wasn't expecting in the Grad program was the networking. What you put into the degree, you will get out of it. And I really made an effort to try to get to know my professors and my classmates. And we had classmates, Chris, that hired one another. Job opportunities came up, and then all of a sudden, it was their class colleague, but it was also their boss from nine to five during the day. And from that we helped someone would be applying for a job or interviewing or get an offer letter. We would help them negotiate. And then I think something people don't realize also is your professor is more than a just professor. Most of them come from corporate backgrounds at U of M flint. They have their own contacts and have a genuine desire to help. So we had professor connections that maybe it didn't lead to a job, but maybe it led to some business opportunities to do business together. So I would say that was in terms of the success that was advantageous to me, and I think that could be advantageous to anyone pursuing a master's degree at U of M flint.

Christopher Lewis:

It's been a few years since you've finished that master's degree. Now that you've completed that degree, and you think about the graduate education that you went through. How do you feel that you use that graduate degree on a daily basis? And how has it prepared you for the next steps in your career?

Dylan Straka:

Something to note for everyone listening, I was at U of M Flint for eight straight years and partially considering going back for another degree. So if that doesn't show my love for it, I don't know what does. But to answer your question, working with teams, that was especially in the MBA program in the business world, it is very collaborative. You are not siloed off. And no matter if it's Finance, Marketing, Technology, Operations, they all work together. And U of M from my very first class pushed that. I think every class we had to do some type of a teams project, and you got every walk of life with that. So part the teams and then part that MBA. The program was designed so well that, like I said, Technology, Marketing, Finance, Operations, you had to take classes in all of those. And so even though I'm Accounting Finance focused, I feel like I have better understanding of how each division functions. I've had meetings today alone in various different departments, and you get pulled into those. So I think having a better understanding of it really gave you more confidence to speak about, hey, this might not be my background, but I do have some education in this regard, and I think I can be helpful in it. And it's the team atmosphere 100%.

Christopher Lewis:

So as you think back to your graduate degree and think back really to that transition that you went through again from undergraduate to graduate, and you think to that younger self, are there things that you wish that you would have known or that you wish that someone would have told you? That would have helped you find success in grad school that much sooner.

Dylan Straka:

Part of it would go back to it is 110% worth the sacrifice, but in terms of social aspects, you will have to sacrifice to do it. I think it's your quality of life after the fact and your knowledge and your experience you gain from it is worth it every time. I also think too, no one's holding a gun to your head into what timeline you have to have this done. Take it at your own pace. There were periods where maybe my work or my personal life were going to be more relaxed and I could take an extra class or two, or maybe I learned quickly that during tax time, I needed to take less courses. And then it kind of molded into a new shape as I went into it, and it worked out so much better, but just be okay with that, that I was just going to get a general MBA. And then I realized the caliber of the classes in that getting. I got an accounting concentration and then a finance concentration with that as well. Those three extra classes, because they were so specific and honed in, they were worth the extra year it took me. And then with that a little bit, I think just kind of bookending. Something I said earlier is that this is not something that you can try to cram in on a Sunday. And I think especially so many of my classmates, their corporation or their company was paying for them to do it, be transparent with work. I had several classmates that sometimes, especially during finals time and things like that, their corporation gave them an hour or two that particular week, every day to work on coursework, because they saw the value they're investing in you financially. They want you to be successful, they want you to do well in a course. I think knowing all those things would be really helpful to anybody going into.

Christopher Lewis:

It as we finish up today. Dylan, any other final thoughts? Any other tips that you might share with a prospective graduate student, someone that's thinking maybe an MBA, but could be something else that you have gleaned in your own experience that you feel that could help them to find success?

Dylan Straka:

My advice would be to anyone that if you're thinking about it, take a class, take one, see if you like it. I even had friends in my first class that started out in the MBA and switched to an MSA, a Master's in Accounting. And if your goal is to professionally grow and gain more experience, gain more education, don't feel like you have to do this multi year major, whole degree, try a class and see how it goes from there. That would be my biggest piece of advice. And I even had classmates that their company really wanted them to get better acquainted in a specific subject. So even though they signed up for it, they just took three classes in technology and it or three classes in finance. It was transformational for them in their work life.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, Dylan, I just want to say thank you for sharing your own experience with us and for all of the things that you shared today, and I wish you all the best.

Dylan Straka:

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. It was fun.

Welcome back to another episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast! In today's episode, we have a special guest, Kris Johns, who will be sharing his educational journey and offering valuable advice on pursuing a graduate degree. Kris will delve into the importance of learning how to learn, the demanding nature of graduate school, and the accessibility of online resources. He will also emphasize the significance of gaining practical experience through internships and building connections in one's field. Additionally, Kris will reflect on his own experiences and share the lessons he wishes he had learned earlier in his academic journey. So grab a cup of coffee and get ready to dive into an enlightening conversation on career development and furthering education.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome back to the Victors in grad school podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. This week, as always, we're having a conversation. We're talking about this journey that you are on that you're thinking about maybe in the future or you're applying right now or you're in graduate school and you're seeing that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. And we're talking about success. We're talking about how you can find success during that journey and also making you think about a lot of different things in different ways to be able to think about graduate school in different ways, to be able to help you along this journey that you're on. And every week we do that by talking to other people, people that have gone before you, that have gone ahead of you and have experienced this journey for themselves. So I love being able to talk to different people every week and be able to get their perspectives on graduate school. And everyone has a little bit different perspective and a little bit different journey that they can share with you, that'll help you to form the plan that you need to be able to be successful in that journey that you're on today. We got another great guest. Kris Johns is with us today. And Kris has been working in, I'm going to say social media and digital media and working in a lot of different areas for a number of years. Kris did his undergrad work at U of M. Flint. Then went and got his first master's degree at Michigan State University in Human Resource Management and Labor Relations. Then got another master's degree in Health Services Administration in Health Management and Policy. And as I said, he's done a number of different things in his career and I'm really excited to be able to learn from him and to talk with him today about that journey that he's been on. Kris, thanks so much for being here today.

Kris Johns:

Thank you, Chris, very much.

Christopher Lewis:

I really appreciate you being here today. And I guess first and foremost what I would love to do is turn the clock back in time. I'd love to go back to maybe back to the days when you were at U of Influent for the first time, working on that undergraduate degree. At some point, whether it was during undergrad or right after your undergraduate experience, there was some point in time where you made the choice. You made the choice that you wanted to take that next step. You wanted to go on to graduate school. Talk to me about what was that impetus that made you say, this is what I want to do and this is the direction I'm going to go.

Kris Johns:

Excellent question. So we'll go to the origin story. In high school I was a midling student and my origin story was I actually had a former girlfriend. I was going to go to Not Community College. She was going to come to u of m Flint. And we by just happened to Chance in the summer of 1999, accompanied her to U of M. Flint. And I thought, this is a nice place. And I said, would you admit me? And they said, do you have money? And I said yes. And they said, well, you're in. And so I was a member of that fall 1999 class. And I think for me, U of M. Flint really gave me the foundation to be involved socially and academically. My family has a background in the labor movement. Really. Almost all my family members on my dad's side were a card carrying union member of some sort. And so I was interested in labor relations. And there was a handful of schools in the Midwest, also out east that had labor relations schools. So it's now called something different at Michigan State, but it was called the Master's of labor and Industrial Relations. And the key piece there was that next step would be a master's degree. And I think just the one first cautionary tale I want to share with the listeners is I was way too young. I graduated from U of M flint in three years. I went year round and I thought that I had to do this to get onto the next journey. And in this case, I graduated from U of M. Flint 21. I entered graduate school at 21. That was too young of an age. And I think the first takeaway that I would encourage people is just to enjoy the journey because, Chris, you love your job, but it's work. At the end of the day, it's still a job. You're leaving your house, you're putting a nice shirt and tie on and you're kind of going someplace else for five days a week for 40 plus hours. And I want to emphasize to the folks thinking about graduate school that enjoy your life. And nothing I did in regards to getting out of school early put me any further ahead than I would have if I would have waited a year or even two years to whether it be work full time or do different pieces. But to get back to where how I did that is I did internships. And that was really the key. And I led this off that I was a middling student in high school. I was a 3.2 student at U of M. Flint. My GRE scores were okay, but what was critical was the internships. I did an internship at the UAW 659 in Flint and then I also did one in labor relations at what is Genesis Regional Medical Center, which has a different name now, but that was a signal to graduate school that I was serious. And I just cannot emphasize more than enough to the people listening, please do an internship. It doesn't need to be your classic 20 hours a week internship. I did one while I did a three credit internship as a class, but then I also just made connections, because ultimately, if you had a five hour a week internship, if those are five quality hours of exposure, that will help you just as much as 20 hours of sitting in an office filing papers. And what I would encourage people and there's the other side of that is it gives you an exposure to see, because, again, a lot of careers, they look very sexy and cool from the outside, but when you have to do it every day, it's a different view. And doing that internship is a wonderful signal to both future employers, your first employer as well as graduate schools, that you're serious about your field.

Christopher Lewis:

Getting an internship is so important. Getting some experience is so important, as you are looking at even your undergraduate degree, getting out there while you're in that undergraduate degree, even if you're in high school, taking some time, and if you think that it's a field that you have an interest in, take the time. Shadow some people, start easy and at least see what people do and see what people do in different types of places and different types of scenarios. So I use the example of if you want to become a physical therapist. If you want to become a physical therapist. Physical therapists work in many different locations. They work with kids, they work with athletes. They work in clinical and hospital settings. They work in outpatient settings. Just because you think you want to be a physical therapist, you might not want to work with pediatric patients, okay, that's fine. But understand what the different routes that are available. Or if you're looking at a degree like psychology, well, what would you want to do in know all those type of things. And the more that you can like what you were saying, Chris, you get an internship, you get some experience, you shadow people so important. So as you were doing that for yourself and you found that you wanted to do that first Master's degree, talk to me about what you learned along the way that led you down the path of then looking like in your career trajectory, you may have pivoted a little bit. You got that first master's, and then you made some pivots and maybe didn't stay in labor relations completely. So along the way, what did you learn about yourself and about the career that made you decide to move in a different direction?

Kris Johns:

Well, excellent question, Chris. I think the first piece was for myself. Again, it was 20 years ago. Exactly. Right now, I was in Phoenix, Arizona, doing an internship for Honeywell, and that was a corporate internship. And that was a strategic mistake. I had one internship offer to do labor relations for Sikorsky Helicopter in Connecticut and the other was to do a human generalist internship in Phoenix. And I wanted to have fun and I wanted to go to Phoenix. Well, the problem was I had too much fun and the job offer never came. And think the other side that I realized there is that if you want to niche down, commit to the niche. In hindsight, if 20 years ago if I would have chose to be labor relations, I think my life would be a lot different. I would be in a different spot, but I still would be working. I mean, I don't know if I'd be a better person today, but I think professionally things would be a lot different. And I think so in terms of that piece, the lesson learned is number one, niche down. And I know it's kind of difficult early, but for example, you mentioned physical therapy. If you maybe go to a senior rehab and then you go to a pediatrics and you go to a sports and you said, I really love working with kids, then commit to that in the sense that the more people you know in that industry, it will help you. And I think that's also the other piece I want to go as part of this, at least for the first master's degree it allowed me to do is knowing those people, allowed me to get letters of recommendation that were outside of my teachers, outside of my professors, which were very helpful. But what was very nice is that when you have people who work in the industry who potentially are known by other people, that letter of recommendation is very powerful because again, let's look at this holistically. Is there's grades as a big component, your GRE scores. But then the other two sides is going to be your internship, your experiences and then also who you know. And I think the one piece that really ultimately I tell people I'm in the relationship business, I've done a lot of different things. I'll continue to do a lot of things. I have a day job and a side hustle and all of that is based off of my personal relationships. And graduate school gave me an excellent foundation for just the technical knowledge. But I think the one thing that young people is that graduate school is not a silver bullet. And I'll tell this story in a little bit once we get to the U of M piece. But the key critical thing is that people want to work with nice folks. And I think the more you get to know people in your field and let them know you as a brand, again, you showing up, being dependable, asking questions. And this is where I would encourage really students of any age to get involved with your professional society. There's often either a free student, know again, now, these meetings with Zoom, you can be in the room with people from across the country, around the world in the same lobby, and people will know that name. And the reason I mentioned that is to your point, Dr. Lewis, kind of like what you can do to prepare. I would encourage people as a student to reach out to folks, because I don't think anybody would say no to a student saying, I'm a student at XYZ, at U of M Flint. I'm the class of 2024. I'd like to learn more about you and get your pointers. I believe eight out of ten people would say yes to a phone call. And nowadays, with Zoom, it's even easier. And what will help you is, twofold, you're going to learn from other people's mistakes. If you were to speak with me, I have a lot of mistakes I would tell you about, but I would also have things that worked out, I would share with that. And then the other side is the million dollar question is, who else should I talk to? And I think when you get to that point in your career and in that learning, that is mission critical, because that's what's going to help you get maybe the second job is your network. Yes, you're going to need to have a degree that's kind of mandatory for many jobs, but once you fulfill that requirement, it's a checkbox. It's very rare that employers go, oh, he went to U of M versus this school. It's more they have a degree check. And then it's a case of, well, he knows this person, and they work together on that project. And so my thesis here is just get involved, and whether it be from the internship or a professional society, you're going to end up meeting people who will know other people through their network that will help you make that next transition.

Christopher Lewis:

I mentioned the fact that you went from U of Mflant with your bachelor's degree. You went to Michigan State, and you kind of talked about the fact that you chose that because they had that specific program that you specifically wanted in labor relations. And then actually following that degree, you came back and you went to the University of Michigan for another master's degree. So talk to me about you're in the middle of that master's degree or in that master's degree and decide you want to get a second master's degree. What made you choose to go to the University of Michigan for the Master of Health Services Administration, and what made you choose the University of Michigan?

Kris Johns:

As I mentioned, I was doing a corporate internship for Know, a large multinational conglomerate, and our summer project was outsourcing. How can we find engineers in China, India, and the Czech Republic? And that just put a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth, and I think just kind of the corporate piece as well. And going back, I did an intern, a semester long internship at what is now Ascension Grand Blank. I don't know if it's Ascension Genesis, but genesis Regional Medical Center in Grand Blank. And I enjoyed healthcare. And I thought wrongly at the time that you can't outsource healthcare. I've since learned you can. But put it in context though, I was at this age, roughly 22, 23, so still very young. And I think this kind of goes back to the piece about I had rushed through U of M, Flint. I did spring and summer, two semester, two years of spring and summer. So I was done before really a month after I turned 21. I was too young. I just professionally, from a maturation standpoint, I needed just to be somewhere else and maybe even just an entry level job for a couple of years. But alas, I put myself in a position where it was two things. It was kind of an interest in healthcare, in working locally. And the second piece was the job market wasn't so hot. So if I would have gotten a job and then at this had it initially I had a girlfriend went to You've Been Flint together. She broke up with me. But after a couple of months, I think it was the best for everybody. And then I had met a new person who's my wife. Now I myself, if you were to say, Chris, we need you to be in Dubuque, Iowa in the morning, I'd be there. I'd be, know, ready to go. She is not an adventurer like that. So she was from the flyn area. And it was a case where it just know, learning from mistakes and just know the corporate piece. Because if I would have gotten that job through Michigan State, it would have been a two year rotation where you live somewhere else every eight months and then you would be going from location to location and you'd be a professional. Itinerant professional, but it would not be a sedentary lifestyle. And so as part of that, I'm now into what would be the fall of 2004 and kind of making that decision and applied and had the background. And I had applied to several graduate schools, so I applied to Iowa, also to the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and then to U of M. And U of M at the time was ranked number mean as far as a student profile. I was an okay student and I was accepted, which I was very surprised kind of looking at back in hindsight. I think they have some slots for people from Michigan because it was an international, diverse cohort. And I think the number of people from Michigan were maybe in the single digits. But I was from Michigan and it was an excellent learning. And so from that side, it really was a case of just like, looking at what the future was in healthcare and knowing that Michigan has large health care systems. And so for myself, I had graduated. But again, going back to the internship piece, I had did an internship with the Veterans Administration in Saginaw that summer of 2004. So I had graduated from Michigan State in May, and then I started an internship. And so that entire summer I was commuting from Flint to Saginaw to work for the VA. And it was a paid internship. I learned a tremendous amount. And that was a case where that kind of gave me that exposure to healthcare. And there's some other mistakes I made, but going forward. But I think what's kind of mission critical was that the U of M piece was. I know many people are interested in rankings, and I was as well as a student, so I can't say no. But at the time they were ranked number one in US. News and World Report, which they always reminded us whenever tuition was due or there was a test, that you're number one and having that master's degree. And I kind of see that first degree from Michigan State really being an extension of undergrad. I just kind of did political science. I really rushed through my three years at U of M Flint, and that was kind of really my time to just become a bit more mature. I made a number of lifelong friends at Michigan State that I still hold till to this day. That friendship has helped me out in many other professional endeavors. And so at this point, we're now at U of M. And I was accepted really primarily. Again, my GRE scores were they asked me to take the GRE again. I got the same exact score as I did the first time. But I think it was a case of having the degree, having that professional experience, really bringing a good amount of professional experience to day one was very helpful to going to U of M-A-N arbor.

Christopher Lewis:

You made it through two different graduate degrees. You found success in that journey and came out on the other side with your degrees in hand. What did you have to do to set yourself up for success in each of those degrees? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout that graduate school journey?

Kris Johns:

Yes, so I think the success piece was really the experience both at Michigan State and at U of M. It's one thing to learn it in a book or read about it or hear about it, and it's another thing to see it. And I know I've been mentioning the internships a number of times, but for example, when I was at Michigan State, I was able to sit in also at Genesis on contract labor relations, contract negotiation. So when I was at Michigan State, we had a class on contract negotiation. And I was using terms that the professionals used and that students just would not have known of because they just were never in that environment. And it wasn't to say I was any better, but just I learned things that you wouldn't have learned in the book. You really wouldn't have learned till your first job. And it really helped shape that piece. And I think the other side of setting up for success is just looking at it holistically. Ultimately, I was very focused on the ranking. I think even if Ann Arbor was ranked 10th, I still would have applied. I mean, if they ranked 100th, I would have been interested. But for myself, it was a case of just having the professional experience to kind of know what you want to do, because for both degrees, if you knew where you were going, like, for me, I wish I would have stuck with labor relations. Things would have been a lot different. And then going into the healthcare degree, it was just I made some strategic blunders there. But I think the setup for success was the experience and then also having some connections that you could draw back on. And in this case, when I was going into U of M, I had worked at had spent time at Genesis, also at the VA. So I had known people that I was actually able to call on for classes while at U of M. So.

Christopher Lewis:

You completed both of these degrees, and as I said, you've done some Pivoting in your career, and you are doing a lot of work right now in digital media, social media, and working with a number of different clients in the corporate world. So as you look back now and you look back at the degrees that you received, your bachelor's, your two master's degrees, how do you feel that those graduate degrees prepared you for the work that you're doing on a daily basis?

Kris Johns:

Excellent question. Dr. Lewis. The mission critical piece there is just the learning how to learn. And I would really credit Dr. Monroe at U of M, Flint, in the political science department of really laying that foundation. Where I'm at now, I'm essentially kind of in my third know, having left U of M, Ann Arbor. My first job was in Akron, Ohio, at a large integrated health system and things just that was a case where my then girlfriend, who became my fiance, who is now my wife, was living here in Flint, and she said, I'm not moving to Ohio. Very wise choice in general. But it was a case where I got a couple of years experience. And so then I come back to Flint, and I have worked a number of different jobs in a number of different areas. But I think the key thing about graduate school is it really taught me how to learn and how to learn quickly, because at Michigan State, you had three classes a semester. At u of m it was five. And these were difficult classes. I mean, the 60 credits at U of M was probably really the toughest thing I've done academically, and it was very demanding. And as we move forward to 2023, I started a new job with a social marketing firm, and part of that was getting the certification. So you had a week to get five or six different certifications, and you had to learn quickly. And where we're at now is a case where information in so many places is free. You can probably get the equivalent of a BA or even a master's degree on YouTube. It's just how do you apply it and are you willing to learn? And I think that's really the mission critical piece is that you just need to be open to learning and just embrace the journey and know that you don't know what tomorrow will bring. And my advice, just to take one step back, Doctor, is when I was at Michigan State, so I graduated from U of M Flint debt free. I had a chance to live at home. I also worked I was a dishwasher. I was a professional dishwasher for three years, and I got scholarships, and I was able to leave U of M Flint debt free. Moving ahead to Michigan State. The first year I took out loans, but the second year I worked in the dorm. And it was not, I think, ideal, but you make the best of it. But part of that piece was you got free room and board, free tuition and a stipend. And it might have not been the ideal graduate school experience, but that second year was free. And then moving ahead to U of M Ann Arbor, I ended up taking out loans for the two years. And my encouragement to students and please is do not focus on the brand. I can tell you on one hand, the number of times people mentioned that I went to U of M Ann Arbor for this degree. One was I was at Genesis, and they gave me no money towards my degree. I mean, other than a paycheck, but I was paying student loans. I would highly encourage, if you're wanting to do a graduate degree, please look out about graduate assistantships. There's a host across the board is look at cost that oftentimes, whether it be I applied to Cornell for my first degree for labor relations was not accepted. I don't know if I would have went to Cornell that would have made life any different. But I just ask people, please do not bury yourself in tens and tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get a brand name, just to be able to wear the sweater, go to a place that's affordable. Take your time. If your employer can pay for it, please do not be in a rush. And then secondly, I would also highly encourage if you can find places that will give you a graduate assistantship and seek those out. And oftentimes for me, I worked in the dorm. I made it a wonderful experience. And what I just don't want people to do is that you get your dream degree, and then now you have a lifetime of obligation to pay it back. Because I will say that I think the master's degrees were more of a personal thing. I probably could have done a lot of what I'm doing, maybe not some of the healthcare stuff, but what I'm doing today without a master's degree, it's just nice to have, and I'm very proud of it. But what I thought I knew at 21, 23, 25 is a lot different than I am now 42. And for young people who get very status focused about, well, if I go to this school, it'll help me do this, it's not at the end of the day, people are buying you. Your brand is your personality. It's your background. It's who you are. The one thing I tell people, and this would be quick, is you either can be an and person or a but Dr. Lewis is a great guy, and I want him on my team. And then there's people like, Chris is nice, but he's annoying. And I've had people tell me that. I mean, not every job has been super successful because it's just a fit. And I think it's one of those things where I've gotten jobs because of who I was, not necessarily because, oh, Chris went to U of M, Ann Arbor. Check. He's got the job. And then I've lost jobs because of personality, because of fit, and it had nothing to do with the degree. And so I would say, just to close, my three takeaways are, please don't bury yourself in a mountain of debt over a degree. It's very important to you. But for many other people, it's a credential. And do they have a master's degree? Yes. Very rarely. Where they got that master degree, will it make a big difference on the employment side? Alumni networks matter. Number two, we're all in a relationship business. There's been a number of things where I met somebody on a Monday and then got a phone call on a Friday because I had a skill set that could help them. And that kind of leads, I think, into the 2.1 is be a helpful person. Know your niche in the food chain until you're the boss. Be a helpful person because the boss needs help. And I think the one side is that get the master's degree, learn, but extend your skills and be a helpful person, and that will open up so many doors. And then lastly, just get the experience, the internships. And again, it does not need to be the full official three credit. I don't even know how many hours it is now for an undergrad at U of M Flint, but even if it's a five hour internship, or it could even just be. Meeting people make those connections because those will last for both your graduate school application, but it'll last for your career.

Christopher Lewis:

As you think back now after going through these graduate degrees, and you think back to that younger self that went through those, and you've given a lot of pieces of advice today. But I guess as you think back, is there any advice that you would have hoped that someone would have given you that would have helped you to find success in that journey that you went on?

Kris Johns:

Wonderful question, Dr. Lewis. I think what I would have tell what 42 year old Chris would tell 21 year old Chris is to slow down is that the clock is not your enemy. And when you get to our level, does it matter if you retire at 67 or 68? It doesn't. I think for myself, in a perfect world, what would have been helpful is I would have loved to have done like, a maricor just to get experience, just to get my degree, even if it was maybe a gap year, taking a semester off to do something. In hindsight, I would have loved to maybe done the Disney program where you go to Disney for a semester or even go out west. So I think the key piece there is just taking it slow and getting experiences and not being in a rush to graduate and allowing yourself to have those opportunities that students get to have, whether it be in AmeriCorps or doing a fellowship for a year. I think that would have been really very helpful just to mature as a young person and then give myself more experiences and just a different perspective.

Christopher Lewis:

So true. And I think a lot of times people at that age are moving really fast and they want to make money or they want to move faster, or people are telling them that they need to jump into that career, and sometimes slowing down is the best policy. So I appreciate you sharing that. Is there any other piece of advice that you'd want to give to anyone that's going to graduate school that would help them in this journey that they're on?

Kris Johns:

Yes. Start preparing for the GRE. Math was not my strong suit. I did very well in the verbal. But we didn't have Khan Academy back then. We actually had to buy a book. We had to go to what there was a store called Borders, which is gone. I went to Borders and I bought a GRE prep book, and I slaved over that book for months. And again, I think the other side, too, is I think there's just we can kind of question about just innate IQ, but I probably could have gone to a number of prep courses, and I don't know how better my score would have been. So I also would encourage people, please take those prep tests early. And I took the LSAT. I did not do very well at all. Take the prep test, see where you're at. And if there are certain areas that you excel in, then press on those strengths. But if there's areas where you struggle, work on that. And then again, we didn't have Khan Academy in 2001. And so use those free resources, use what's available and put the time in because the GRE test is what it is. I mean, it's not going to change now until in the next ten years. And learn the test and be prepared. Nothing should be a surprise in terms of what the career is. You should know by talking to people the test, you should be able to better understand how that test is set up and what your strengths and weaknesses are and what you can do to improve. And I think put that time in because and again, graduate school is a signal to employers that you are serious. And I just want you to be serious about being serious. And I think that will really help you out. Because I would say this without my internships, I wouldn't have gotten into Michigan State because there's really nothing on my scholastic resume that would have indicated I would have been a good fit. There was people with much better grades, much better GRE scores. But because I had those internships and just please be serious about your experience. That's really the mission critical thing. And then get ready for the test because those test scores are real and a good test score can help you get a scholarship.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, Kris, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing your journey and for sharing the things that you learned along the way that were both positive and negative. Because when you go through these experiences, it's important to share both. And I wish you all the best.

Kris Johns:

Thank you.

Welcome to another episode of Victors in Grad School! In this episode, host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Derek Howard, a successful attorney and past adjunct professor, to discuss his journey through graduate school. Derek shares his experiences starting with his undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Michigan Flint and his decision to pursue a Juris Doctorate at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He reflects on the factors that influenced his decision to go to graduate school and how his experiences during an internship solidified his passion for law. Join us as Derek discusses his choice of law school and the challenges he faced as a working student. Don't miss this valuable conversation about finding success in graduate school!

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School podcast, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And every week we have an opportunity to sit down and talk about this journey that you're on. You might be in graduate school already, or you may just be having that inkling in your head that you're thinking about continuing your education maybe in a similar path or maybe in a direction where you want to go in a different path from your undergraduate work, or a completely different direction than that either. Or maybe it's just a completely different direction, and you're really just exploring. The great thing is that you're here, you're listening, and you're willing to be here to learn because this podcast is all about helping you to find success in that graduate school journey. Every week I have a great opportunity to be able to sit down with other people that have done this before you and they are sharing their own experiences and their own successes. And you never know, maybe some failures along the way as well. This is all being done to help you to not make the same mistakes or maybe to make some of the same mistakes so that you can learn as well as you go through the process. Today we've got another great guest with us. Derek Howard is with us today. Dor McWilliams howard PLLC. He's also a past adjunct professor at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, as well as a number of other legal opportunities that he took advantage of for many years now. He started his education at the University of Michigan Flint where he studied political science for his bachelor's degree. And then he went on from there and got his Jurisdictorate degree or his law degree from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. I'm really excited to have him here today and for having him share his own experiences with you. Derek, thanks so much for being here today.

Derek Howard:

Thank you for having me, Dr. Lewis. I appreciate it.

Christopher Lewis:

My pleasure having you here today and really to be able to learn from your experiences. I guess first and foremost, let's turn the clock back a little bit. I mentioned the fact that you attended University of Michigan Flint for your undergraduate work and you decided to getting a political science degree. So talk to me about the fact that at some point during that undergraduate experience you had some inkling in your life that you wanted to continue on, you wanted to go on, you wanted to end up in law school. But what were the reasons that made you really decide that you wanted to go to graduate school?

Derek Howard:

Well, when I was coming out of high school, I believed I wanted to be a lawyer. Now, that changes. Students coming out of high school obviously change their minds sometimes, and so that changed over time. But immediately out of high school I wanted to be a lawyer. And when I looked into the programs and was accepted to U of M. Flint, the obvious path was the political science program. So I entered the political science program straight out of high school, and I did that for a couple of years. And then I actually took a break, actually stopped going to school. I don't know exactly what it was, but for me, I apparently wasn't into it. And it might have had to do with I just didn't know how to study or how to be successful in education at that time. I didn't have anybody helping me with that, I guess. So I took some time off. I actually ended up taking five years off. And after about five years off, I was at this job and I managed a retail business. And I was very young. And I always kind of advanced through whatever business or whatever jobs I had at that time. And so I was a manager and I was one of the youngest managers. It was a multiple presence business, and they brought all the managers down for a meeting to drum up sales and all this. And I looked around the room and there were people, a bunch of people 30 years older than me. And I'm like, I don't want to be here in 30 years. And so that moment changed. I'm like, I'm going back to school. I don't care what it takes, I'm going back to school. I went back to school. I re enrolled at University of Michigan Flint. And what's interesting is the classes that I took that I struggled in in those first two years, I would get A's in I don't know if I matured. I knew how to study and what was effective for me in learning material, but I did very well from that point forward. I went straight through and got my undergrad. There was a moment in my undergrad where I thought, well, I don't know what direction I want to go, especially later in my undergrad. I really enjoyed sociology courses that I took as a part of my undergraduate degree. And so I thought I might go for a PhD in sociology for a time. And I was really struggling in those last couple of semesters and choosing between I knew I was going to do a graduate program. It was either going to be a PhD in sociology or it was going to be a jurist doctorate. And I just really didn't know. And the deciding factor on that came as an intern. There was an internship I had to do as a part of my undergraduate studies, and I did it at the court in Genesee County Circuit Court, right down the road from U of M Flint. And I was in a courtroom and I was around lawyers and I really enjoyed that so much. That's easy decision now I really enjoy this. I'm going to go to get a jurisdoctorate degree.

Christopher Lewis:

You did decide to end up going and getting that law degree. You just mentioned that you decided to attend Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. And there's a lot of options for law schools not only here in the state of Michigan, but beyond the state of Michigan and around the country and beyond. So talk to me about what was going through your head and what ultimately made you decide that Western Michigan University Cooley Law School was the right school for you.

Derek Howard:

So I got out of undergrad and I knew immediately I was going to go into law school. So you take the LSAT, that gets you the testing that lets you certain score to get in and you look at your grades. And I sent around and I actually applied to many law schools. When I was going to U of M Flint, I was living near the Rochester area and that commute was just a difficult commute. It was very practical. I had to work full time while I was going to school. And so not wanting to repeat the commute actually played a role in choosing it. At the time, Western Michigan Coolie Law School had a presence on Oakland University's campus and that was five minutes down the road and they were willing to give me a nice scholarship. And so even though I was accepted to multiple schools, that just tipped the balance for me. So I started on Oakland University's campus where their presence was and did that for a while and there was only a certain amount of credits that you could do on that campus before you had to finish your degree in Lansing. So we ultimately did finish in Lansing, but all of the students became close. I think our starting class that semester was 62 students I believe is the right number. And by the time we got kind of said, we're going to have to go to Lansing to finish up here, we become good friends and commuting together made us even better friends. So we'd share driving responsibilities and go back and forth. And so I really enjoyed that time and the closeness with the groups especially that I commuted with, are still lifelong friends. And so that was the reason for cooley law school. They gave me nice scholarships. They were five minutes off the road when I started and I was a working student. I had to have a full time job while going to school for most of it. There were semesters that I took off that were very important semesters to really devote a bunch more time, but for the most part I was a working student.

Christopher Lewis:

So talk a little bit about that because working while going to graduate school, especially for a law degree is in itself really difficult. And then you have to add on all the other factors and life issues that you're dealing with in your life. So talk to me about balance and how you were able to balance all of that and still find success during that law school journey.

Derek Howard:

Well, like I said, there were moments or semesters that I found very important in my undergraduate studies. I was also a full time worker. With the exception of my final semester I had waited to do a bunch of classes that required me to be in Flint every day of the week rather than staggering two or three days a week. The same for law school there were semesters where it was just necessary that I kind of pulled back on the work. But I do remember my fourth semester of law school, I think it was. I had a full time job at the court that I ended up working at as a lawyer. I was on Law review which puts out a scholarly journal on a regular periodic basis on legal topics and that itself was like another part time job. On top of it. I was going to law school, which was a part time job and my first son was born so I had what amounted to like four jobs, it felt like which felt very daunting. And when I talk about it I look back at it I go, that was but when you're in it and you just kind of are in it it just becomes life is how I looked at it. And I just would do. And it's probably not something that's healthy to maintain for long stretches but I made it manageable for a few semesters that I had to do that. And you just prioritize the important things. Obviously, getting good grades is very important and being a good father is very important and making money so that I could afford the place I was living in was very important. So I don't know how I did it when I look back, to be honest. But it just becomes part of life and you just do the best you can. And sometimes that's what life becomes about is even though you're short on time in certain things, that you care enough to do as best you can in the amount of time that you have, and you just be efficient with your studies or you be efficient with what's necessary for the grades that you get or what's necessary for your job.

Christopher Lewis:

Talk to me also about that transition that you went through. The transition from going from being an undergraduate student to becoming a law school student. Because going to grad school itself is very different than going to law school is also very different in the way that you're educated and by the way that your professors are teaching you. So as you made that transition from the University of Michigan Flint to law school what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success? Throughout the entire law school journey, there.

Derek Howard:

Was definitely a different educational experience between my undergraduate studies and law school. So undergraduate studies for the most in my liberal arts degree was a reasoned paper or a researched paper and some kind of an exam at the end. I think the most of them, especially later in my bachelor's degree, ended up looking something like that. In law school. You come into it and you find success by you study a body of law and the body of law appears to be black and white. And it can be in the form of a rule, like a statute or a court rule or some kind of a code or it can be in the form of case law interpreting those things which becomes law in itself. And so what I found fairly early on was success in learning about law became success in learning about the theory behind the reasons that decisions were made in case law. Theory behind why a statute was codified. What was the public policy behind the statute. The reasons behind what you were reading was really the important part of learning to become a good lawyer or finding success in law school. And the material was nonstop. It's like that I Love Lucy episode with the chocolates coming down the conveyor belt. If you didn't stay on top of reading these cases and understanding the reasoning behind the decisions, you would dig yourself a hole that was virtually impossible to get out of. Especially if you were juggling that along with a career like I was, or a job that allowed me to go to school even though I had scholarships. It wasn't enough to not work. I simply had to work. I wasn't willing at the time to take out loans to cover living expenses. I needed to work. It was necessary. I had a family. And so law school is interesting in the sense that at the end of the day, they can't teach you everything, so they really teach you how to educate yourself. If a client comes to me today and says, hey, I have this issue and this is what happens. Clients are very good at saying what they experienced, what they think happened, the facts surrounding something, but they don't know the law, and if you've not dealt with it before, it always requires research. I don't know that I've ever had a client come to me. That's not necessarily fair, but often clients come to me and I don't know the exact answer to what they're looking for. But I was trained in law school to find out how to find that answer, to educate myself on that answer and be an expert at it so that I could bring a case and win a case, especially in litigation.

Christopher Lewis:

I think you're right in what you just said that in regards to the law, going to law school itself teaches you about ways to think about also ways to process things for yourself. Now, as you think back to that education, and now you are thinking about the work that you do on a daily basis, how do you feel that your graduate degree prepared you for the work that you do on a daily basis?

Derek Howard:

It literally taught me how to do my job. There's no more direct. Well, I don't know. I guess I don't have experience at medical degrees. I'm assuming I would be certain would do the same thing. But I don't know how you'd know how to find these answers because there's research tools and methods and just like technology changes, how you do it changes. When I went to school, there were electronic or cloud based research tools that you could use, but it was also going to the library and pulling books and understanding how to look at the pocket parts. Any lawyer is going to know what that means. These additions at the end of the book where case law changes, so they're literally journals of cases that come out of courts that have the ability to make case law and they're published. So certain courts have the ability to decide whether or not it's going to be law that everybody has to follow called case law, or it's going to be an unpublished law that would just be persuasive in certain circumstances if a court wanted to find it persuasive. So when a court overturns a prior case, everything changes. And you have to be able to know where to look to see if that happened. You have to be able to look to see how it's evolved over time. Because law evolves. It's living and breathing and new issues come up. You may have seen in the news recently some lawyers relying on Chat GPT to write a brief that created out of thin air cases that didn't exist. And they filed these in courts and they were actually sanctioned for it by the court. How do we deal with those issues and not just in law or in a courtroom setting? How do our clients deal with those issues and what's the legality behind those things? So because it's ever changing, if they just taught us like a foundational knowledge about the law, we would be stuck with what we knew when we graduated if we didn't have the ability to continue our education. I think it's kind of what I in part find fascinating about being a lawyer is that it's continuing education all the time. You have to stay on top of it and you have to something that I wrote about a particular area of the law five years ago isn't necessarily true today. That may have changed. And so that piece of law school that teaches you practically hands on, how do you go find the answers, how do you make sure that answer is still correct is absolutely necessary in my profession.

Christopher Lewis:

As you think back on your undergraduate experience and also yourself as an undergraduate, as well as the transition that you went through as you went from being an undergraduate into law school, is there anything that you wish that someone would have told you that would have helped you to find success sooner?

Derek Howard:

I don't know when I finished, because I talked about I had that break those first two years. I wish I would have had some words that when you go into educate and I later taught, and I later looked into educational theory a little bit, and what I learned is that everybody learns a little bit differently, and everybody has different techniques that may be effective for them to learn and retain information and to study. And what works for some people might not necessarily work for others. And that was something that I think I started learning in my later stint into my undergraduate studies. And I learned what worked for me. But it really was reinforced when I started teaching, because I would say the same thing, what I thought was the same thing, and I would have a couple of puzzled looks back in the back of the class, and I would have a couple people nodding their heads, and it's like, okay, some of you need can I hear this a different way? I remember one class, I was teaching a writing class, and I don't even remember what the topic was, but I said something, and I had a whole class looking at me with a puzzled look on their face. And so maybe that was me, but I actually drew it kind of I outlined it on the board, and I go this, and they all go, oh. And I go, oh, you're all visual learners or something like that. And the whole classroom started laughing. It's just that appreciation that I wish somebody would have told me early on, that how we teach you how to learn. It's one way, and it might be the way that's most effective for the largest number of people, which is probably the right way to look at it. But there are other ways, and you need to really find what works for you. You're the only one that's going to know that. But I think I kind of figured that out for myself later on. But early on, I wish somebody would have said kind of how we're showing you my not work for you. There might be a different way for you.

Christopher Lewis:

And as you think about the success you found in law school, are there any tips that you would offer to other students, whether they're going to law school or just going into graduate school for some other type of discipline that would help them find similar success?

Derek Howard:

Well, there's a few different types of classes in law school. If you're talking about substantive law classes, the foundation of the substance, like your contracts, your criminal law, your constitutional law, the property law, these foundational core concepts for those types of classes, it's important to understand the why. Why did the courts rule? That the way they ruled. Applying statutes understand the value in making good. There's this tool called analogies and distinctions. If a court decided this particular case this way, and the facts are the most compelling and interesting story of a case, so they'll start out with this factual, foundation part of an opinion, how did they apply the law to those set of facts? And then when you have your client and you're trying to make an argument, if you're doing argumentative writing, you say, well, my client had a similar circumstance, and if the court decided it this way, in a similar set of circumstances, then it also should follow that it would apply it this way now. Or the opposite distinction. No, the court applied this law this way in these set of facts, but we have a different set of facts learning analogy and distinction and theory. I talked about how when a client comes to me, I can't presume I know the law, but I do know the theory behind almost everything that my kind of law touches on a daily basis or could touch. So when a client comes to me, I can go and think in my head, well, I'd be surprised if it's not this, even if I don't know, because I understand the theory behind all of these different fingers of law and kind of combining different issues that pop up on a fairly consistent basis. So for foundational core type of law classes, that's important. For writing classes, it depends on what kind of writing you want to do, right? There's argumentative writing, and that's trying to convince somebody that you're right. And then there's legal drafting. I taught them both. Legal drafting is you're writing something like a contract, where you're not arguing for one side or another or you're writing a statute. You want to use certain tools in your writing that make sure that you come across with clarity and you use the right amount of vagueness and you avoid ambiguity and all these tools. So kind of depends on the type of class.

Christopher Lewis:

Eric, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here today and for sharing your own experiences. And I wish you all the best.

Derek Howard:

Thank you so much, Dr. Lewis. I appreciate it.

On this episode of Victors in Grad School, we have a special guest, Dr. Precios Armstrong. Dr. Armstrong is the special education supervisor for the Jackson County Intermediate School District and an adjunct professor for Grand Valley State University. Dr. Christopher Lewis, the director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint, is excited to have Dr. Armstrong share her journey with us.

In this episode, Dr. Armstrong shares her career path, which initially started with a desire to go to law school but eventually led her to a career in education. She talks about the importance of continuous learning and how pursuing multiple degrees, including a master's degree and an education specialist degree, has made her a better leader and servant leader. Dr. Armstrong also emphasizes the value of setting clear goals, sticking to a schedule, and building supportive networks for success in graduate education.

Dr. Lewis also shares his own educational journey, from a career in the nonprofit sector to becoming an educator. He discusses the importance of intentional choices, having a clear plan and timeline, and revisiting and aligning that plan with life circumstances. Dr. Lewis offers tips for successful graduate education, including brushing up on writing and research skills and pursuing one's passion within the program.

Throughout the episode, both guests emphasize the value of mentorship, collaboration with colleagues, and the impact of their degrees on their careers. They encourage listeners to celebrate achievements and strive for continuous growth. Whether you're a dad looking to support your daughter's educational pursuits or a dad looking to further your own education, this episode of Victors in Grad School is packed with valuable insights and advice.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

TRANSCRIPTS

Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. I'm really excited to have you back again this week. As always, I love being able to talk to you about the journey that you're on. You may already be in grad school, you may just be thinking about grad school, maybe you're toward the end of grad school, but you're still going through that process. And this show is all about helping you to be able to walk through that process, to be able to give you some tips, some hints, some things that will help you to find success as you go through graduate school. And we do that every week by talking to other people because we have an opportunity every week to talk to different people, to learn from their experiences, the highs, the lows, and everything in between about what they learned about their own about what they learned about themselves and their own journey as they went through their own graduate school path. This week, we got another great guest with us. Dr. Precious Armstrong is with us today. And Dr. Armstrong is the special education supervisor for the Jackson County Intermediate School District, but she's also an adjunct professor for Grand Valley State University. She's actually going to be starting a new course here very soon, and I'm really excited to be able to bring her to you, and I'm looking forward to talking with her today to learn from her own journey and having her share that with you. Dr. Armstrong, thanks so much for being here today.

Precios Armstrong [00:01:52]:

Thank you. I'm excited to have this conversation.

Christopher Lewis [00:01:55]:

It is my pleasure having you here today. And I guess for me, I know that you did a couple of different undergraduate degrees. You got both of your bachelor's degrees from Michigan State University. And at some point, after getting that first bachelor's degree, because there was a little bit of time in between, you made the choice that you wanted to continue and get a second bachelor's degree in leave behind Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy. And you went on and got a special education degree where you were able to then work with kids, with students, and then after that, you continued your education. So talk to me about what was going through your head as you were not only transitioning from one academic area to another bachelor's degree area, but then what made you make that choice that you wanted to go further beyond those bachelor's degrees themselves, to get then the master's and beyond that, the specialist and the doctorate degree.

Precios Armstrong [00:03:02]:

So I always knew I wanted to work with students, but when I was going through the first degree, the goal then was to really go to law school and be an advocate in the legal realm for students in that way. And so I did all sorts of things in undergrad to prepare towards going to law school. And then when I got done, I didn't want to go to law school. And so I went and got a job and went and worked for the state, worked for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, transitioned from there, worked for Michigan Nonprofit Association. And it's neat how people are putting spaces in places with you at the points along your journey that you're supposed to encounter them. One of my colleagues at Michigan Nonprofit Association, she had gone to Notre Dame and got found out about a master's program there. And so I used that as a way to explore what my next step was going to be because I knew I wanted to get to teaching. And so going the route of exploring program offerings that were available at Notre Dame, I said, you know, this isn't exactly the right fit, so what makes more sense for me? And so going back to the drawing board, I started subbing. And when I was subbing, one of the principals pulled me aside and said, precious, I want you to go and sub in the special aid class. And I was like, I have no idea anything about special aid at all. She was like, that's fine. Try it out for two weeks. If you don't like it, you don't have to stay there. But if you like it, I think you do a good job. And I fell in love with it. And because I fell in love with it, I knew I had to go back to school. I was like, okay. So we've shipped gears. We are no longer going to law school, but we're absolutely going to become a teacher. And so I went back, and it made the most sense since my first bachelor's was from Michigan State, it made the most sense to go back as far as credits were concerned. And so I went back and absolutely loved getting that second bachelor's in special ed transition to working, being a fully employed teacher. And so while going through my first couple of years of teaching, I went ahead and finished up and did that master's degree. Because again, recognizing that in my journey, being a perpetual learner, that not only benefits me, but it benefits the populations that I serve. And so that's what got me to that space of going back and kind of will definitely shifting gears. I can say this, though. That first degree definitely, positively impacts the work that I do now, because in my current role, I have to understand policies. I have to understand the legality of things. And so those foundational pieces that I learned in that first degree have definitely carried me throughout.

Christopher Lewis [00:05:46]:

So you got those first couple of degrees at Michigan State University. Go green, go white. But then you made a decision to I'm going to say go to the other side, because I know people that attended Michigan State. They're not always fans of the maze in blue. But you came over to the University of Michigan Flint to get your specialist and then on to your doctorate degree. There were a couple of years that went in between. Those that went between getting that first Master's and then moving to the specialist made you choose to continue your education, and what made you choose to decide to attend the University of Michigan Flint for those degrees?

Precios Armstrong [00:06:29]:

So I always knew I wanted to ultimately become doctor. I knew that when I was in my first degree. However, after I finished my first graduate program, I said, I need a break, because at that point, I had been in school really most of my life. And so I said, I need a break. Let me see what it's like to not be a student and to work. And so I spent from 2005, when I finished the Master's, until 2016, I spent working. And I said, you know, let's do that. But then it's funny. One of my buddies that I met when I was working on my Master's, who was also a special Ed practitioner, she was like, okay, so you ready? We talked about in the Master's degree, about going ahead and getting the doctorate. Are you ready? And I was like, okay, I'm ready now. I can do this. And so the question was, where? And yes, it was an interesting decision to join U of M for that program, knowing I have spent all of my adult education prior to that with Michigan State. But it came down to even with my letter by my personal essay, I said, this Spartan wants to explore being a Wolverine as well. I will just be education divided. So that is how and when it came down to it, looking at the various different program offerings around the state, it made the most sense. U of M Flint Ed specialist was lights out, perfect for me. The format of it worked, the amount of time it was going to take work. It made sense. I was going to be able to not only advance certifications by adding the specialist central office certification, but also get the critical pieces I need within that curriculum realm. Because my Ed specialist, my concentration was curriculum instruction. And so it was a lot of pondering, but it made the most sense. And I had a fantastic experience with both the Ed specialist and the doctorate. I love how those marry each other. And that when I looked at U of M plant, the initial thought was, okay, so let's just go right into the doctorate. But you can't go into the doctorate unless you have the Ed specialist. So I said, Well, I can do that. I will absolutely do the Ed specialist and go on to the doctorate. I took a small break after the Ed specialist. But definitely it was an amazing experience with amazing people that I met in the cohorts that I was in people. As far as the professors were concerned. I always felt like I could talk to my professors. I always felt like the workload wasn't crazy. It was the rigor that you should expect in a program as advanced as an Ed specialist and a doctorate program. However, it wasn't one that felt like you were being beat down. I felt that at every point I could call a professor and say, okay.

Christopher Lewis [00:09:28]:

How did this go?

Precios Armstrong [00:09:29]:

Like, did this make sense? Was my writing clear? What can I do to be better? I always got great feedback, and really, I made the choice because I was old enough at that point in my journey and my maturation to be able to truly identify what I needed and what I wanted and how those converged and U of Influence program was the perfect fit for me.

Christopher Lewis [00:09:52]:

Now, through all of these different experiences, I can tell that you were motivated. You had the energy behind you. You had people, it sounds like, behind you to support you along the way, and you found success. As you look back at the experiences that you went through through those graduate degrees that you've received, and you think back to the transition that you had to go through with each of those different degrees, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout all of those different degrees?

Precios Armstrong [00:10:25]:

I think every point I had to map it out, what did I need to do to get there and what was my end goal, and then celebrating each win. And so, especially with well, from bachelor's to doctorate, I always had a list of what are the classes I need to do, what is needed for each one of those classes, and then checking it off so I would literally lay out at the start of a program, okay, what all do I need to do? All right, so then what is the timeline by which I want to get it done? Knowing that the timeline has always got to be flexible because life happens, and then making sure that within having that really kind of tentative but mapped out idea, creating a schedule for each class. So I'm in the class, what do I need to do, and what amount of time do I need to dedicate? And really sticking with that schedule. If you have a really good schedule, then what I found is that you have blocked off that time. It's not a fly by night. This is my dedicated space so that when all the world goes crazy, I know I still have a schedule that I can rely upon to get to and making it one that if something goes wonky, that I couldn't dedicate that time to writing, couldn't dedicate that time to reading that day. I had time blocked off enough throughout my week that I could pick it up on another space, but it really was committing to a schedule of following through, but even more importantly, identifying like minded people to work with, both in the eds. Well, throughout my journey, I have been really afforded the opportunity to have almost a cohort model for the bachelor's program that was within James Madison college, which is a residential program at Michigan state. So you come in all first year students and you really build up your cohort and you follow with everybody through. I followed that with building a network. When I came back to work on the second bachelor's, with the masters and certainly with ed specialists, the folks in the ed specialists, we built groups within groups to say, okay, how are we doing? To the point of we even had a group meet that we formed. And then when I got to my doctorate, we created a dedicated study time every week that this is when we are going to study together, this is when we're going to write together. So building those networks, being clear about what my goals were, setting a consistent schedule for how I would complete that work, those were the critical components that got me through.

Christopher Lewis [00:12:55]:

You mentioned at the very beginning of your answer that you had to map things out and that you had to do that for each degree that you went through. Can you walk me through what you did to map that out that helped you to be successful in those different degrees?

Precios Armstrong [00:13:12]:

I really looked at what did I need to get done, what did that course, what did that major require for me to get done? And if there was wiggle room, making very intentional choices about what I was going to gain the most out of, and where did my strengths, what was going to help build upon my strengths? I giggle often that for the bachelor's, there's a point in that sequence. In the first bachelor's, there's a point in the sequence where you had to choose between a logic course or a stats course. And I said, I'm going to pick logic. Now, in hindsight, I learned that that was really probably the harder choice, but it was intentional in what is going to help me move forward in a way that makes sense for me. And at every point when I got to the ed specialist, it was you have a whole sequence. You had an orientation, they mapped out what the courses were, and so I said, okay, so this is what the map says. Am I committing to this time frame, how this cohort goes, or am I going to need to take it a little bit slower? For me, it made sense to go ahead and go through in each point. Here is what I want to knock out. I literally had a posting in front of my desk at home that had, all right, what semester are we taking that class? And once I was done, I check it off, put what my final grade was, and say, okay, I'm scheduling the next one, and went forward with that. When I got to the doctorate, it was much the same way. And that, again, had it all mapped out, checked them off as I went. But then when I came to being a doctoral candidate so you're in your phase of getting ready to write your dissertation. When I got to that phase, we mapped it out, like as a collective part of your defense, your proposal defense. You got to map out what your plan is. Well, we mapped it out and we stuck to it that this is what I need to get done and by when. And then again, relying upon that network at each point, all right, are we all doing this together? Here's what we're going to do. Knowing that everybody is not necessarily going to come along the same pace as you, because we all have our own journey. But even those who finish with you or those who don't, still supporting one another in getting through and relying upon it can't be just you. If you are just trying to go this alone, the road is so much harder. It is so important to build those networks, even if it is to just vent or share ideas to see does that make any sense? So that was what I did. It was very, write out what I need to get done, check it off as I go, and then making sure that I am revisiting that over and over again to make sure it makes sense and aligns with what was going on in my life at each step.

Christopher Lewis [00:15:54]:

You mentioned that your first bachelor's degree really helped you in the work that you do, especially in regard to advocacy work that you do, and also understanding policy and looking at policy in different ways and how you advocate for students. As you look at all of these different degrees that you've had that you've built your career upon and you look back at each of them, how do you feel that those graduate degrees helped you? How do you feel that those degrees prepared you for the work that you do on a daily basis?

Precios Armstrong [00:16:30]:

They prepared me amazingly well when I look at my master's degree. So much of what happens within schools is around behavior. And so being able to understand how we support behavior and what those best practices should look like and where those resources are has very much helped me as far as helping parents understand things, being collaborative with parents, collaborative and a source, and being a resource for teachers and principals, as well as having those conversations with students. And so that behavioral expertise that I gained there has been invaluable. Then you couple that with the Ed specialists where the focus was curriculum, instruction, being able to look at things from a 10,000 foot view and look at what that scope and sequence is how it is or is not. Meeting the needs of the populations that we serve has been invaluable as well, in and of itself, because I'm able to have those very intentional conversations from an educated standpoint of here's what we should expect to get out, and how do we evaluate what those outcomes are in comparison to what our expectations were. And so being able to really look with a broad lens of how we're utilizing curricular tools, how those align with the practices that are utilized, and being able to identify additional resources that are necessary has been phenomenal in being able to make sure that what we have for students and supporting parents makes the most sense. Then you couple that with my terminal degree and that opened up a whole other world for me of understanding research and understanding research to practice. And so I find that I am a much more, even more entrenched, evidence based, data based practitioner and coach. When I look at what my staff is doing, when I look at how I'm supporting families, I see that there is this other way of considering the information in ways that may be novel or they may be something that we typically use. But in either way, being able to look at it from a lens that says, okay, so can we prove that that works? Or are we just going from our gut because our gut is great, but is our gut supported by data? And so I found that all of those degrees have really helped me to be a better leader, a better servant leader, because there is a wealth of knowledge of both what can be done and how to reach out to resources and be open to the possibilities of other options that we may not have conceived of before.

Christopher Lewis [00:19:19]:

I think that with every degree that you go through, you take pieces of it and you fit them into the work that you do and they become a little more seamless as you go further into your career. So I appreciate you sharing all of that. Now, I mentioned you're going to be an adjunct professor coming up at Grand Valley State University. You're going to have your own graduate students that you are going to be working with, that you're going to be teaching, that you'll be mentoring, and they will look to you for guidance. I guess as you look back at your own graduate education, if you think about the students that you're going to be working with and you think about your own journey that you went on, what are some tips that you might offer to students that are considering graduate education that will help them to find success?

Precios Armstrong [00:20:09]:

One, the first tip was brush up on your writing and your research skills because if you haven't been in school lately. Those are the first things that make you question your existence, because definitely there is a different layer of expectation with your writing at the graduate level, let alone being able to really command what it is to do real research, that you are looking for peer reviewed articles. You are looking for well respected journals. Because I think because we have so much information at our fingertips, google is our friend, but Google is not our friend when we're doing actual research. And so those will be my two biggest tips, making sure that they're looking at those writings. If the writing is coming as more of a challenging piece, avail oneself of writing centers. Every college has them. U of M has a writing center. You can go and talk to the librarian. That was one of the great things I remember dr. Cheeram brought in. The librarian speak to us when we're working on the Ed specialist, just to kind of make sure that we understood the level of expectation and how to be successful. So those would be my biggest things. But the other layer would be identify what your passion is. Identify what your passion is and utilize the program to further that passion. So that my passion is culturally responsive teaching and practices. And that's why, ultimately, I did my dissertation on culturally responsive practices within special education classrooms. But in doing that dissertation, leading up to that, you can see that my writings within my Ed specialists were very much focused on my passion. So most of the assignments that were given, that was the lens I chose to utilize. And so that's the piece. As a grad student, this is an opportunity to learn and grow. I look at grad professors as your colleagues to help elevate the way in which you conceive of your world. How can you utilize more resources and become and expand your expertise? And so in doing so, looking for ways in which that expansion is going to positively impact. And so that made the work more relevant for me, because it wasn't work just to do the work. It was work that was going to translate into the practices of my everyday life.

Christopher Lewis [00:22:36]:

Well, Dr. Armstrong, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here today, for sharing your story, for showing that there are those pull strings that you have to follow, that you have to pull along with you, that you are going to be using along your path to help you along the journey that you're on, to make it to the endpoint in your career that you want. And also that it sometimes takes a little bit of time to figure out what that is and to see it. Because when you're in it, sometimes it's not always easy to see. It doesn't always make sense. But as you get further on, you definitely can look back and you can say, yeah, that's what it is. That's why I had to learn this. That's how I'm going to use this. But sometimes it does take a little bit of time. But I truly want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today and I wish you all the best.

Precios Armstrong [00:23:32]:

Thank you.

Christopher Lewis [00:23:33]:

The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgradoffice at umflint.edu.

On this episode of Victors in Grad School, our host Christopher Lewis welcomes a special guest, Jim Ananich, CEO of the Greater Flint Health Coalition and former Michigan State Senate Representative.

In this episode, Jim shares his experiences and discusses how his education played a role in his career. The conversation begins with Jim talking about his father, who was a faculty member at the University of Michigan in public administration and political science. Jim shares how he initially enjoyed school and learning but decided to make a career change and pursue teaching. Eventually, he developed an interest in administration and decided to pursue a career in that field.

Jim talks about how he learned about a grant program at U of M that trained urban and rural leaders to be principals, and he decided to join the program. This program not only covered some of the coursework costs but also made graduate school more appealing. Jim mentions that most of his cohort from the program are now administrators, retired, or still involved in administration. Before joining the program, Jim audited a class on community history at U of M Flint, which he found enjoyable due to the small class sizes. He appreciated that U of M made it easy for him to balance work and school, with flexible class schedules and the ability to do assignments outside of class.

The discussion then shifts to the benefits of graduate degrees in advancing careers and gaining a leg up in government positions. Jim explains that while graduate degrees are not always required for state jobs, they are often seen as an added benefit. The type of degree one pursues depends on their career goals, with specialization in a specific area making someone an expert in that field. However, having a general knowledge and being a good policy advisor may require a broader understanding of multiple area

Jim stressed the importance of finding the right balance between focusing on one's desired career path and being open to changing careers if necessary. He notes that there is a need for new professionals in the field as the workforce ages. Graduate degrees can prepare individuals for leadership positions and provide them with essential skills. Jim reflects on his own experience, mentioning that he initially studied educational administration but now wishes he had studied healthcare instead. However, he believes that the leadership and financial management skills he learned in educational administration are transferable to other fields, including healthcare. Additionally, his graduate degree in Public Administration focused on school finance, school law, and leadership, which proved to be useful when he got involved in budget decisions and school aid. Jim also discusses the benefits of U of M Flint's hybrid model, which allows for a combination of in-person and online learning. He found the flexibility and hybrid approach appealing, and the use of an online portal called Blackboard for classwork made it convenient.

The ability to balance attending City council meetings and coursework was made possible by the flexibility of the program. In conclusion, Jim shares his advice for individuals interested in a public administration degree or a career in the public sector. He encourages them to utilize the resources available to graduate students, such as professors and office hours, to be successful. He also highlights the value of scheduling courses according to one's ability and goals, and the importance of discussing plans with someone to ensure the right time for graduate school.

Join us on this episode of Victors in Grad School as we dive into Jim Ananich's personal journey and gain valuable insights into finding success in the field of public administration and politics.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:

Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, dr. Christopher Lewis, director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You and I every week get to go on a journey together. Then opportunity for us to be able to talk with one another, to be able to really delve a little bit deeper into what it takes to find success in graduate school. I know you may be at the very beginning just thinking about graduate school. You might be in graduate school still trying to figure things out, might be toward the end, trying to look at what's post grad school look like. But for all of you that are going through graduate school, there is definitely things that you can do to be able to be successful. And every week I love being able to sit down and talk to you about this, bring you guests that are able to tell their stories and be able to share their experiences because every person's experience is a little bit different. But the things that you can do while you go through grad school, you can learn from every person, no matter if they go to med school, law school, public administration school, physical therapy school, whatever it may be, you can take things out of everyone's journey and learn from them. And that's what this show is all about. This week. We've got another great guest with us, Jim Anna. Nick is with us today. And Jim is the chief executive officer for the Greater Flint Health Coalition. He's also a past Michigan State Senate Representative, and we're going to be talking about some of those experiences and how he got into some of those experiences and how his education helped him in those experiences. But I'm really just excited to be able to talk to him in general and be able to have him share his story with you. Jim, thanks so much for being here today.

Jim Ananich [00:01:54]:

Thanks very much for having me.

Christopher Lewis [00:01:55]:

It is my pleasure. I love being able to talk to people about their stories, and I think what I'd love to do is I'd like to go back in time. I know you did your undergraduate work back at Michigan State University. And at some point during that time in undergrad in those first experiences that you had working as a teacher, you had to have gone through some point in time where you said, I need to go back to graduate school or I want to go back to graduate school. What were some of the reasons that were going through your head that made you choose to go to graduate school?

Jim Ananich [00:02:28]:

That's a great question. And my dad was on faculty at U of M in the public administration and did some political science work. He was adjunct professor. So I spent a lot of time around U of M and I knew that when I liked school, I enjoyed learning and when I was home so I lived in DC. And then my dad passed and I moved home and I made a little bit of a career change and went from staffing in politics. I worked for my congressman and I just wanted to do something different. Went back to school for teaching and kind of decided as I was teaching, even when I was going to classes, that I thought maybe administration may be something I would want to do long term, maybe being principal or something in that range. So I started looking and then a good friend of mine, his mom told me about a program that she saw available where they were trying to train urban and rural leaders to be principals and that U of M had been awarded some resources to start a grant program to have some of the coursework paid for. So I was able to join the urban and rural can't remember the name exactly, but it made graduate school even more appealing because I had some of the cost covered. And looking back, almost the entire cohort are administrators right now. So it worked, there's no question about it. I mean, they're either retired or still doing some level of administration. So it was a great path for me. It made a lot of sense. And right before I did that, I took U of M Flint, public Administration Professor allowed me to audit a class on community history that I just thought was fun. And I sat in a class and I small class sizes, very intimate setting. And I'm thinking, well, this is how it's going to be. This makes it a heck of a lot easier because I was working and I knew I couldn't just leave work and go back to school like I did for undergrad do it around my schedule. So U of M has made it very easy.

Christopher Lewis [00:04:12]:

Well, I think you answered my second question, which I typically ask, why you chose U of M Flint. But you kind of made some comments there that I think you kind of said the small class size, the fact that your father was a faculty member there, you knew the school, you were back in the community and you're kind of living and working in the same area. I guess what I'd love to ask instead is talking about the fact that you were working and going to school at the same time and balancing life. So talk to me about balance and what you had to do to find balance in being able to be the full time employee, the part time student, and be able to be successful in that.

Jim Ananich [00:04:50]:

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that was so appealing about U of M. I mean, for me it was very close. I live in Flint. It's relatively common now but U of M flint was a little bit on the cutting edge of like offering a hybrid model for obviously we didn't do zooms and things like that back then and I am sure if zoom was a company yet, but we did Blackboard, which was an online portal that allowed us to do a lot of our classwork that way encouraged us to work together, and then we'd have really flexible class schedules. So I remember one, there was a professor on staff, he was a school law school finance professor and he was from Ohio. So he would drive up for the weekend. So we have these weekend courses which for some people that's not appealing, but for someone who's working, spend a few hours on a Saturday or Friday night, I mean, it's hard to beat. And then he would also do these hybrid model and it was really flexible. Plus instead of having you had to have it in by Tuesday at X O'clock, you'd have to be in class. We'd have this giving assignment and you'd have time to do it. So if you had time on Monday night to do it, you weren't required to do it in class. It helped that way too, so you could kind of set it around when you knew you had some flexibility. So I was also on City council at the time, so I had for part of the time I was in the cohort, so I was balancing that as well. So like on Mondays and Wednesday nights it was tough for me. So I would schedule my time around the cohort and when I had time to make sure I got the coursework done and I did very well. So it worked. But that flexibility, that differences of time for classes and the hybrid model worked really well for me. Some people have to be in class or it doesn't work for them. Some people want all virtual. Back then, that was a pretty new idea to do it the way they did it.

Christopher Lewis [00:06:22]:

There was a few years between the time in which you got your bachelor's degree at Michigan State University and then when you started in your master's degree in Public Administration at the University of Michigan Flint. You said you went to DC, you staffed, you got that experience, and then moved back to the Flint area. And I guess as you made that transition into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout that graduate school journey that might have been different than what you had to do during your undergraduate years?

Jim Ananich [00:07:00]:

Yeah, no question about it. It was a little intimidating at first to apply because it's been so long since I've been in school. I wasn't sure if it was like riding a bike or not. Like if you pick it right back up again, or if it would be, it's graduate school. So I didn't know the level of which from a difficulty standpoint. So once I got in and the school was very helpful, they worked with you, kind of professors were easy to talk to. It made the transition pretty good and pretty seamless, so that helped. And then I just had to find a way to schedule said before an undergrad. I did that full time. And for a graduate school, I think sometimes they tell you if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. So sometimes being more busy helped me because I really did have to focus and I wanted to do well. And some people that did the Cohort never missed a class, always stuck with it. There were some that kind of would come and go. I think I had to take off one semester where I couldn't take the full load and caught back up later. But like I said, they were very open to that and that made a lot easier. It felt like they were on your side. It felt like U of M was on your side versus like, you're just there as a you know, as a number. And that was the minute. It's so appealing. It's like they genuinely wanted to see if they could resolve your problem versus just telling you you had to do something. You have to follow these rules, and sometimes they can seem arbitrary. At U of M it was, okay, how do we make you successful? And that was really very appealing.

Christopher Lewis [00:08:17]:

After you finished your degree, you continued, you got some more experience in public service. You were on the Flint City Council and serving the citizens of Flint. And then a few years after that experience, you ran for state representative. Talk to me about the degree itself, what you learned during that degree, what you learned in your experiences in serving the people of Flint that you were able to take from the degree, your experiences that allowed for you to be successful in being a state senator.

Jim Ananich [00:08:55]:

Yeah, I mean, I think probably even more so than the undergraduate degree, which obviously was important to me as well. But the graduate degree was a lot more practical. It was very specific to schools. But school finance, school law, a lot of these other courses on leadership, those things actually helped me when I got to Lansing. Often you feel like you get your undergraduate degree and you stretch yourself out all these things and maybe you never use it again, or you don't feel like you're using it again. That was definitely not the case with the graduate degree, because when you get to Lansing, I got put on Appropriations, so I'm deciding the budget. School finance was extremely important at the time because at the time they made a huge cut to education, but they were trying to act like it was a small cut and it was easy to explain to folks, well, let me tell you what this is actually going to do to schools. And we were able to stymie some of it because of that. But also it was because I had a knowledge in specifics of how schools are financed that I was able to uniquely have an understanding better than most or better than almost everybody in my first year, which is unusual. It takes a while to learn massive budget like the state and how it works and parts of the budget I didn't have as well of an understanding of. But schools I had pretty early and I was on the school aid budget. So it really did work itself out pretty well that way. A lot of rules around schools were changed in the last decade. One of the main reasons, in my opinion, why we've had such an excess of people leaving teaching and it's ironic that they want to go back and oh, we need to lure people, we need to incentivize people to go to come to schools to be teachers again. And it's like, well, all the things we did the last decade is why they left. But that's neither here nor there. But it does matter to learn history. It doesn't matter to learn that policy does make a difference. And I learned that at U of M. I learned that there's reasons for the policies in place that they are. There are policies you can put in place to attract teachers and bring some of the best. There are some things you can do to save money that will have an effect in the long run on people leaving the field. So I was able to speak about it from a I could kind of project what was going to happen and I was right, unfortunately. I wish I would have wrong and that the bad things didn't happen, but they did, or they would have listened to me on the front end. But it was a very practical graduate degree for my teaching, but it also ended up being very helpful for my service and legislature too.

Christopher Lewis [00:11:00]:

For people that are thinking of doing a public administration degree or they're thinking of some type of work in the public sector in regard to public service or working in state government, I'm sure that you've seen the highs and lows of working in those type of fields. What kind of advice do you have for people that may be thinking about it, looking at a public administration degree and saying I'd like to work in that type of work in the future? What type of advice would you give to those individuals that would help them to be able to be successful in being able to work in that field and be, let's just say successful in the politics of working in that field?

Jim Ananich [00:11:37]:

Sure, we're talking about graduate schools, so obviously, potentially they would have gotten started after their bachelor's degree, they would have got into the field. Maybe they're not at the point in the career where they want to be and they're trying to kind of go through the ranks. I definitely think a graduate degree, especially here at UV and Flint, could be very appealing and could be very helpful because often they're not requirements of state jobs, but they're definitely like there's the basic requirement and then there's the added benefit and it's almost always in that extra category. So it gives you a bit of a leg up in government. It doesn't seem like it because it's been bashed for so often, but there are a lot of experts, content area experts, and that people do rely on those folks. So it depends on which way you want to go. If you go on the executive branch, often you get put into like a civil service system where you're kind of working on a very narrow topic. You can move around, of course, but you have one very big responsibility. It's important and you kind of work on that and become an expert. Or if you're in the legislative side or on the policy side, in a department or in the governor's office, I think both the degrees help either direction you want to go because you get a firmer, a more concrete understanding of the policy. If you're on the legislative side or in the policy offices of the governor or the departments, if you're trying to narrow in on a specialty and really be the expert on something, it's also very helpful. Now it's different so you kind of got to decide which one you want to do. Do you want to be the expert on defos remediation or something to do with roads or an issue in schools? Because if you are, then you narrow into that focus as part of your graduate degree. If you want to just have a general knowledge and be a good policy advisor, you still probably need to pick an area, but you need to have a little bit broader knowledge of the entire area. Obviously people change their mind, they change their careers all the time. So it's not says you're stuck in one rut if you don't end up liking it. But obviously you should focus your attention at the time which way you want to go. But no, there's a lot of a need and much like a lot of fields, we have an aging workforce. So there's going to be folks that are you may look and say, well, there's two or three people ahead of me, but they may not be there for very long, right? You're starting to see people leave at larger numbers and all of a sudden you're in leadership position. At least in my experience, the courses I took, the degree, the degree I was able to get definitely would have prepared me and did prepare me for those opportunities.

Christopher Lewis [00:13:57]:

So you're now in a new position and you are working again serving the community, but you are the chief Executive Officer for the Greater Flint Health Coalition. Talk to me about how your degree helped you or is helping you now in the role that you're in.

Jim Ananich [00:14:16]:

Yeah, obviously if I'd have known this is where I was going to be now, I might have rethought the educational administration and maybe done healthcare. But a lot of those things are transferable, right? Because at the end of the day, you're learning leadership skills, you're learning how to manage, you're learning finances. And they're not that different, right. Once you learn a balance sheet and all the different things you have to learn in school finance, moving over to a nonprofit health care, it's not that much different. I mean, there are different sources. There's different places where we get a lot of money from center for Medicaid, Medicare, different contracts. It's definitely different than a school. But the leadership components don't change. So there's no question it helped me. I think one thing it did help it helped organize my mind in a way that from a leadership and management standpoint, where before that, I just didn't have that. I don't think I knew what was happening as we were doing it. But looking back, at least the curriculum and the MPA program, and I'm sure there's plenty of others that are just as good, the course work, it was very purposeful and you learned it in stages, at least with our cohort. I'm sure you could jump around if you wanted to, but the way that they laid it out, it gave us deep understanding of how schools were organized and both at the policy level and how you finance and also, of course, the implementation of school curriculum, things like that, that helps really structure your brain in a way. Like the things matter and there are steps to the process. Obviously the steps are different here, but the structure helped me to transition relatively easily.

Christopher Lewis [00:15:51]:

As you look back at your graduate education, you think back to the transition in that we talked about and through that we talked about. As you think back to that, what are some tips that you might offer to others that are considering graduate education that would help them to also find success in that graduate school journey?

Jim Ananich [00:16:11]:

When you make a decision to go to graduate school, one, I think I would encourage people to do it, one starting off there, but make sure it's the right time. And sometimes with life, I mean, there is no perfect time, right? If you're looking for the perfect time to do something, you're probably never going to do it because life's busy. But there are times when it's a little bit easier to do it right. Not always the perfect time, but when it's a little bit easier in your life. So I would suggest, as you're considering it, the good thing about u of M at least, is you can go talk to somebody and have that conversation about, this is what I'm thinking, and you walk it through, walk the steps through with somebody. Bigger institutions may be tougher to do that. I can't tell me at U of M, but I would encourage that. And that's the nice thing is places like U of M, and in particular, this isn't like, let's see if we can sucker tuition out of you. We want you to be successful. There's no point in doing it if you're not going to be. So come have a conversation about like, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want to do. Here's my career path. Does this make sense for me? And the beautiful thing is people in the departments, the people in the sort of administrative offices are very helpful in those kind of conversations. So I would encourage those. Some people are kind of hesitant. I don't want to bother anybody. Well, that's exactly what they're there for, right? That's what they want to do. So have those conversations, and then when you're in, just make sure you schedule courses around, because there's so much flexibility now in a way that makes sure you're successful. If you can't handle three courses in a semester, then don't take three courses. I had to do that a couple of times as I was trying to catch back up because I missed a semester master where I had to cut back. But I was very successful when I did two. I could handle two. If I hit one, I could knock it out the park, but it would just take forever to get it done. And it's really a question of like, what do you want the end goal to be? Is it are you going to get a PhD and want to work in a university? Then you probably got to be a little faster, a little more intentional about it. If it's just for knowledge and getting better at your current job and not a requirement, take as much time as you want. If it's for principals, it's very helpful to have an educational administration background, whether it's an MPA or even a specialist, or of course, a doctorate. If you want to be a superintendent, I mean, you can do that as a principal. You don't need it. That's kind of depends on where you want to go. But I think the master's degree is very helpful as far as getting in the door and getting the interview. My father in law, his undergraduate U of M and did Eastern for his Ed doctorate because the U of M didn't have it at the time. And I know his getting that Ed doctorate helped him. He was Superintendent Grand blank. Almost all the superintendents. Now, not all of them, but many of them are at least have had specialist degrees. So it kind of depends on which way you want to go talk. I've never done college administration, but I know some folks that have and are doing that, and it seems to have that level of education definitely helps. So really, it's kind of you don't have to have your life plotted out, but the nice thing about graduate school is undergraduate. People expect you to kind of move around a little bit more. In graduate school, it is, by nature, more focused, so you want to make sure you pick the right one and then just have a realistic timeline to get it done. Professors were very helpful. The office hours were real, and you could have conversations also. You could communicate with them outside of that, like, if you're having problems. So everyone wants you to be successful and the tools that are available should be used. I'll say that. And then once it got out, I used my master's in a lot of ways to help get me in the door, and then the skills I learned from it helped me to be successful. So there's no question in my mind. I mean, I'm very happy I did it. I didn't need to as a teacher at the time. Of course, the pay scale was based on years of service and education, so it did help me. There's no question I got paid more. I didn't end up going into school administration, but obviously the funding of it, the policy of it, was happening all the time when I was in Lansing, so it was definitely valuable for me.

Christopher Lewis [00:19:41]:

Jim, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today, for sharing what you have gone through, and for helping others to be able to think about this in a different way and be able to think about ways in which they can make that transition as well. And I wish you all the best.

Jim Ananich [00:19:58]:

Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

Christopher Lewis [00:19:59]:

The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at Flintgrad office at Umflint.edu.

On this episode of Victors in Grad School, host Christopher Lewis sits down with Shelly McFarlane, a criminal defense attorney who shares her journey from undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan Flint to law school at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. Throughout the episode, Shelley reflects on the importance of flexibility and finding the right fit in graduate school, the challenges she faced transitioning from work to school, and the preparation needed for success. She discusses the decision to attend Cooley Law School, highlighting the school's flexible scheduling options that allowed her to balance work and family responsibilities. Shelley also opens up about initially wanting to pursue a career in dentistry before discovering a passion for law, and how her background in premed has shaped her legal career. She emphasizes the significance of advocating for oneself, seeking help, and maintaining a balance between investing in oneself and taking risks. The episode delves into Shelley's fulfilling work of helping people who have made bad choices and the impact it has had on her and her family. Listeners gain valuable insights and tips for navigating the challenges of graduate education, defining success, and following their passions. Don't miss this inspiring conversation on Victors in Grad School.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

This podcast is brought to you by The Office of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint. If you're still wondering about other things to consider when it comes to graduate school, you can also contact the Office of Graduate Programs at UM-Flint. We're here to answer questions Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST. You can also find out more about the 50+ programs that the university has to offer here.

TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Lewis

Welcome to the Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in grad school. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint.

Really excited to have you back again this week, as we do every week. I love being able to sit down with you, to talk to you, to work with you as you walk through this path that you are on, to be able to explore graduate school. Whether you are just starting to think about it or you're in graduate school yourself, there are things that you can do day in and day out to prepare yourself and to work toward finding success in the journey that you're on. And that's what this show is all about. I love being able to sit down and work with you every week and talk with you every week to bring people and ideas and thoughts and experiences to you that will help you to think about the journey that you are on because every person's journey is just a little bit different. But you can learn something from everyone's journey about what you can do to find that success for yourself and find that path for yourself that will lead you to the career goals that you have for yourself. I do that every week by bringing you someone new, someone to learn from.

This week we got another great guest. Shelley McFarland is with us and Shelley is a criminal defense attorney in Flint and she did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan in Flint, but then went on from there and went to Western Michigan University cooley law school to get her graduate degree, her law degree to prepare herself for her legal career. Really excited to be able to have her here and to have her share some of her own experiences. Shelley, thanks so much for being here today.

Shelly McFarlane

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Christopher Lewis

I love being able to have different people here to share those experiences. And I think what I would love to do is I want to turn the clock back in time because I know for every person there is a point in time where you identify for yourself the path that you want to be on. And I guess as you think back and you go back to that point, might have been an undergrad, might have been after undergrad, what were the reasons that you chose to go to graduate school?

Shelly McFarlane

Well, thank you. There were a lot of moving parts and variables that got me to where I am today. Originally when I started undergrad, I wanted to be a dental hygienist and I thought from there thought, well, what else can I do? I wanted to help people, that was my ultimate goal. And through dental hygiene I could have. But then I thought well, I can make more of an impact if I'm the dentist. I can help in that capacity. So I switched gears a little bit and started working towards a bachelor's degree at UVM Flint for pre dental. So I followed the premed program and I did biology, chemistry, communications, applied to dental school. I wanted to stay in Michigan, so I applied to University of Michigan and Detroit Mercy, and I did not get in. So I paused. I thought I did everything right. I did the pre dental club at UVM Flint. I volunteered. I worked at an office, and I couldn't figure out what else I needed, so I got frustrated a little bit. But I live by everything happens for a reason. And that path ultimately steered me towards law school. I worked as a chemist for a local company in Flint for a couple of years. And as I was there, I looked further into law school and decided to sit for the LSAT and applied to one school I went to, like you had mentioned, western Michigan Cooley Law School. And that was kind of the route I took. I have a different background than most law students. There were a couple of people that said, what a waste of an education to go from premed to law. And it actually is not. It's refreshing to not have the same background as every other attorney. A lot of the stuff that I use or learn for the premed route I use now when it comes to the chemical testing for blood alcohol, urine, all that stuff, I utilize, and it's different. I stand out from other defense attorneys because most don't have the premed background like I had. So I took a long, winding path to get here. But I truly believe I'm exactly where I am supposed to be. I'm helping people just like I wanted.

Christopher Lewis

I know you just were talking about the fact that you ended up at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, and there's a number of law schools not only in Michigan, but across the nation. Talk to me about the reason that you chose to attend Western Michigan University Cooley Law School and what you were looking for in a law school that led you to choosing Western Michigan Cooley Law School.

Shelly McFarlane

So my decision to go to Cooley actually was based on where I was at the time that I decided I wanted to go to law school. I wasn't fresh out of undergrad. I had a couple of years had passed already where I was working, and I wanted to maintain my job. So I had spoke with my company and I said, I know I'm full time right now. I'm hoping that I could move down to part time so I could do both. I wanted to continue working while I was going to law school, and Cooley was the perfect fit. I was able to adjust my schedule for school whether I wanted to take morning, afternoon, night, weekend classes and continue to work in a career and also maintain my family. I was married and I had a stepson at the time. He was very young at the time, and I also knew that I wanted to have children of my own as well. So Cooley really fit perfectly into my needs and schedule, and it really was a perfect fit. I was able to continue working. Ultimately, I did end up leaving my job because I was fully invested in law school and convinced that I was going to continue. Part of the reason why I was hesitant was because I knew I wanted to take the leap. But it was such a big leap from already being in a career to basically switching fields. The premed, the chemistry biology portion, and then law school. They're very, very different forms of learning. And I knew I wanted to go to law school, but there was a part of me that was still scared to make that leap. I'm glad that I did. I was able to do it all, and I was able to continue to invest in myself to get to where I am today. But there was a piece of me that was reserved at the beginning, and I wanted to make sure that I still had something to fall back on just in case I thought I made a mistake or made a bad choice. I didn't. I was very, very pleased. Once I started, I was able to leave my company and then concentrate on school and my family. And Cooley was again the perfect fit to be able to maintain both schedules.

Christopher Lewis

It's great to have flexibility and be able to find a way to incorporate it into the busy life that you have. Not every graduate school does that, so it's nice to be able to find that and find what is the right fit for you in that regard. Now, throughout your experience, you did find success. You got through your law degree, you made it into the bar exam. You made it passed the bar exam. You're in practice right now. Talk to me about what you had to do, especially in transitioning from work back into school, and even the transition from originally back in your undergrad and the way in which you had to study and had to prepare yourself in undergrad. Talk to me about what you had to do to be able to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your law school journey?

Shelly McFarlane

I have to be honest, it was a transition. The biology chemistry area, it's just a different type of learning and studying than it is for law school. And my first year, it was difficult to transition because I was so technical and there was a right answer coming from undergrad. There was always an answer, a goal to work towards. And then when you get to law school? The answer was, well, who argued it better? Here's the outline, here's the law. And then you have to argue it to fit your facts. Well, again, it was different for me and a very different style of learning and studying. So the first year of law school, I think is difficult for everybody. But I did feel a little more pressure because I was coming from a different style. And again, I was able to overcome that and learn and adapt. And whether it's approaching your counselor, approaching your professors, asking for help, you have to be able to advocate for yourself. Not just when you're an undergrad or in law school, but even now, even today, you have to be able to ask for help and advocate in order to be able to continue to be successful. And I did that. My first year in law school, I made an appointment with a professor because I was struggling. I was struggling in how I needed to take exams because I was very long winded and I'd run out of time. And that to me, was my turning point. That's where once I was not afraid to ask for help and direction and I was able to get pointed in the right direction and how I was supposed to form these answers to these exams, that was where I flourished. I was not afraid. And then I was able to follow the direction of my professor. And he wanted to help, he wanted to see me succeed, but he didn't know I needed the help because I hadn't asked. And that really was the turning point for me. It was tough once I got there and got that extra direction, again, I was able to apply it across every class and be able to answer the questions like I needed to. Now, again, very different backgrounds. But in order to continue to succeed in law school, I had to make sure that my schedules were also balanced. After my first year, I knew what was expected and I knew how much time was going to be put into studying. I was somebody that came from balancing three jobs. As soon as I turned 16, I was balancing three jobs. I'd never not had a job. I'd always worked very, very hard to make sure that I had everything that I needed. And being able to step away from my career in order to concentrate and focus and be all in for law school was scary. It was a risk. And again, I had to make sure that I wasn't afraid to invest in myself. And I did that. And again, I was able to get through all of law school and be where I'm at today. Are there risks involved? Absolutely. But that's going to happen no matter what. No matter where you are, no matter what your goals are. You don't have to have it figured out from the very beginning. Again, when I was entering undergrad. I wanted to be a dental hygienist. And I tell that story to people often because my path was changed and I ended up exactly where I'm supposed to be. My goal was to help people and to have a family. And I'm able to do that from where I'm at today. So I wouldn't have been able to do all of the stuff and be able to reach those goals if it wasn't for, again, my undergrad at UVM Flint, and then also going through fully law school.

Christopher Lewis

I love what you put there because there's a lot to unpack. And one of the things you talked about, I'm going to say the invisible assumptions that graduate school faculty and more make of new students, that there are unseen assumptions and expectations that are placed on every graduate student. And when you do step into that graduate school journey, you may not know what those are. So being willing to be an advocate for yourself is so important. That's why I really love what you said, because you stepped forward and you may have been a little afraid at first, and I think that a lot of students would be afraid to step out and say, I don't get it, this is really hard. But that you have to be willing to do that and put yourself out there and to ask for the help that you need when you need it, as faculty will help you, or they'll point you in the right directions to where the help can be found, but you have to ask for it. Now, the things that I would love to hear from you is that now you are in your professional career. You're out there, you're helping people, as you said you wanted to be in that helping profession. And you are in a helping profession. You are a criminal defense attorney. You're working with individuals. I love the tagline for your business where you say, sometimes good people make bad choices. That's true. And they need help just like anybody else do. And I guess as you look at the career that you're in, the work that you're doing on a day to day basis, and you reflect back now on the training, on the graduate training and education that you receive, how did that prepare you for the work that you're doing on a daily basis?

Shelly McFarlane

So part of what I do, again, helping people, that is because sometimes good people make bad choices. I have to explain that to my children because a lot of the times people will say, well, why would you want to help those kinds of people? And it turns into me defending my career choice often because I have to explain what I do on a daily basis. And there's a lot of things that law school teaches you, but there are also a lot of things that it can't and you will never learn in a school setting what type of impact you can have on individual people. A lot of the stuff that I do involves substance abuse. So drugs and alcohol and again, substance use. Substance abuse can affect so many people. Friends, family, strangers, all different types of people. And I'm able to get these clients the help that they need. You never know where you have substance abuse counseling. People don't know where these things are located because it's never going to happen to me. I was able to branch out and I go to these substance use and abuse centers. I go to residential facilities. I go out and meet these individual counselors. So when I have a client come to me and want to know what they can do to get help, in my mind, I'm already working towards the perfect match. I know exactly where I want to send them because I know this counselor and they're going to be able to help this client. In particular, I will get messages and phone calls that will say, I'm celebrating my five year sober today. I wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for you. I probably wouldn't still be alive if it wasn't for your help and your direction. So having the legal issue, again, those are the things that we learn in law school. We learn how to deal with the legal stuff. But the day to day, the personable stuff, again, where I said you have to advocate for yourself, reaching out, those are things that, again, I did do in law school, but it wasn't taught in law school. If you practice that and advocate for yourself, you're going to be that much more confident when you're advocating for somebody else. So when I pick up the phone and I call these facilities and I say, hey, I'm a defense attorney, this is what I do. I want to come check out your facility. You got to be okay to do that. And those, again, are things that you're not going to learn from a school setting, but you learn the concept, you learn the idea and the communication portion of it, whether it's undergrad or graduate school. So to be able to take all of that and tie it into a profession, again, there's more than just the schooling portion of it. There's so much more. And one thing, like I said, that you're not going to get from a graduate program, they're never going to be able to tell you what that impact feels like until you have that somebody pick up that phone and call you and tell you, hey, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here. Thank you for helping me. You can have conversations. I speak at different events, really, across the state, but you never know who is listening, who in the audience. It's impacting. Same thing as this podcast. You never know who you're talking to. Most people have been affected by some sort of drug or alcohol use and abuse either they know somebody or they're going through a struggle personally. You never know who's on the other side. And by speaking about it and letting people know where they can go for help, again, it's part of making a difference. And that was part of my goal, is helping people. So to take the education portion of it and then also the real life stuff, there's a lot of real life stuff that you're not going to learn in school. One thing that you can do is go out and volunteer. You'll get a lot of that. I know the schools will talk about it and people will think about volunteering, but there's a lot of stuff that you can get from there when you do the clinics, I was a part of one of the clinics in Lansing where we helped with estate planning. You got to meet the clients through the clinics and that gave me a taste of what it felt like to help people face to face. So again, you can learn some of that there. But in the profession, once you get out here, there is that tenfold. You will have so many more experiences once you're practicing again, that school doesn't necessarily prepare you for, but you could prepare for it again by advocating for yourself.

Christopher Lewis

Now in finishing up today. One of the things that I would love to know, and this is kind of again, reflecting back, thinking about the journey that you went on, what you had to learn along the way, and maybe things that you wish you had known before you had gone into law school and gone through that law school journey for yourself. Are there any tips that you might want to offer others as they're considering graduate education that will help them define success?

Shelly McFarlane

Well, there's so much, I mean, again, being able to be confident in your decision to follow a path or follow a dream, I know it is so scary. Whether you're a high school graduate just beginning undergrad or if you're going to graduate school, that entire decision making process is scary. And it's like that for everybody. So I want everybody to know that those feelings are normal. Even if you come from a family of doctors or lawyers and you know that this is your path and you were born to be an attorney, you were born to be a doctor, you were born to be a teacher, whatever that path may be, it's okay to change. And if I would not have felt okay to change, I would have stayed and became a dental hygienist and that would have been my start and my end. I was confident enough to take a risk and confident enough to invest in myself. And each little change started to become bigger and bigger and that's how I ended up where I am today. And again, I can assure you this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. I thought I had a plan. And that plan continued to evolve. And I'm glad I allowed that to happen because there are so many lives that I've been able to impact from where I'm at today that I probably wouldn't have been able to do had I not been courageous enough to make the change. So I think that's probably the most important. Again, it's okay to have a path or not have a path, but remember the change portion of it. That's kind of the purpose of it all. As you go and you learn and you evolve, and you may end up in a different spot. And that's okay. That's okay. So have the confidence to be able to change and trust yourself, you'll know, when it's the perfect fit.

Christopher Lewis

Well, Shelley, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your own journey and for the work that you're doing to help people in the Genesee County area. And I really appreciate your time today and I wish you all the best.

Shelly McFarlane

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Christopher Lewis

The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].