Ep #53: My Uncommon Story: Getting Off Autopilot, Outsider Insecurities and Spreading My Wings

Episode Summary

Jenna shares influences from her teen years and how travel, moving to suburbia, and heading to college impacted her perspective.

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Show Notes

Welcome back to my Uncommon Story Series, where I share experiences from my youth that helped shape my perspective today. This week is all about my teenage years: parties in Honolulu, a summer in Greece, finding my independence, a shocking move to Washington State, and my college experience.

My teen years were a collage of experiences that, in some way, challenged and changed me, causing me to dull my light and stay quiet. At the same time, my college years questioned my identity and pushed me to adapt as a small fish in a big pond.

Discover more about my background and the roots of my Uncommon Perspective on life and business. Unpack moments of my impressionable youth, days of rebellion, adventure, and hardship.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• The importance for grounding into your “why.”

• How travel opens your perspective and builds confidence.

• How to identify programming rooted in childhood experiences.

• Why words matter.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, this is a new series where I'm giving you the context behind what I share in this podcast; i.e., what went on in my life to get me here. Think of this as part entrepreneurial mindset building told through stories, part historical nonfiction, and part audacious, salacious, beach read. I hope you enjoy.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I am recording this just a few days before we leave for Spain for the month. In fact, when you're listening to this, I think we'll still be on our way, maybe our second flight, from Paris to Majorca. So, we are in the midst of the last-minute packing. My brain is telling me that this is hard and that there's so much to do, which there is.

But it reminds me a lot of what I see in business, with myself and others, where our brain just likes to have an opinion about it. It's my job to just direct it back into why I'm doing this.

Really grounding into how it is to be raising a son, that from his earliest memories, is learning that how we do things here isn't how things are done everywhere else. That there are pros and cons for everywhere. That paying attention to those details, and holding that truth, helps you make decisions about how you want to live your life.

See? Even just saying that out loud, which is why we do this in our mastermind, The Clarity Accelerator, we ground back into our “why,” and to what we are clear on and what we do know. Even just saying this to you all is making me feel excited about the trip. So, thanks for being on the listening end.

That whole topic about getting intentional about how you want to live your life, it's just the perfect place to hop back into my story. Last time, we left off where I had gone to New Zealand. I'd had my mind opened, and from there was able to make decisions about what were truly important to me.

One of the things that weren't important to me, were logos, anymore; clothing logos, brands of clothing. From there, all material goods; cars, zip codes. In releasing that, I was becoming more intentional about what I like. Asking myself, “What do I like?” I was really a changed person, and that showed up in a lot of different ways.

One, was that I had a new group of friends that last year. I'd already mentioned to you my Italian boyfriend, who was just beside himself that he couldn't impress me with material things. That really was part of the fun spark of our relationship. That I was just so over it, and he was so aghast and determined to prove to me, at least, why his Italian brands were very much worth paying attention to.

Now, my parents were pretty beside themselves about this boyfriend, or at least my dad was. My mom just swooned every time he came to visit. But I was raised in a very strict environment. I've already mentioned growing up on the military base, and how everybody knew who I was. All of a sudden, it's like you have tens of parents and older siblings.

My parents had told me that I couldn't single date until I was 18. I couldn't go on group dates until I was 16. When I met my Italian boyfriend, I was 15, so that was a problem. Especially coming back from New Zealand, that felt very, very restrictive to me. Because in New Zealand, we'd been going to parties, we'd been drinking alcohol, and I missed that freedom.

But I did have a little ace in my back pocket. Which is the fact, that ten years ago, when I was five years old… Yeah, we're going there. Ten years ago, when I was five years old, there was a time where I didn't get my way about something and I was extremely disappointed.

My mom was lying in bed with me that night, and she said, “Okay, you know what, honey? Tomorrow, we'll do what you want to do.” Even at that age… I was always a very strange child… I thought about it and I realized that that promise would have so much more value to me when I was older than it would at that age.

So, I said, “Actually, I want to be able to do it for my 16th birthday. On my 16th birthday I get to do whatever I want to do.” She said okay, assuming, who would remember that all those years later? That way, she got out of having to cater to me the next day.

Except that I didn't forget. I had this amazing memory back then. I would keep reminding her of this throughout the year. So, it was something that grew and grew. My boyfriend, by the way, was a senior. Wouldn't you know, that prom was coming up right around my birthday? So, I told my parents that that is what I wanted for my birthday, I wanted to go to prom.

Not only did I want to go to prom, I wanted to stay out all night with all the other friends that were renting hotel rooms down in Honolulu. Because that's where the prom was being held, at a hotel down there. I wanted to stay there and hang out with them all night. Somehow, my mom convinced my dad that, yes, she had to maintain this promise that she had made.

But I remember the rule is, I think I had to call home every hour throughout the night. As if that would stop anything. But bless their hearts. Being a parent now, I'm seeing the other side of the story. But it was such a magical night. I just felt so free. I had so much fun.

You know when you're one of the younger kids in high school, then you show up at the senior party, and all of a sudden you're seen in a completely new way? That's really what was happening. I just felt so old and mature. That led to another event, which was soon after that, because I was now part of this group that could party together, right? Friends that party together, stay together.

My boyfriend and I were invited to another party that was happening one night, and it was on the North Shore. So, I lived close to Pearl Harbor. This was going to be across the mountains. For those of you who are familiar with the geography of O‘ahu, we would actually be going through the Likelike pass, so it was not a really safe drive. Something that my parents never allowed me to do, especially at night. Especially after being at a party.

Now, there were four of us girls who were best friends. We were all pretty much on the same wavelength, except for one of us, who was the good little girl out of the group. We knew we couldn't tell her about this party. The other three of us decided that we were going to have a sleepover at someone's house whose parents really didn't care what she did or where she went. I think she was older than us. We weren't going to invite our other friend.

Now, everything was going well, and nobody would have been any the wiser, except that the friend that we didn't invite, just happened to call my house that night and ask for me. My mom, who is the consummate people pleaser, was just devastated that we would leave her out of a party that we were having.

She decided to call my friend's house and have a conversation with me about it, right then and there. Not wait until the next morning, but to actually talk about it then because she felt so bad for my friend. Well, when she called she got the news that we weren't there, and all hell broke loose.

I still remember driving up to my friend's house, and her parents came straight out and said, “Jenn, your parents want you to go home immediately. Here are your things.” That's definitely the most trouble that I'd ever gotten myself into. My parents grounded me for, I think, a month.

This happened to be exactly when, not only were a couple of my friends graduating, including my boyfriend, but we were all splitting up. So, my dad had by then retired, and we were going to be moving to Washington State. Of course, my boyfriend was going back to Italy. A couple of my friends were moving away. So, this really was our last month together.

We'd had just such a great year, and I couldn't participate in any of it. I couldn't see my friend get awarded as valedictorian. Couldn't go to any of the final parties, of course. I remember being so devastated. But I really only had to endure it for a month, because I had already lined up my second exchange trip for that summer, going to Greece.

So, I had mentioned in an earlier episode, that my mom had not allowed me to do a yearlong exchange trip. But if I were able to find financing and work everything out for myself, they would let me do two shorter exchange trips. I already had this other exchange trip lined up to Greece, and so while they were in the process of moving from Hawaii to Washington, that's where I went for the summer. Off to Greece, just a newly minted sweet 16.

That's where finally I could stretch my legs a bit. By legs, I mean, screwdrivers and peanuts for breakfast at an outdoor café, before hitting the beach. Because there was an interesting situation going on with my host sister, in that her parents were also very restrictive. She also had a fairly significantly older boyfriend, and her parents were very against this relationship.

What she had done on her end, hooking up with me, I was like her governess. For some reason, her parents would trust me going out with her during the day, when really, she would just drop me off at the cafe in the morning, and then go off with her boyfriend. Then, we'd meet back up to go home in the afternoon.

So, I was left hanging out with all of her boyfriends, friends, and some of the other Americans on my exchange trip. Also, another American who was traveling through Greece with her grandmother at the time. It really became just a golden summer.

I just have such vivid memories of… Well, in fact, this is one of the pivotal memories when I think back over my timeline, and the strange little things that really sunk in and make you wonder, “Why did my brain focus on that? What was really going on?” One of the ones that I always refer to, so that my clients can see what I'm talking about, is this time where I was on a city bus in Greece, and I was feeling so elated.

When I think back about that memory, I just have to wonder why. Why would I be so elated on a city bus? What was it about it? Then, I remembered the steps getting there were that I had to use my limited Greek to try and accomplish this thing on my own. Ask people the way to the bus stop and buy the bus ticket. Talk to food vendors in order to buy food; I was going to the beach.

So, I was buying peaches, a loaf of freshly baked bread, and a bottle of water, because I didn't have a lot of money; I guess spending it on alcohol. But that was what I just loved to eat for lunch. I'd finally made it. I was on this bus by myself, 16 years old, which I wouldn't be doing back home. I felt so elated. When I think back, yes, it was the freedom, and it was the accomplishment. But really, what it came down to for me, is that I was so awake and so alive.

I couldn't help comparing that to times when you're driving down the street, and you honestly can't remember if the stoplight you just passed was red or green. You just assume it was green, because these are the things we do on autopilot. But you're not fully in the moment. In that moment, I was fully in the moment.

When you're traveling, especially back when no one spoke English, you just had to concentrate on everything. Oh, interesting. Yes, I think I was feeling a little heartbroken or something from my Italian boyfriend. I think that might have been part of this, as well. There were times where I'd be waiting; did he write today? Did he write today?

In that moment, I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just there, and it felt so delicious. There was also a lot of learning going on. I was with my host family; we were taking trips around Greece. They were amazing hosts, in that regard. I really got to see how they lived and how they traveled and be inside their minds.

I came up against some ways of thinking that absolutely floored me. Like these friends, of my host sister’s boyfriend. They would tell me, looking me dead in the eye, that foreign women only come to Greece in order to have sex with Greek men. I was so dumbfounded. I'm like, “Not for the history? Not for the architecture? None of that? Just to be with you guys?”

They would say yes. Now, of course, this is not representative of all Greek men, but it will play into something I'm going to tell you about later. They just seemed really confused about why I wasn't having sex with them. I had never been exposed to casual sex before, and I found that idea really interesting. Not something that I wanted to engage in at that point, but just really fascinating to even think about.

Another fond memory was the first time I went to the beach with my host family. We all peeled off our clothes, I was in my bathing suit, and I remember them kind of looking at me, looking at my body, and saying, “Oh, wow, you'd have a really great body if only your hips were a little bigger and your breasts were smaller.”

I remember being really caught off guard, because back in the 80s, before JLo ever came around, really small butts were kind of the right thing that you wanted, and large breasts. So, just in the same way that New Zealand had taught me that so many material goods and material things that I'd taken for granted were completely arbitrary, I started to understand, oh my god, ideas of beauty are completely arbitrary as well.

As I looked around at, for instance, magazines… Oh, that's fun. Because even just the little weeklies, that would come in the weekly newspaper or whatnot, would have topless women on it. I'd never seen that before. But even Playboy magazines, sure enough, there would be these women on the covers that kind of looked like the body of Venus de Milo.

Apparently, the perfect breast size was like a champagne glass; not a flute, obviously. But a glass with much thicker hips. Then, the big, big eye-opening experience for me, of course, was just the freedom that teenagers had in those countries.

There was no drinking age. People were always out and about on their motorcycles. I remember many evenings where I'd be with these friends, and they'd say, “Oh, you have to come check out these special little doughnuts that this one little town makes over there.”

So, we'd hop on the back of their motorbikes, and we'd go for, I don't know, half hour in the dark, driving to who knows where little town, in order to get these special little things they made there, these special little pastries. That was just the way kids spent their time.

I never saw a Greek person drunk. Never saw a Greek person drunk because they all grew up with wine and alcohol. They just learned to manage it from a very young age. Now, us Americans, we got a little sloppy, I have to say. I remember people looking at us in a rather shocked and unfortunate way.

That served me so much, because by the time I got to college, I just really felt like I had it all under control. At a party, maybe I'd have a couple of drinks, and then pretty much be done. But anyway, I'm setting up the scene for you so you can see the life that I was living there at 16.

Then, cut, frame, to Issaquah, Washington. A little town outside of Seattle, which is where my parents had decided to move. Now, this area has grown up a lot. It's actually where Costco is, and Microsoft is right on the same lake as Issaquah. But back then, it was pretty sleepy.

Every one that I met there; I was so amazed because they had communal memories. They would all remember the same things that had happened when Johnny fell down and broke his leg or something. When they were all in first grade, and they could all remember that. As military kids, none of us had communal memories.

One of my first nights there, we were heading up this hill into the mountain where we lived, and we saw something rolling down the street past us. Then we saw another thing rolling down, and we thought, “What in the world is going on?” Well, it was a small enough town, that every week they would print the police report in the newspaper.

We were reading that, the next, whenever it came out, I guess it was Sunday or something, apparently some teenagers had been caught rolling cantaloupes down the hill trying to hit cars. Now, first of all, that's the kind of fun the teenagers were getting into there. Second, who can afford to buy all these cantaloupes to roll down the hills?

I think that's a great story to really set up the sheltered environment that my parents had moved me into, and the privilege, like white bread privilege, that was there. In fact, on the first day, when I went to register for high school, I was standing in line looking around and noticing how white everybody was.

I said to somebody that I was talking with, standing next to, “Wow, this town is really white bread.” She looked at me and said, “No, we have five black people.” Which, in and of itself, is a thing. I told you that I'd grown up in Hawaii with racial diversity. Then, in the military community, there's so much racial diversity.

So, this is the first time that I had ever been anywhere in the US where there was so much whiteness, and where somebody would think that five black people constituted a diverse community. But here's the real kicker, four of those people were Filipino, it turns out. So, there was this homogenous culture. There was a high standard of living. There were these wholesome kids, and a very, very low crime rate.

For the first time, my parents are like, “Be free, young thing, you're free. You can date. You can do whatever you want.” Because there was nothing to do. The worst trouble that I could get into there, and it wasn't really trouble... The worst thing that I kind of shouldn't be doing but I was doing, was friends and I would drive out to Snoqualmie Falls. Which is where the show Twin Peaks was filmed, a cult classic back in the day. I don't know if you've seen it.

But we would drive out there at night. We knew a special pass to get down to the bottom of it. We'd walk along, and we'd go sit at the rocks at the base of the falls, they were always lit up at night, and we just sit there and talk and have fun.

Not drink, though, because the people there didn't drink alcohol, and they didn't swear. It was a really strange environment, I think, for any teenagers I've encountered anywhere else. It might just be that point in time, maybe things are different today. I know that so many young people are a lot healthier, they are drinking less alcohol. But from what I had seen, in that point in time, this was way outside the norm.

There was this thing in Seattle; this is pre grunge. This is right around… I think “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out when I was in my senior year of high school. There was this attitude, in Seattle and the surrounding areas at the time, that our kind of coolness or hipness is displayed by our type of humor; the way we talk and the kinds of jokes we make.

I mean, they're just the pre hipsters, right? So, the ironic music that we listened to, that is kind of what defines us as cool. But drinking alcohol and swearing, and any of that, is definitely not cool. So, I really think of this time here in Issaquah, as the most challenging cultural immersion, in all of my travels.

There's this movie called Keeping Up with the Joneses with Gal Gadot. They're CIA agents, and they've had to travel all around the world and fit into different environments, and not be noticed or seen. But she's saying to her husband, Jon Hamm, “You don't know, this is suburbia. You don't know how hard it is. The women here are vicious.” I think that's what she says.

Here, when I was getting to know people, they would ask me questions about myself, I was introducing myself, and I had already accumulated so many stories, lived in so many different places that it seemed like a divide between us. I noticed that when those stories were over, there was really nothing left for us to talk about. And/or we'd created too much of a divide for them to perceive that we would have more to talk about.

Sometimes, with things I would say inadvertently, that would come out of my mouth, I'd see a couple of the girls kind of look at each other and then kind of raise their eyebrows and laugh, and think it was just something very strange and weird for a person to say.

I've mentioned this on other podcasts, how I didn't lean into that difference. At that point in my life, I did the opposite. I made sure not to really talk about myself, not to talk about any of my past experiences, and to make myself really as vanilla as I could.

I actually continued that when I went into college. I'd have to trust somebody in order to start telling them these things about my life. I had to trust them as a friend first. That reinforced, in my brain, that this was a sound strategy. That really, it was better not to shine, and not to stand out.

On one level, I got over that, to a certain extent, fairly quickly in my 20s. But on another level, we all know that we have this complexity. It’s something I'm still working on. In fact, here I am now, sharing these stories with all of you, many of you for the very first time. But it kind of worked out well that I didn't have a strong social life there. I wasn't dating anyone.

Because by that point, I was full on positioning myself for college. I was working all the time. I had student council, different clubs, and had a job. My very first job was $3.85 an hour working at a chocolate factory. I remember they had us wear…

It was in an area called the Issaquah Alps, because it's very reminiscent of the Alps. This was an Austrian chocolate factory. The place was built to look like a little chalet in the mountains. They had us wearing these dirndls. The things that you see women wearing at Oktoberfest, where there's kind of a corset that cinches them up, and a little white blousy thing covering their breasts.

Looking back on it, oh my God, horrible. But this is just what the girls wore who worked at this chocolate factory. By the way, yes, we could eat as much chocolate as we wanted to. It was really delicious. It was really good.

Of course, I was in the most difficult classes that I could get into. Definitely in math, because, like I mentioned in the last episode, I had taken a class in summer school specifically so that I could finish calculus as a junior, and then not have to worry about math my senior year. But that was the only accelerated class that they would let me take.

Because in Hawaii, if a child excelled, they would very easily and quickly and supportively move them up into any class, any grade the that they were capable of participating in. But in this school, they had a really strong level of academics at the median level. So, everyone was doing really pretty well. But no one was doing great, because they wouldn't allow people to move out of their grade level.

So, they made me retake classes. I had read the exact same curriculum of books, and I had to retake the same classes again. That was true not just of English, but other subjects as well. To this day, I just have such a problem with rules for rules’ sake.

But I was still working just as hard as I could. I've never been a very fast worker; I've always been a very determined worker. So, I think I went both of those years with just about four or five hours of sleep a night. It was noted. In the end, I was voted Most Likely to Succeed. Which, actually, came back to haunt me very soon, and I'll tell you more about that.

I really couldn't wait to get away from this town. I'd set my sights on going back to the east coast for school. I'd grown up in the west coast and in Hawaii, and I really wanted to see the other part of the country. People asked me why, “Why Swarthmore? Why did you choose that school?”

To be completely candid with you, at the time, it was the number one liberal arts school in the country. That meant a lot to me. I've talked earlier about the life of the mind, and how frustrated I'd been, over and over again, when I couldn't stretch my legs academically or intellectually. I was longing for the hardest school that I could get into. I had a big ethic; still do. Still breaking it; that working hard equals success. That working hard equals my value. I've done so much work on that topic.

But the other thing I liked, was the very broad approach to academics that liberal arts gives you. They really promoted themselves as a place with a lot of diversity of thought. There was a story I remember, about two best friends on the same hallway. One was the head of the Young Democrats, and the other was the head of the Young Republicans. I just thought that was really cool.

I loved the history of the school. It was one of the first co-ed schools in the country. It was founded by Quakers, who believed from the beginning that women should be educated just like men. So, I applied early decision, and I got in. Which, on the surface, is great news.

It was certainly great news for me. I felt like I had been working my entire life to get there. Even since third grade, if you listened to the last episode. But most of my family, except for my mom, and my biological dad and stepmom, most of my family were not really happy about this.

My parents had fallen on some hard times financially when my dad retired. Because they'd always lived on a military base, they hadn't accrued equity in a house. So, they'd had to put all of their savings into a down payment for a house, thinking that they'd be fine with dad's retirement and any new job that he would get then; because people retire so young in the military.

But what happened just at that time, is that when President Clinton came in, they did a huge contraction on military spending. So, all of the defense contractors were losing bids and couldn't afford to hire people like they used to. Now, I have no problem with that. But it did affect us very hard.

There were many people that thought I was being extremely selfish by going to this expensive liberal arts school. But another promise that my mom had made me, and this one she made over and over and over again throughout my life, was that if I worked hard and studied hard, I could go to whatever school I wanted. Once again, she determined to hold that promise.

I remember, I did get a third of the tuition in scholarships, and we did a third in student loans. But then, for what was left over, it was split half between my mom and stepdad, and my biological dad and stepmom. Even making that part of the payment was so difficult for my mom. I remember, she sold all of her beautiful jewelry in order to afford that. Talk about a mom’s sacrifice.

I loved my college experience. I was so grateful to her for making that possible for me. But it wasn't just my family, it was everyone in the community too. They just couldn't understand why I would go so far away. Every four or five years, someone would end up going to Stanford, and that was somehow accepted and understood. But every other person stayed local and went to state universities or colleges.

We didn't have the money for me to go back and visit all of these schools that I was considering. I remember a friend's mom asking me, “But what if you get back there and you don't like it?” I just looked at her and I said, “I've just decided that I'm going to like it.” I probably said, “I've just decided that I'm going to love it, I just will.” She tells me that story to this day, it made such an impression on her.

I love how, even then, somehow, I had figured out that power of the mind to create our experiences for us. I found it so interesting, because my roommate had a very different experience. So, she had grown up in New York City. When she went to Swarthmore, she found it very provincial, very difficult, and isolating.

I could kind of see what she meant, because she and I would go back sometimes, for some of the shorter holidays that I couldn't afford to fly home for, like Thanksgiving, I would go with her to New York. So, I got to live that experience with her. This was back when New York was still pretty gritty. I just thought it was a blast. I thought it was so fun.

We had certain little bars that we could get into. I just remember it being so dark, and so different, than the brightly lit New York that I think of now. As I would interact with her, her friends, and her parents, there was just a different type of conversation than ever would have happened in Issaquah. So, I could see why she didn't need Swarthmore to fulfill those, I don't know, those buckets of yearning, like I did.

But for me, having that personal freedom, and that intellectual freedom, the ability to use the biggest words that I wanted to and be around people that really cared about these ideas that we were discussing, and where there was absolutely no shame. In fact, there was extreme competition to be the person that can synthesize these concepts and most clearly articulate them. It felt thrilling. For the first time in my life, I felt so free.

Except that it was also quite hard. Not just because the curriculum was hard, but because I was no longer the smartest person in the room. Or knowing what we know now about all the different types of intelligence, I was no longer that book smart person. I had gone from a small pond to a large pond, where I was just an average fish. It really rocked my self-concept, and sent me into years of spirals of self-doubt.

Looking back, I can clearly see what a fixed mindset I had. I'd grown up being told, “Oh, you're so smart,” and I'd attached my identity to that. If, in fact, I wasn't smart, or I wasn't the smartest, then what was I? Who was I? There was no room for growth. I had no idea.

When Carol Dweck did the study at Stanford, about the people that could succeed and be resilient and go on in life to figure things out and do new things, I was the one that really floundered. If I wasn't good at math, I just wasn't good at math. If I had been proved to not be the smartest, then I just wasn't as smart as I thought I was going to be. Or I just wasn't as smart as I thought I was.

We really didn't have a lot of personal development work in those days. There wasn't a lot of interest in it. I remember there was a book called My Mother My Self, that my stepmom had told me about. But the only people that were really talking about this in the mainstream, and for instance, going to therapy, were kind of either neurotic New Yorkers, or really disturbed people went to therapy.

So, the only way that I knew to cope with that was to have tremendous self-doubt, a very strong inner critic, and to work my ass off. I also, especially in this first year, had not learned yet to work smarter, not harder. So, I was reading every single thing on the curriculum that I could, trying to do all the work.

We had a computer center on campus. There were a few students that had their own computers, but that was a big deal. Most of us didn't have our own computer. So, I was having to do my work at the computer center. It closed at 3:30 in the morning, and I was there closing the place down every night, and then taking a shuttle back to my dorm.

I survived, again, on four or five hours asleep for so long. Which, of course, didn't help my academics. But again, no personal development work. We didn't know any of this stuff. It wasn't that I was going after the A's. Because A-, and even B+, were badges of honor at that school.

There was a big problem, or it had been brought to light, how many schools were undergoing grade inflation. So, we were all very proud of the fact that a B+ at Swarthmore was like an A at another top school.

In fact, people from other schools would transfer to Swarthmore because they wanted a more rigorous and challenging academic experience. We were all just little gluttons for punishment. We wanted to work really hard, and prove that we were working harder than anyone else. But what I really wanted, was just to hold my own in discussions with people, right? To hold my own in these classes, as we were debating, as we were discussing.

The students around me, it seemed they'd come in so much better prepared than me. They had such a breadth of knowledge. I remember, my boyfriend and my roommate, they knew so much about art history. They had already studied economics in high school. They knew so much more about social issues.

When I was there, my first year, that's when the Rodney King riots broke out. We were in New York at the time, all of us. We were in a place in Long Island, very close to the city, where the riots were getting closer and closer, and it was a very fearful moment.

But in discussing this, in the weeks that followed, both with them and on the Swarthmore campus, there was just such a different perspective on what the riots were and why they had happened. Specifically, on the level of understanding about the rage that was bubbling up to the surface for Black Americans.

So much of what we talked about during George Floyd, is what we were talking about in these campuses, back in the 90s. But I certainly hadn't been exposed to it growing up, and I wouldn't have been if I weren't at that school. Understanding that words matter, that was a big one as well. I remember my parents laughing at me when I would say something like firefighter instead of firemen.

I just want to share here, that anything that you feel passionately about or strongly about right now, and that maybe some people think you're making too big a deal over in your community, chances are that very thing, 20, 30 years from now will just seem so normal. Or maybe with the way information spreads nowadays, and the Internet, maybe it will only take a decade.

You just happen to be on the tip of the spear, right now. But that's what social change takes. It takes enough people making the same types of decisions, saying the same type of things, around more and more people, for those changes to become accepted on a broader level.

Okay, so travel was still a huge priority in my life. Now that I was an adult, I really did want to take that full year and live abroad. So, I ended up going to Spain in my sophomore year. It's interesting that I chose Spain because I assumed that I would spend most of my career in Latin America. I was an economics major. I really wanted to work in the fields of micro lending. That was just so cutting edge back then, though it's become such a successful model now.

I thought if I were going to be spending my life in Latin America, and I would need to be speaking Spanish, wouldn't it be fun to just go play for a year in Spain, and learn Spanish there?

Also, I had had this dream ever since I was a child. I used to love to ride horses, I was riding competitively, and I dreamed of being in the Olympics. That all came to a halt when my dad retired and we hit hard financial times. But I still dreamed of wanting to go back to the Barcelona Olympics in ‘92. Even if I couldn't ride there, I at least wanted to watch it.

So, I set myself up, in order to be studying that year and going forward. But I couldn't actually make it to the Olympics because I had to earn money. Instead of being in Barcelona that summer, I was in Issaquah, Washington, working in a towel shop folding towels all summer long, listening to the Olympics. Which was a good character builder, as my dad would say.

Let me tell you, everyone, that Spain trip changed my life. It was such a huge fork in the road, and such a great, great story that I am so excited to tell you about next time. Have a great week.

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