Against the Grain: Redefining Success on Your Own Terms

Meet Will: Philosophy Student & Campus Leader Hey, what's up and welcome to the Promise Pod. I'm Nisha and this is the podcast where we talk about everything. The real stuff, the messy stuff and the things nobody really wants to talk about. Each episode will be diving into students lives and have honest conversations, really new perspectives and stories you can actually use in your life. So whether you're a promise student or just someone who wanted to hear a 20 year old talk about how hard education is, you are in the right place and let's get into it. OK. Hi everybody. This is going to be, I guess, my last podcast of the semester and ever because I'm graduating, but to make this last podcast kind of special, I decided to have a really special guest on the podcast. Would you care to introduce yourself? Speaker 2 Hi, my name is Will. I am a philosophy student at Kenyatta College. I'm transferring out this semester to EU CS. What else? I'm up your mentor for the interest areas. If you are a student in the business interest areas or your human behavior and culture oriented, you can always just hit me up. I'm always here at the second floor of the Learning Center on Wednesdays and Thursdays, around mornings on the Wednesdays, afternoons on the Thursdays. And I also have the pleasure of being your campuses student body president. So if you do have issues or needs that are not being addressed, you can always come talk to me and. Speaker 1 Yeah, OK, great. So will you say you're a philosophy major? But I decided to interview or I guess have you on my podcast because I feel like for someone who is kind of majoring in humanities, you're taking AI guess a non traditional route because you're also doing pre Med. Why Philosophy is a Unique Pre-Med Foundation Yeah, you're absolutely correct in highlighting that. And yes, you are very correct in stating that it's a very non traditional route to take for sure. For those who may not know, right? There's a lot of pre Med students who often take the Biological Sciences or public health or psychology, right? And it totally aligns with, you know, going through that pre Med track. Now, as you mentioned, I did take that leap towards the humanities oriented undergrad experience of studying and preparing for a degree in philosophy. And yeah, it's been an interesting journey so far. And yeah, there's a lot of questions and challenges associated with that, so yeah. Speaker 1 OK here too. Speaker 2 Do I just like talk about that or? Speaker 1 No just pretend this is a normal conversation you're going to try. So like you said, a lot of people go into like the bio route or even like the Cam route when they're doing pre Med. And if I remember correctly, you were originally a public health major. And that's, I don't, I feel like that's very into the pre Med route or at least going into medicine or getting like a doctorate or a PhD. What made you decide to make that change from public health to philosophy despite still wanting to be in medicine? Speaker 2 Good question. I think it all started with my journey at Kenyatta College. For context, I was a middle college student here, so I was in high school and I transferred out in my junior year and I took this one class, economics, from Professor Rochelli and it was macroeconomics. And in this class, I, it kind of opened my viewpoints from previously being a biology student because for context, yes, in high school I planned on being a Biological Sciences major. And so once I took that macro econ class with Professor Shelley and I kind of learned about the theories and the systems that kind of governed the way we think. Because economics is a very social sciency, human behavior oriented major as opposed to, you know, finances. Well, the finances is a big part of it. It kind of widened my viewpoint, and that's what kind of inspired me to take public health. After that, though, I took a really interesting English class, English one O 5 at CSM with this one professor in his syllabus for, you know, the books that we were going to read. We read a lot of different books that were outside of the normal curriculum. We read things like a feminist Manifesto, Meditations, the Dauded Shing and a lot of like philosophy oriented books. And that's what kind of opened my interest to potentially taking philosophy. And what sealed the deal was obviously taking philosophy classes here with Professor David Eck and seeing the way he actually addressed issues, right? He taught us to kind of sit in the middle ground of things because in life, right, when there's arguments and debates and conflict, right, we always choose a side. But taking David X class and knowing that he has certain viewpoints on certain, you know, topics and still having that maturity to actually sit in the Gray line, the middle ground and bring out the truth as opposed to being a victor of an argument. That kind of inspired me to say, hey, maybe I should consider working on the way I think first before practicing medicine. And that's where I'm at today, where it's like, yeah, I do want to practice medicine, but I absolutely will not practice medicine unless I become, I wouldn't say trained, but more educated on how we think and how to better approach challenges and disagreements with one another. And, you know, that's one of the merits. And I think it has a lot of value to bring, especially to the field of medicine, right? And yeah, that's kind of where I'm at so far. Intrinsic Motivation Outweighs External Expectations That was very insightful. I guess another question I have is just kind of like you said, you, you have taken, you know, some I have some sort of advice or some knowledge from all these professors or it's, you know, Professor Eck or even like your English professor. What is like a piece of knowledge that like when you are, you know, taking your classes and and you're taking a lot of sun based classes, obviously for medicine, when you're taking these classes, what reminds you to kind of not, I guess, pivot, not make an impulsive decision where like a lot of people would just choose the easier route, you know, of double majoring or again, like you said, doing biology, Like what how is that experience of being philosophy and then or being a philosophy major and then like going into pre Med? Speaker 2 So for clarification, you're asking about how what is the pull factor that pulls you away from that stereotypical traditional path? Yeah, well, I think that's a good question. And I do want to acknowledge and recognize that it's a very personal decision and everyone's very different. You are no better than another student if you go on that traditional path or that non traditional path. I want to recognize and acknowledge that everyone has their own strengths and everyone has their own interests. But I will say for me, I can speak for myself and the pull, right? I will say it's a pull as opposed to a push, right? And that's the first thing I want to highlight before I talk about the pull factors. I think through, you know, several of my experiences and working with students and mentoring students at the peer mentors program, right, for talking and having conversations with other students on campus. As, you know, student to student conversations. I've learned that there's a lot of push factors, right? Things like money, finances, time, energy, our parents, our culture, everything that governs our identity pushes us to study a certain degree or a major. And for me, I was that student, you know, with my cultural background of being that East Asian kid and having to, you know, excel in academics and almost to a do or die kind of state, right? It's been, it's kind of just it's second nature, honestly, to just say, oh, I'm going to study medicine, OK. I'm going to go straight into the biology, right? And a lot of people feel the same and no shame if you do, right? But everyone's different. And that's when I'm going to go into the polls, right? If you can and if you have the energy and the time, you must absolutely find something that is a pull factor for you, not a push. Because I will always argue that a pull factor for anyone on this planet is much stronger than a push. That is. Well, it's complicated and it's nuanced, but I would argue in most situations, yeah, having a pull factor such as an intrinsic motivate motivation, like, I don't know, you want to help people, you want to heal people, right? A virtue or something where you're guiding people, teaching people something where you're actively helping others. That as a pull factor can be much stronger than just saying, oh, well, I'm being pushed by, you know, these expectations. And I know everyone has these challenges. And that's why I also wanted to recognize once again that it's a very personal journey that we all go through. So for disclaimer's sake, this is from, you know, my personal experience. And yeah. And for me, right, my pull factor was that, yeah, I wanted to help people, right? But in my journey as a student here, I, you know, worked in student Senate, right? I mentored students. I taught students a lot of things, right? And I realized, Oh my gosh, there's such, I don't, there's, I don't know the word maybe there's a huge demand out there for people with these, you know, interpersonal skills as well. And that's when I realized, Oh my gosh, I wanted to study something where not only can I work on my prerequisite requirements for Med school, but also work on developing the communication skills and the abilities to actually interact with people and communicate and articulate hard ideas to others. And that was my pull factor, right? Training myself on these foundational skills where I could say, hey, I could become developed in these aspects of things such as a communication, articulating thoughts, right? Teaching. And I could always bring that anywhere I go because I'll tell you this, there's a huge stigma with studying philosophy. I'll tell you this, when I first told my parents that I want to study philosophy, my parents laughed at me. And they're like, ha, go to your room, go study or do whatever, right? Point is, they thought it was like a joke, right? It's like these sorts of major slash degree interests often don't hold a lot of value in some the people's lives, right? Some other people's lives, right? And that's OK, right? So it's very important that you all do the research and you take the time to figure out what you want to do. And hence it's a personal decision, right? You must ask yourself, why do you, do you feel satisfaction from what you currently study? Do you find anything else out there that's interesting? And if you do right, would you consider like studying something like that outside of your tactical major requirements? And for me, the easy answer was, yeah, I love philosophy. I love learning about how people think. And I was very concerned with the ethics of living a happy life. So why not, right? So to anyone who is a pre Med major, right? Although a lot of people will say study something that's a pre Med major, such as chemistry or biology and stuff like that. No shame if you do again, but study what you want to study. And I can say that as a pre Med student, study whatever you want to study. And that will go a long way in improving your chances of getting into Med schools as well for your interviews and getting to show, you know, application admissions committees, right, That you're someone who's really in it for the humanities side of things, right? And yeah, it's just a personal decision at the end of the day, but yeah. How Mentoring Builds Essential Medical Skills That's really interesting going back to when you said how like initially you decided to kind of go into like the humanities route and the pool of philosophy through, you know, being a peer mentor and like tutoring and and whatnot. I think that's really interesting because I feel like once people find their majors, they're usually, they're usually focused on doing extracurriculars that are kind of focused on like what they want their future career path to be. I guess my question is, why did you decide to still work in like tutoring and you know, student Senate? Why did you decide to do a lot more of these people oriented roles instead of what other people might do in terms of like volunteering at the hospital or working out of like a senior care facility where you kind of get more hands on experience in a medical environment rather than, you know, academia where you're not going to exactly get that unless you are like working inside a health clinic or something. Speaker 2 Yeah, at first for me, the decision to just work on campus and near my campus was just a matter of what was available to me at the time. You know, internships are very hard to get into. A lot of pre Med students would also know that. Yeah, you know, there's the Stanford internships and, you know, the undergrad Stanford undergrad internships that, you know, are out there and they're very competitive, you know, and they're very expensive and costly. You know however, when it comes to being a pre Med student right? Any experiences that you intentionally choose to do, you can technically define and redefine that experience as something that has taught you things that are applicable to medicine right? Just because on the surface, an extracurricular or job doesn't show or doesn't technically align with your degree of choice doesn't mean that you can't talk about it. You definitely can, right? There's a lot of parallels between mentoring students and talking to patients in medicine, right? I talked a lot about articulation. Why is that so important? Well, if you can articulate difficult abstract concepts to a student who's struggling in a subject and help them actually understand, then I would definitely say that you have the potential to become a physician who can explain, right? A lot of these issues that are afflicting your patients, right? With compassion and humanity, right? And notice how I went from an example of mentoring or tutoring to workplace experiences, right, as a student, right? A lot of these opportunities, internships and whatnot are they're there, but sometimes they're very hard to come by. And I will admit that, yeah, I haven't been able to get those internships and that's OK. But at the end of the day, whatever you do now, right, with the time and energy that you have, do it with intention and do it with meeting and with a goal, right? Do it to help people and you'll learn a lot of things along the way that skills wise, right, or experience wise, that can always, you know, transfer to whatever future careers you're doing. So to really sum it up in a nutshell, you can just demystify the myth, OK, whatever you do today doesn't have to necessarily correlate to your job. And that at least that's for US students. And I will recognize that yes, I am a pre Med student, so I am on this track. And for a lot of other students who are doing technical degrees like engineering or business, right? For those students, my advice would not really correlate with them because I understand that they do have to get workplace experience and what not as they graduate. So just for some context, right, Being a pre Med student is a long track, 6 to 12 years. And that's why I'm saying what you do today as a pre Med student doesn't have to correlate necessarily with their goal is of being a medical student. However, if you are a student that is doing business or research straight out of you know, school, yes, do try to look for those internships and workplace experiences because you guys may be on that shorter track that act shorter academic track of four to six years, maybe at most 8 right starting from like freshman year in college. Focus on Control, Let Go of Uncontrollable Outcomes My next question is you talk about how it doesn't matter where you start, right? You can kind of always pre Med in this example is a very long journey. And you're saying how like, yeah, you don't have to necessarily start because there's going to be such, there's going to be so many examples for you to continuously develop your skills and your abilities. Do you ever feel like despite doing so much, you're not doing enough? And if so, how do you kind of combat that? How do you how do you let yourself kind of deal with that aspect of anxiety? Speaker 2 Yeah. So yeah, we all go through our challenges, right? We're all pushing this metaphorical boulder up a mountain just to wake up again, right? Have it roll back down and, you know, push it back up again every day. And I will say it is a challenge. And we all go through that monotonous journey of, you know, dealing with our anxieties and struggling. And I will say, just know that there we are humans, and there's a limit to what we can do. So when you're thinking about your duties and your responsibilities, right, think about what you can control, really think about what you can control. And for the things that you can't control, yeah, I might. You know, things like admissions or acceptances to programs that you're applying for, those are things that we can't really control at the end of the day. So when it comes to things of that nature, right, when you can't control the outcome, then I guess it would be in our best interest to try and let it go, right, And focus on the things that you can control. Right, that's always the best first step that I recommend to everyone when it comes to dealing with the anxieties of being a student or maybe being multiple things at once, like a student and a worker, part time worker, right, or student and taking care of family members, right. Worry about the things that you can control and it's easier said than done, right. So you, that's why I'm saying like always, like really do think about what you can control and just take that with grace and be kind to yourself and just have to keep pushing forward, you know? Speaker 1 And I guess this kind of in terms of pushing forward, this brings me on to my next question of right now is April, right? And we're getting a lot of acceptances into colleges, a lot of wait list, a lot of rejections. So how do you think someone who is, as you know, has such AI guess a appearance on campus who it's you know, you're the student body, but you're a peer mentor, but you are integrated into all these different programs. How do you handle college decision season where you might not go into get into a school that you had applied to and you might get wait listed? How do you how do you deal with that? Speaker 2 Yeah, good question. So when it comes to the things that I do on campus, I want to reiterate that I don't do it because I want to get into a school. And I would argue you should never do something just so you could get into a dream school. Do something because you like it. OK? And I'm going to say that again. Do extracurriculars, right? Do that extracurricular, do that volunteer work, do that internship and do that job if you're really interested in it, right? And that excludes the kinds of jobs that we need for financial reasons and things to keep us living. But whatever you do beyond that, do it because you care about it. Don't do it because you want to get into a school. Now, when it comes to the decisions, part of things, like I said before, right, What is within your control, right? You can't control what the committee say about your decisions, so why stress over it? Speaker 1 Well, how about the, I guess, especially medicine is so competitive and especially being in like the Bay Area, right? And where these majors like nursing is competitive, comp size competitive. Engineering is really competitive. A lot of times I, I think from what I understand, the students might feel like, oh, shoot, I got rejected from a school that I really want to go to in a competitive major. And to them that can seem like a very huge failure, right. And what, what would you say to that in terms of like, yes, we don't really get to decide what the decision makers do, but that doesn't ultimately stop us from some sort of like realistically, yes, you're right, there's nothing we can do. But I think more on an emotional aspect. What would you think is a way to resolve that feeling of like, oh, because I didn't get this into this one school that is known for this one major, I am no longer successful. Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a very good point to bring up. And I want to recognize that, yeah, everyone can have, everyone is different. And so we'll have different responses to these rejections or acceptances or wait lists. And I want to acknowledge that it's still a very personal journey for all of us. And I think in these kinds of situations, yes, these schools may not. It's difficult, OK? I have to acknowledge that, right? I do want to recognize that these majors are very competitive, right? And, you know, at the end of the day, I don't want to say the cliche. I'm trying my best to not say the cliche, OK? But you know, life takes you where you're meant to go. I know people love it, people hate it. But at the end of the day, I can't really find the words to sugarcoat something when you receive that letter and you know, it's, it doesn't go the way that you hope. So, you know, I maybe my brain is just wired a different way. But I guess on the emotional side of things, you know, I always want to emphasize that your success is not really tied to the school that you go to, right? We are doers, not the school. The school doesn't do your job for you, right? If you want to be an engineer and you want to make something special, then go and do it. And I could guarantee you with the fact that if that dream school doesn't accept you for that, you know major of interest of yours, and that's OK, because that shouldn't stop you from designing. You know what you want to design right from what you want to do. So if you do feel the pain and the hurt of not getting the response that you hoped for, by all means feel it. But at the end of the day, just recognize that that's not going to stop you from being that, you know, the genius that you are as a student. And I think if it were me in my position and I, you know, got blindsided by a rejection to a school that I really wanted to get into, I guess I would take a couple steps back and think back to my values, right? You know, to me, my family learning, right viewpoints and perspectives. And step by step, I would try and, you know, try to reflect on those things and feel gratitude, right? I guess what I'm trying to say is that in the face of suffering and tragedy, I try to go back to gratitude and what I'm grateful for. And I don't know. I think for me, it makes me feel a lot better about my situation most of the time, although there's no guarantee that it may work for you. So I will always say without a doubt that yes, whatever school that you get into, right, it's not going to change your genius, right? Who you are, your character, it's really up to you to make the changes that you want to see in the world. And I think we all have that potential within us to make it happen. So if you don't get into that school, it's OK. You can still keep being you, and you'll do great things. Choose Your Major, Embrace Your Own Greatness I guess the last question we have for our podcast today is, is there anything you want to say to the people who might be listening who are, one, planning to pursue a major that's like, you know, kind of like what you're doing, like integrating STEM in humanities? And two, for the students who are hearing back from colleges and, you know, not realizing that the plan they had determined for themselves might not be the plan they go through with. Speaker 2 Yeah, for the former, right, choosing your major, correct? I think so. There are a list of resources. This is for pre Med students where you can search up the AAMC data and they did share a table where they showed matriculation rates of students who chose different majors and Biological Sciences with one of the most, you know, populated categories in the data, right? They did have the third lowest matriculation rate out of every other major on that list. And on the top three majors on that spreadsheet, I believe number one was the physical sciences. So chemistry and physics were students were one of the most successful matriculation students who got into Med school. The second was humanities and 3rd was Oh my gosh, I forgot. But either way, point is, there's a lot of data out there, right? And so the goal when it comes to choosing your major is do your research, please. Like don't just do it because someone tells you to do it. Like actually, please do your research and if you don't know what to research, I don't know, watch videos, listen to look up content creators or find someone who's been in that position, right? And talk to them, get to know them. I mean, I'm, I'm available, I'm an open book. So if you do have questions, I can definitely fill you in because this is a it's a pretty complicated thing. Choosing your major, that is, and this is I have a lot of details and it's not going to fit all within one small podcast episode. So yeah. But at the end of the day, I would say just choose what you're interested, study what you're interested in that is pre Med or pre law or pre anything else. Study what you're interested in and do make sure that you fulfill your course requirements. And yeah, now for the latter, in terms of dealing with decisions, I just want to reiterate that, yes, at the end of the day, right, you are in control of what you can control. So yes, when it comes to things that you can't control, I know it hurts sometimes, but we do have to try and move forward with Grace. And like mentioned before, your schools, the school that you go to does not define your greatness as a person or as a student. It is rather you who defines your own greatness. And it is within your control to control these factors. So take that with pride. And even if you don't feel, you know, a lot of excitement at hearing that, I believe one day you will and we all will start to recognize our own greatness in time. And yeah. Speaker 1 OK. Thanks you will. Speaker 2 Thank you. Speaker 1 Hey guys, if you really liked this podcast, please let us know. I'm always open to feedback and areas of improvement, so I would definitely appreciate it. Some reminders are please, please, please meet with your counselor. We're supposed to do one a month, so check with your counselor. They miss you, You probably miss them. Why not? On top of that, please make sure to do your incentives each month. We really want you guys to attend at least three workshops. Sorry, a semester. So tender workshop, fill out the incentive form, get free money. That's amazing. And well, yeah, you guys make sure to end the day with a good moment in mind and don't be afraid to let us know whatever you need. Thank you so much. This is Nisha, and this is officially the end of my first podcast.