Transcription of Graduation #143
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show #143 “Graduation” airing for the first time on Sunday, June 8, 2014. Tis the season for graduations. As the mother of a high school senior, I joined the families and school across the state who are sending this year’s crop of graduates out into the world. What’s next for those who have turn the tassel?
This week we are joined by Genevieve Morgan, Island Port Editor and author of Undecided and former 207 Executive Producer Becki Smith, author of Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates, and Tim Sample, a widely acknowledged humorist who is a correspondent for CBS news Sunday Morning where he produced postcards for Maine segments. Thank you for joining us.
For long time listeners, I’m pleased to bring back into the studio a voice that you will find quite familiar. This is my friend and former co-host, Genevieve Morgan. Genevieve is a writer and editor from Portland. She is the author of Undecided, a book that helps post high school grads with the big decisions that affect their education and careers. Her next book, The Fog of Forgetting, book 1 of the Five Stones Trilogy will be released in July. Thanks for being here.
Genevieve: It’s so nice to see you, Lisa.
Lisa: It’s really great to have you back and I was saying to you earlier, I’m so impressed with the work that you’ve done in the time that you’ve been not with us. You’ve been really busy.
Genevieve: I have but I’m so pleased to come back and see all the great things you guys are doing and how well the shows prospered. It seems not that long ago that we were just thinking of doing this show.
Lisa: That’s true. I guess we’re almost 3 years here.
Genevieve: Congratulations.
Lisa: Thank you.
Genevieve: It’s a great thing for Maine and for Portland.
Lisa: For Portland. You’re a great thing for Maine and for Portland because I have your book Undecided: Navigating Life and Learning After High School in my hands. It’s something that I found really interesting to read because you and I both have children in this age range, the range where you’re trying to decide what do I do after high school and is it necessarily college? Tell me why this was an important book for you to write.
Genevieve: First of all I have a junior at Portland High School and a 14 year old coming up into Portland High School. My junior at that point, who was a sophomore last year when I started the book, was not doing very well academically. He seemed fairly unmotivated when it came to school. There was a lot of conversation in our household about whether college being so expensive was the right choice for him right after high school, because as you and I know, in order to go to college now, if you’re going to try and pay full boat, it causes extreme hardship except on the most wealthy people in the country.
If you can’t afford to pay full boat, your kids end up with ruinous debt after they come out of college unless of course they can get scholarships. There are ways around that, but it’s a much more difficult decision now and yet two-thirds of every high school senior wants to go to college. My thinking was what if you don’t get into college? What if you can’t go to college? What if you can’t afford to go to college? What are the options? I started to do some research and luckily my publisher, Zest Books in San Francisco, had already been thinking of doing a book along this topic.
When I spoke to them about it, they were so excited because they felt like it was a necessary topic to cover. I think it’s so important. I learned that there’s so many options for kids right now, so many ways that they can go and college is one of them.
Lisa: You started the book with asking kids to really understand where they are right now and by understanding what their personality is kind of, at least at the time that they’re reading this what their personalities were like, because we all know personalities can change.
Genevieve: Yes and particularly at that age.
Lisa: Yes. Exactly. Talk to me a little bit about that. I know there’s the standard introvert and extrovert, but you have a few other interesting things. You talked about the person who’s maestro for example.
Genevieve: A few areas of the books I’m asking kids to look at. They’re very, very basic. I don’t profess to be an expert in psychology, but I did in my research try to help kids understand where they are at at this moment in time. Some very basic fundamental stuff about their character and their temperament and the first one is introvert or extrovert because it’s a very important thing to know whether you get recharged with the group of people or recharged alone. You can imagine if you’re an introvert and you go to a big party school or you go to a big service program with a ton of kids and you’re never given any time to relax. You’re going to be miserable so that’s just a waste of time.
Then there is something deeper than that, which has to do with how you process information and how you utilize information and also how you are in a group. There are two different very basic categories. I really attribute this to Nicolas Lauer, who is a researcher in this area. Three quarters of us are tribal, we like to have a group around us all the time. A quarter of us are maestros, we march our own drum beat. We don’t necessarily need the validation of a group.
Obviously if you’re a maestro, you might have a little more success or be a little more excited about doing something that doesn’t require the support of your community. You could go off and train tigers and dance in the air or something like that. You might be able to feel a little bit better about if you can self identify it as that, as an adventurer. That doesn’t mean if you’re a tribal person, you’ll be unhappy doing that. It’s just that you might be better off in a program with a bunch of other kids.
Lisa: This is an interesting thing to be thinking about if you’re 15, 16 17, 18 because much of what we know when we’re younger comes from our families and comes from our peers and comes from all these external things. We’re just starting to get to understand ourselves.
Genevieve: Many kids, they want to do what’s right. They want to make the right choice and my point in the book is there really is no wrong choice at this point in your life except the choices that end you in jail, in rehab or in the morgue. Those are the 3 places where I want you to stay away from completely when you’re 16, 17, 18. Other than that, what you really need is a plan. That plan I hope will eventually lead to higher learning because I do think that a college degree really impacts your earning capabilities over the long term. These kids are going to live to be 110, hopefully.
To jump off from being 18 into a life of debt service, steady job, we’re putting a lot of pressure on our kids to do that because of our economic instability, but I wonder what happens to their personhood in that. That’s a very important thing for me and for my children. I know that they will eventually get the education that they need to hold down a good job, but I also want them to have a bold and adventurous experience. If they get a degree at 28, I’m really not that worried about it, honestly. I’m here to tell you. I don’t think they’re going to be that worried about it when they’re 60 and they look back whether they got their degree at 24 or 28.
Lisa: Gen, you describe your own experience as being someone who is sort of, I guess let’s say on the back you say, Genevieve Morgan has made a career out of being undecided.
Genevieve: It’s true.
Lisa: You’ve been a writer, an editor, a producer. You’ve lived in different parts of the country, you’ve written for different magazines, different publications. You’ve written different books. You’re a bit of a free spirit yourself.
Genevieve: I am and yet I have the same fears for my children that everybody has. However, I do think that if I look back at who I was when I was 17, I really wanted to be an actress. That’s all I wanted to do. I was good at school and there was an expectation that I would go to college and I was lucky enough to be applying to college in the late 80’s when it wasn’t so hard to get into. I remember distinctly I was going out with a guy who played in a rock band and I wanted to move to Hoboken and live with him and basically go on auditions. My parents were thrown into just spasms of anxiety over this.
I remember I got into Bowdoin, which one of the reasons why I’m in Maine. I spent half an hour in front of the post office with my matriculation card thinking do I send it in, do I not send it in, do I send it in? The epitome of undecided. I eventually sent it in. The boyfriend dumped me and so I did luckily have a place to go. It turned out to be a great thing. I was able to continue acting. I won the Theater Chair of Bowdoin and I went out to California to become an actress. I got to California, realized I wasn’t going to make any money being an actress and got a job fact checking at a magazine.
As the tides of life happened, I started to write more and that’s where it took me, but it was never a conscious choice. People are really lucky if they have a passion and they can actually say, okay, this is what I really want to do. I really admire those people. I’m not one of them.
Lisa: You talk about that in the book, that there are going to be people and maybe those are not the people who are going to read you book. Some people will say I want to be a doctor. I’ve already decided, I’m going to be a doctor, I’m going to go to medical school so then that kind of dictates where they go to college and what courses they take. It’s a relatively clear path. You suggest that maybe it’s okay to not know what you’re passion is, to take some time to think about it and even if you’ve taken some time to think about it, you still may not know what your passion is. That really is okay. That it’s just a lot of pressure we’re putting on kids these days.
Genevieve: I think so and I think that many of us get into our 40’s and we realize we’ve been living somebody else’s life because we thought we knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t have the maturity or the insight or self-knowledge to understand that we were actually working with somebody else’s script. I think that’s a reason for a lot of midlife crisis. I’m trying to say to the kids, try to get to know yourself a little better now or if you don’t know yourself, be brave enough to experiment and one of the things that I do really appreciate about college for me and for a lot of my friends and what I want for my own children is that it is a safe place to experiment with very wise people guiding you.
I think it’s a great privilege to be able to go to a good university and throw yourself into the mix and figure out what it is you like and what you don’t like. I wish I could give that gift to everybody. There are a lot of people who can’t afford it and a lot of people who can’t get it. What I really want to get across to those kids is that there are ways to cobble that experience together on your own that will lead you into a crazy bright, shinny future. To not be afraid to take the road less traveled. There are other maps.
College is the best known map, but there are tons of other maps. Even if it’s community college in your own community, travel abroad, international studies. Lots of kids are now looking to go oversees for a year and then they end up at college in Scotland or England or Ireland at, I will say, a third the price. Now, whose to say that that’s not a fabulous path for anybody? I look at your son, Campbell and I’m so impressed by what his choices are. He went to Guatemala right after high school, correct?
Lisa: Yes. Campbell went and spent time with safe passage in Guatemala and he helped to educate children who’s families were at the Guatemala City Dump picking trash.
Genevieve: Right. Bold and adventurous choice and has he regretted it at all?
Lisa: No. As a parent of a then 17 year old, I was very anxious, but you’re absolutely right, he went away, he had been accepted to Bowdoin, he was accepted to Cornell. He went away and spent time with people for whom money was thought of very differently. He came to value money himself very differently. When he came back to the United States, he said, you know, I think I’m going to go to the University of Maine where I have a scholarship. I’m going to go on to be a doctor and also study Spanish because it makes me happy. It was all as a result of being away for a year and spending time in a different culture and getting a completely different perspective.
Genevieve: Then his choices are his own. I think there’s an intangible maturity that comes with that. We’re all saying to ourselves as parents, do I really want to spend 60,000 dollars a year or have my children or myself take out these loans to pay 60,000 dollars a year and have them party and do whatever it is they’re going to do at college. No, I think that’s also a really big part of college. I’m really pro college. I think everybody really should go. I’m not trying to say that, but I do think Campbell’s experience or Doug Drew who’s a guidance counselor over Portland High School, he went to college, got into a great college, had a full scholarship, but he was so burnt out by the time he got there, the effort that it took to get him there.
He spent his freshmen year miserable, he failed his classes, he ended up dropping out and he went on what he calls a self-guided gap year where he pedaled. He biked across the country into the wind. I love this story. At the end of that bike ride, however long it took, he stayed at strangers houses. He put himself out there. At the end of that bike ride, he was ready to go back. Took 18 months. He asked to go back to the college where he’d failed out and he ended up graduating with high honors and is now a guidance counselor for other teens.
There are all those kinds of ways and paths to success. It isn’t just the straight and narrow. That’s what I wanted Undecided to say to the kids out there. To not be afraid. There are many, many, many, many options and many paths and you can cobble a bright future together. You don’t have to just go to a brand name college.
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Lisa: You took the time to put many different case studies in the book. You talked about, I believe the founder of Kinko’s was one of your examples. Then you also spoke with a urologist living in this area.
Genevieve: Yes.
Lisa: An author and you spoke to, actually our audio producer John McCain, who’s also a musician. You spoke with lots of different people who had made great fortunes, had made success in other ways and have these as examples to people, kids who are reading this book.
Genevieve: I wanted to show them the adults in their life and even their teachers had all had a crazy twisted path. When adults speak to them about the future, they want the best for them and this includes teachers, coaches, parents, relatives. Nobody had, I mean, very few people, yes, there are people who had real determination and real desire to achieve in one particular field. I don’t know if there’s ever been any study. Look at yourself, you were very determined to be a doctor, but then halfway though you decided you wanted to open the horizons to alternative medicine.
Everybody is growing, we’re human. I’d make the case that being undecided is the state of being human because even the best of us, I remember my dad said, being adult means that you’re about 70% sure you’ve made the right decision. There’s always that 30% you’re not so sure. I think as parents and teachers, we don’t talk about that 30% with our kids because we want them to feel secure, but nobody is totally 100% secure.
That’s a generalization, but nobody I know is 100% sure they’ve made the right choices. We all do the best we can with what we have and I make the case that the more life experience you have, the more resources you will have eventually to draw upon. I think the most important thing, if I get anything really across is that kids start to understand that it just means doing something. Sitting on the couch and playing video games is not going to take you where you want to go.
Going out and driving a food truck or selling your own silk screen t-shirts at a concert or getting a day job and taking Russian at night online. It may not seem like a lot, but all of those things are going to take you somewhere. Right now with the internet, there just a vast, vast pool of resources for kids to draw on right now and their parents and some of it is covered in Undecided.
Lisa: You do talk about college. You talked about colleges as an option. You also talk about and you mentioned traveling abroad, but you also talked about the military and you also talk about going to work. You talk about international and American service programs. You really are providing resources or at least beginnings of resources that will, as teasers, for people to explore.
Genevieve: That was the most amazing thing. I had no idea how much was out there. Had I known when I was graduating high school, I filled out a questionnaire for my publisher and they said, what would you do differently now? I said, I would definitely take a year off, I would go nanny for a family in the south of France and learn, I spoke French at that point, I would come back take acting lessons, Skype with my newfound friends in France and go to work in a retail job to make money. I had no idea that it would be as easy as it is.
It just means you have to plan for it. You have to make a decision that that’s what you’re going to do and then there’s this wealth of people and experience and programs that will come up behind you to support you. If you have good grades, that does make a difference. For instance, the government has a number of government sponsored internships. There’s a wonderful one through the state department, where you can go and live in a consulate. Anywhere in the world. It’s very competitive so it helps if you have good grades and good recommendations, but that’s a terrific thing to do. Who wouldn’t want to do that and have that on their resume?
That’s just one. There’s another one called Pathways to Success on doleta dot gov for kids who want to learn more of a trade or who want to get an internship. There’s over a thousand different paid internships that guarantee pay from day 1. Some of them are like oil rig workers, but some of them are computer programmings, some of them are pipe fittings, some of them are sound engineering. That’s all through the government. Who knew that that was out there? I didn’t before I started the research.
Lisa: There is the value of work itself. Showing up, applying for a job, getting a job, showing up on daily basis, being responsible, understanding what’s it like to pay your bills and the experience of getting along with people in a non-school environment. The possibility that that could really lend itself to some real life and very valuable experiences.
Genevieve: Work doesn’t have to be paid to get that value out of it. I make a big case for volunteering, either abroad or in your own community or through AmeriCorps VISTA because there’s a lot of need in our country. There’s a lot of need in the world. If you agree to donate your labor, what you get in exchange is education and a lot of responsibility. That can often lead to paid work, eventually. Campbell again, he went down there and he donated his labor and that completely changed his outlook and his horizon.
I think volunteering is a great way to blow the roof off your life. Some programs you do need to pay a stipend. I mean you do need to pay a entry fee. Some of them actually pay you a stipend, it all depends on the program. I highly recommend volunteering for anyone who really has no idea what they want to do because you can do a lot in many different fields.
Lisa: One of the strong points that you made in the book is understanding that what you’re doing when you decide, whatever it is you decide to do is you’re making an investment in what might happen next even though you may not know what the outcome is. In one case, you’re talking about colleges and really understanding that if you pay 16,000 dollars a year, if you pay 56,000 dollars a year, it’s an investment. It’s an investment that may or may not pan out and also requires repayment.
Genevieve: Someone said to me you’ve underestimated the effect going to a brand name college because you go to a brand name college for the networking. Yes, it’s great to have a known name on your diploma, but what it is is you meet all these other high-powered individuals and they’re going to come out and rule the world and you’re going to be friends with them. I think that that’s a paradigm that you and I grew up in. I’m not so sure that’s the paradigm for generation Z. Generation Z is the ultimate social network. Their networking goes far beyond bricks and mortar colleges. I think that working together at Ben and Jerry’s for a summer can be as much of a bonding experience as being in someone’s philosophy class.
I think that the person makes the college, the college doesn’t make the person. I think you can get a terrific education at a trade school, at a community college, at Bowdoin, at Stanford, if you really want to. That goes back to the first part of the book which is who are you, where are you at and what do you really want because that’s the first part of any decision making. That’s what I hope kids can get out of the book. It’s to figure out where they are right now and what kind of experience would best fit them right now. It doesn’t mean that’s going to be who they are in the future, but what’s the next best step?
Lisa: My middle child has decided to go to college next year after thinking she might take a year off after thinking she might go to one college, another college, maybe she would work. She is going to college next year. One of the very difficult but important things that we had to do was to sit down and actually run the numbers together. To say if you, in a weekend, as parents put in this amount this is what college-
Genevieve: Expected family contribution.
Lisa: There is the expected family contribution and then there’s the reality. As parents, they may expect that we can put in this amount, but what we have is X. That means that anything that’s additional, you as the rising college student, you are going to have to find a way to pay for this. This is what it’s going to mean. There are all kinds of calculators online that say that if you are going to take out a loan of this many dollars, this means that it’s going to be this amount of a payment per month and you’re going to need this amount of income in order to do that. I think it was frightening and eye opening, but also very grounding for my child to have this conversation. It’s not a conversation that I think parents find very comfortable.
Genevieve: No, and it’s also very obfuscated because the cost of college and tuition, the standard we look it up online and there’s a certain number, but when it comes to what you, your kid and your family will actually have to pay, different colleges may give different packages. I do think there’s a value proposition in that conversation. If you end up, let’s say, you as a family have 10,000 dollars to give towards your kid’s education, what does that mean? How much debt are they going to have when they graduate? I think also, too, that we tend to forget that tuition debt is on top of credit card debt and all sorts of other debt that can make it hard to get a mortgage, hard to do basically do all the things that we want our kids to do.
If you have that 10,000 dollars, would that be better spent going to school in Canada or Ireland and having your child come out debt free? Possibly. If he feels confident that there are other options you can really look at the opportunity cost of that money. I don’t think it’s a bad conversation to have with your children and for them to understand that if they do go to a particular college and it is going to cost them a lot of money, then they better be serious about it. They better do the work and if they can’t do the work, then they need to let people know that they can’t do the work and they can defer for a year or take a year off. Work for a year before they go and make money, before they go in.
No college that I talk to dings students for taking a year off in between high school and college. In fact, they love it. They love gap years. There’s been a lot of research, a lot of data coming out about gap years. The Dean of Admissions from Middlebury ran a study a few years ago and he actually said that the kids coming back from a gap year, or the entering freshmen who had a gap year had an average of 1 to 1.5 rise in their GPA. Colleges like mature kids. They don’t want to waste money or time either. What did she decide? I’m interested.
Lisa: She has decided that she is going to go for the smaller liberal arts college, which is going to be quite a lot more than the state school. She’s decided that she is willing to accept the contributions that our family can make and she is willing to accept the loans. It’s a big and heavy thing as an 18 year old, but this is what she’s decided to do and I completely support her in that.
Genevieve: Again, that’s where she’s at and that’s an empowering thing for her because those decisions are hers and so that debt, she’ll be able to own that debt and hopefully when she graduates, have a degree or a network where she can get a good paying job. There are great paying salaries out there. I don’t want kids to be afraid. I feel like there’s a lot of bad news around this time with all the college admissions. You turn on the radio and it’s just all bad news. I’m here to say, it doesn’t have to be bad news.
Lisa: Speaking of not bad news, in fact, very good news, you have The Fog of Forgetting, book one of the Five Stones Trilogy coming out not too far away. Not too long from now. I can’t wait to read it. It’s not much like your Undecided book or really any other books that you have written.
Genevieve: No. It’s my first work of fiction. In a funny way though, I was thinking about this. I started the Trilogy a few years ago and it actually does relate to Undecided because it is about finding the landscape of your heart. It’s a young adult book. Young adult trilogy. It has 5 characters and they all are searching for something. I didn’t really realize that until recently that the books were related, but my message is somewhat similar in both books. Although The Fog of Forgetting has a lot more action and sword play. It’s a great book. I’m so excited to have it out there. You can actually pre-order it on Amazon.
Lisa: Did it help that you have 2 boys when it comes to the whole sword play thing?
Genevieve: Yeah. Very much, very much. They got to act it out with me. It really helped. They’ve read it and approved of it. They were younger when I started it, but I think the core reader will be maybe 10 to 14 years old. You can read The Fog of Forgetting and the Five Stones Trilogy and then move on to Undecided and contact me at GA hyphen morgan dot com because I’d love to hear your stories. Any teen who’s listening to this, I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about and what you’re deciding to do.
Lisa: Very good. I do encourage people. I read Undecided myself. I got a lot out of it as the parent of 2 children who are now college age and another child who will be college age in fairly short order. Read Undecided, get The Fog of Forgetting, book one of the Five Stones Trilogy. Get in touch with Genevieve Morgan, my friend and former producer of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. As we said, Genevieve is a writer and editor from Portland. The author of Undecided and the upcoming Trilogy, the Five Stones Trilogy. Thanks for coming in and thanks for doing the work that you did to bring this information into the world.
Genevieve: Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s been a pleasure.
Lisa: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When asked, most of my clients say the same thing about what keeps them up at night. Money. Making certain cash flow is there to meet day to day operational needs. Oh, my gosh, is payroll going to be able to make it? When we dig deeper, we understand that those sleepless nights are symptoms of poor planning and forecasting. More often than not, the reasons for not doing it are lack of time and a lack of resources. Here’s a suggestion, instead of living in fear of the numbers and losing sleep over them, make peace with them by paying closer attention to the financials and creating positive cash flow. I’m Marci Booth, let’s talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine dot com.
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Lisa: In the studio with me today, we have 2 individuals that I believe we could describe as the royalty of Maine Media. One of them is Becki Smith. She is the former executive producer of 207, and Bill Greene’s Maine. She’s an adjunct professor of writing at the Southern Maine Community College and is also the author of Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates, book that compiles advice from successful professionals that are out in New England.
One of these professionals we have here in the studio, Tim Sample, a widely acknowledged humorist who is a correspondent for CBS news Sunday Morning where he produced postcards for Maine segments. Thanks for coming in.
Tim: Thank you.
Becki: Our pleasure
Lisa: It is very interesting to me, especially because I have a daughter. I have a son who graduated from high school and now I have a daughter who’s graduating, actually from high school. As a parent sending a child out to the world, and I know both of you have been that parent, it’s kind of an interesting time. You want to fill them full of advice and send them out there.
Becki: You also want to hold on to them.
Lisa: You also want to hold on to them. Right.
Becki: I think that Eleanor Clivens, who is a cookbook author and a frequent guest on 207. She’s an older lady, but she’s wonderful. She gave me the best advice when my son was exactly at the point where your children are. I was lamenting, it was like August and he was heading off to NYU in a couple weeks. I was just lamenting that he wasn’t going to be around and I was going to miss him and on and on. I think she just really got tired of me and finally said, but you really don’t want him to be living at home with you when he’s 40, do you? It just hit me and I thought, well, kind of, but not really. I learned to let go of Will.
Lisa: Yes and you did in a really great way. You actually brought in the copy of the book that you gave him when he graduated from Tisch at NYU and you called it Dust Never Settles.
Becki: Right.
Lisa: This was a collaboration. This is a compilation of all these amazing things people have said over time for graduates.
Becki: Yes. The book came about when I was searching for a gift. I asked him what he want for your graduation and he said, I want a new laptop. My heart kind of sank because we had a graveyard of technology in our basement. I just though in 2 years that computer’s going to end up down in the basement, too and then 20 years from now, he won’t even remember what I gave him for his graduation. I wanted to create something really special for him. One night I sat down at midnight and sent out a 100 emails to friends that I had made through the shows and titled it Favor and simply asked people if they would be willing, all of whom had successful paths to share a little bit of advice for him.
Within a week, I had 90 responses. The Dust Never Settles comes from actually Don Campbell’s entry. It was relevant because whenever I would go to the dorm room at NYU, Jake would look at me and say, where does all the dust come from. Not realizing he wasn’t cleaning. As it turns out, Dust Never Settles is also the title of Don Campbell’s new CD. We’re really in sync there.
Lisa: I do like the fact that in this original book, all of these are actually addressed to Jake. The beginning of each page it says Jake and then it goes on to give the advice.
Becki: I think that’s what made the book so special is that because when you do a show like 207 over 10 years, we had frequent guest contributors that came regularly. We followed people’s stories as their lives grew, but at the same time, they got to know me. We became friends over the course of time. They had heard me yak about Jake for a number of years, too. They felt like they knew him and they actually did write to him. I think that’s what made it so personal.
Lisa: I’m going to have Tim read what he wrote to Jake because I like it. I actually like a lot of the intersections. It’s a very main entry.
Tim: It goes something, but not exactly like this. Life lessons learned along the way. First of all, let me congratulate you on completing a marvelous college career and extend my best wishes as you embark upon the next phase of your life. I’ve been asked to pass along some quote, words of wisdom based on my own experience. I’m more than happy to oblige since it is my belief that in real life, experience is the best teacher. Here’s just one memorable example of a personal life changing experience, which I hope will find helpful and instructive. I sure did. In 1976, I was 25 years old, working very hard to establish myself in the entertainment business.
I got a big break when I was offered a gig as the opening act for Noel Paul Stookey, Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary. The first show went so well that I was hired to do several more and over the next 2 years, we became good friends. 1978, I moved to Blue Hill and began working full time at Noel’s company, New World Media. We continued to perform together. Noel even produced a 5 song music album for me. I was convinced that it was just a matter of time, weeks, days before I became a big star in the music business.
Around that time, Noel was also producing another young singer-songwriter named David Malek. In the summer of 1979, Noel, David and I were scheduled to perform a big series of concerts with several other singer-songwriters. During the break in rehearsals the day before the first show, Noel took me aside and told me that he thought there were too many singer-songwriters on the bill and that since I had a real talent for making people laugh, I should leave my guitar backstage and emcee the show doing a series of 5 minute comedy bits in between the other acts.
This was a watershed moment. Should I change my act or insist on doing my music? I decided that since Noel was the only person I knew with several gold and platinum selling albums, Grammy Awards, etcetera, perhaps he knew more about show business than I did. It was the right choice. I was very successful that night, went on to do more comedy bits for the rest of the tour. About a year later Noel produced my first album of Maine humor and the rest, as they say, is history.
Lisa: I love that because it does say, you may start in one place and end up in a different one and that’s okay.
Tim: Gradually you find connections with human beings and the right thing at the right time. That’s what life teaches. What I love about this book and what I loved about the idea was this is not theoretical advice. Becky didn’t ask us, the folks who contributed, to theorize and speculate. She asked people to share from experience. They’re all talking very matter of factly. I remember Don, Don opened for me. I though he was more than 20 or something. He was playing banjo. You see these lives that have played out and had these impacts and connections. What better gift to give a young man starting out with dreams and goals than a kind of a road map from real people.
Becki: It is indeed. I’d say I collected a village of people, who actually created a path for Jake to follow and now for other graduates to follow. I’m very grateful to people because they could have easily just sent some very placating words of advice, but they didn’t. Don Campbell, for example, I cried when I read his because he sent me the note and he said … And I knew this, that his 15 year old nephew, was killed by a drunk driver on the Maine Turnpike. He said I am writing to Jake what I would have said to Cooper on his graduation. That’s very personal. That’s very generous gift, more than anything. Other people wrote their life stories, other people sent funny lists, other people sent calls to action, but they really came from the heart. They weren’t just plain words of wisdom. You can’t help but be grateful.
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Lisa: What I really love about all of this is, with our radio show we have our audio producer John McCain, who’s also a musician. We have Kelly Clinton who does our online work, but there’s an entire team that makes this all possible. Everybody is so important. The producing of the show isn’t just about the voices that come across the microphone. Everybody is crafting something to make it really powerful and you do that with 207.
Becki: Absolutely.
Lisa: You’re doing it again with this book.
Becki: Very nice analogy because when I gave remarks at the book launch, that’s exactly what I said. When you produce a show, every person from the engineer to the audio guide, to the director, to the guest, to the host, everyone is a piece of the puzzle. Everyone is equally important to the success of a show. The same in raising a child, everyone that child meets is important to his or her success. From the lady that cut Jake’s hair for 20 years, to his grandmother, to anybody that crossed paths. His pastor, they all play a role. Then to collect a group of people, like I said, to sort of become a village, was a very cool way to end that career in a way.
Lisa: I know that Don Campbell had a lot to say in his words to Jake. We won’t have you read all of them, but maybe you could read some of them for us.
Becki: Sure, sure. As I said, he would have sent this to Cooper, he said who would have graduated from Cheverus the same year that Jake graduated from NYU. He said that these are some words that I think you’ll find useful. Always laugh but only at your own expense. Never find laughter in another person’s pain. Accept that life is a kind of a roller coaster with turns you might not expect. Knowing this just helps. Hold the door for people and don’t wait for a thank you. You don’t need that. Remember dust never settles. It’s so true. Sleep on big decisions, but take risks when you feel confident in your gut. Enjoy the nobility of paying off debts and thank the lender.
Remember that every living thing is here for a reason. Try to be at least 15 minutes early always. Don’t sweat the small stuff. If you look closely most stuff is small. Be generous to those you believe in, forgiving to those who don’t know any better. Celebrate your every victory and remember to also celebrate the victories of those you love. This was one of my favorites because I never knew this and I’ve used it repeatedly. When assembling something, it’s righty tighty, lefty loosey. Remember Robert Frost and once in a while, take the road less traveled by. Finally, always listen to your mother. Very good advice, I might add.
Lisa: It’s pretty wonderful to me that your son went to NYU and went to Tisch, coming from Maine. It’s actually interesting that Tim is here. Tim Sample, we’ve all known Tim Sample for years and years and years as somebody who’s made his way up in the ranks of humorous, but it’s not a straightforward path for artists and performers coming out of Maine. It takes a lot of courage and it takes a leap of faith. It’s interesting that your son decided that this was going to be the path that he would take.
Becki: It was something he always wanted to do. He used to set up his mechanical Godzillas on our bed and take the video camera when he was 5 and make little movies with Godzilla on my bed. When he was in 8th grade, he made a film that won the Maine student film festival and I think from that point on he was just on his path. He knew what he wanted to do, he stayed focused and he’s never veered from it. There’s no plan B for him. I think that helped. It helped to have a very supportive family. Someone’s got to have your back. He has very good professors at NYU, several of whom he still is connected to, still sees every other day.
He has a great network in New York to help him on his way. It was one of his professors who said to me after graduation, you need to know this child is never going to be in a corporate environment with a 9 to 5 job. It’s always going to be up and down, up and down because that’s just the path of someone in this business. Don’t feel bad when the check from the company isn’t coming on a weekly basis because that isn’t how it’s going to work for him.
Tim: I have to just add that from my own experience and observing the experience of others, Maine is an amazingly supportive place for creative individual. It’s the state of Steve King and Louise Nevelson and on and on and George Mitchell. These people who carved their own path in a variety of different things, but the idea in Maine, I’ve said this for years, people think Mainers are backwards. Mainers are very open-minded but we don’t broke fools gladly. If you go to somebody who’s been making lobster traps with lathing for 10 generations and your new way of doing it out of wire is demonstrably better, they’ll change in 5 minutes.
If it’s just some variation on the theme that’s not particularly better than what they’re already doing, forget about it. If you have an original idea, an original thought, I’ve always said, when I started out in Maine and I was a kid. I was in my 20’s, I went to art school here. I created a calendar and I’d knock on doors and gift shops. I just say hi, I’m Tim, I do this thing, I like this. People hear the story over and over again. If that have been New York City, I’ll took very quickly but Porches was the ankle where Mecca is now. I was literally out on the street. I was 21 or 22, I’ve been in art school, I’ve created a line of greeting cards, I had it printed out the little print shop. I was selling them on the street, it sounds like dickens but it’s really true.
Out on the street. Some people, for a buck, would buy some gift cards. Then somebody said you ought to go inside and ask them if they want to sell them in the store. I thought, why not. I walked in and within a couple hours, I was talking to Bob Porches and we’re up in his office and he liked them and they bought them. That’s a story that you hear people in Maine tell stories like that. If you have integrity, if you’re straight up, you’re not trying to scam anybody, you just want to get a leg up. If you try to list all the people, Steve King or Noel Stookey. Many, many other people have helped.
I was at Steve’s house 20 something years ago and he gives in a [inaudible 51:11], read a few page out of this, make a tape, send it to this guy and I ended up narrating the best selling book on tape in America for a few weeks back in the summer of 91. That doesn’t always happen. There’s a lot of urban environments we have to go through chance. You got to know somebody who knows somebody. It doesn’t always work this way. A lot of what Becky is talking about, a lot of what her son has experienced is you get this idea growing up in Maine that there’s possibilities.
You do have to work hard, but you’re not always shut out because you come from a little town at Western County or you don’t have a lot of formal education. Maine is elemently pragmatic. We don’t want to know your philosophy. We want to know do you have jumper cables and will you stop? We don’t really care about your religion, your philosophy, your sexual orientation, we just want to know, are you in this with us or not? That spirit infuses the Maine way of life. I think kids rightly believe, yeah, I got to have something going on, but I’ll get a hearing. The worst part is when you go, I didn’t call Charles Kuralt, he called me. How did that happen? I have no idea. The worst part is when you know you’ve got something and you can’t get in the door. In Maine, most folks, you can get in the door.
Becki: Yeah. That’s one advice I give to. I supervise a lot of interns through the course and they come to me and they say, I want to work at NBC. I’m like, okay. How are you going to do that? I don’t know. My mom knows Brian Williams, but I don’t want to ask. I’m like, ask. It’s okay. It’s okay to use your network to get in the door. You still have to walk though that open door. You still have to prove yourself on the other side. Don’t be afraid to use everything you’ve got to get to where you want to be. Once you’re there and you proved yourself, it doesn’t matter how you got there. I think that that’s a real Maine thing, that you can ask in Maine and people will, I think, help.
Tim: He had this experience. People are coming and going through the show and they’re real flesh and blood people. It’s startling when you meet people …
Becky: It is.
Tim: That you see on TV. The first time I did Good Morning America long time ago, David Hartman was hosting with Charlie Gibson later on. [inaudible 53:43] He gets out of the limo. I go, I know that guy. Then you realize that they’re people and that it’s okay.
Becki: Yes, yes.
Tim: You be yourself and you be substantive. Most people, there are a few bad apples, but most of the time, I think that you probably have found this too, Becky. Folks that have been successful, who have been able to see their dreams and their goals and their visions reach fruition have a sense of gratitude, appreciation and every once in a while somebody is just a horse’s butt, but that’s rare. Most of the time, people recognize in others what they needed nurturing in themselves. They’ve got some mentors that helped them. Cap Weinburger used to bump into down at Southwest Harbor. He was like how you doing, Tim?
Becki: It’s a good point, Tim. It’s a good point. When I took 207, Steve Paxton was general manager then, one of things is said is, if I do this job, it’s going to be a 60 hour week job, but I’ve got a son who’s in middle school and I need some flexibility because I don’t want to not be there for him. He said fine, you can bring him anywhere you want. Bring him to the studio, bring him on shoots, I don’t care as long as you’ve got the job done. I did and because I knew that Jake wanted to follow this path, I thought it was really important for him to meet successful people. Some of them in his field, some not. I didn’t want him to end up enthralled by celebrity because I wanted him to see that people who got to that point were real people who worked hard. It wasn’t overnight and I think he learned a lot from that.
Lisa: I am very grateful that both of you took the time to come in here and be in our humble digs and record the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour with us today. As I said, I think part of my quiet tune today is just in my awe that I’m sitting here with the 2 of you, who clearly have done so many great things in your own lives. I’m going to finish out, I like Robert Shetterly, he’s an artist. I’m not sure everybody who’s listening will know exactly who he is. He was a pretty great artist. Pretty well known.
Tim: Wonderful stuff.
Lisa: I’ll leave with this quote from your book Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates, which of course Becki Smith, you have put out there. We must all rise to the requirements of our time even when it is not the challenge we would like to confront. James Baldwin said, people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction. Our task is not to shy from that reality and where we are now is both a real and a mythic moment in human history. It’s mythic in the sense that it’s the kind of situation we loved experiencing vicariously in the Lord of the Rings or the Darth Vader series. Now it’s upon us and it’s harder than we could have imagined. Grim, yes, but the only way though is enjoy and in love, determination and courage. The same values we have always admired, but never needed so much. One for all and all for one.
I really believe that this is the reason that you’re both here today sharing this with us. I encourage people to look up the work of humorous Tim Sample. Also to buy the book Starting Out: Life Lessons for Graduates by Becki Smith, which is put out by Islandport Press. You’ve been great guests and thanks so much for bringing this light into the world.
Becki: Thank you, Lisa, for having us.
Tim: Thank you, Becki, for asking me to tag along. It’s fun. It’s really fun. Great book.
Becki: Thank you, Tim. Thank you for contributing to it.
Lisa: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show #143, “Graduation.” Our guests have included Genevieve Morgan, Tim Sample and Becki Smith. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facbook page. Follow me on Twitter and on Instagram as bountifulone. We love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, I hope that you have enjoyed our graduation show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and happy graduation day to my daughter Abigail, Yarmouth High School, class of 2014. To all graduates who are enjoying this graduation season, including my brothers John and Bryan, who are graduating from law school and from graduate school. May you all have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1:The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary By Design, Michael Page and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Tom Shepperd of Shepperd Financial, Dream Kitchen Studios, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms and Bangor Savings Bank. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Audio production and original music by John C McCain. Our online producer is Kelly Clinton. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is available for download free on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.