EP #59- Why We Need Mental Health in Education with Khandker Ahamed, Founder of Kids Ivy Tutor

(gentle music) You know, often time when we think about mental health, we always go into like the mental health issues or conditions like anxiety, depression, like bipolar disorder, like you know, we go into that but mental health is basically everything. It's a all encompassing, right? Everything together and it's just like basically combination of your good mental health, your bad mental health and that's what mental health is to me. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfins. This week is all about bringing more access towards mental health resources and mental health education in the school system. And I thought that the perfect guess to come on and speak to these topics is Kandakar Ahmed. Kandakar and I met while I was interning at Accenture and at the time he was one of the leads for the Mental Wellness Employee Resource Group. And soon after I joined full time, I found out that Kandakar had left the company to pursue his nonprofit, Kids Ivy Tutors, full time. Kids Ivy Tutors is an educational organization that's on a mission to teach the future of work by connecting passion, mentorship and 21st century skills and sponsored in-demand skills courses free of charge in schools all across New York City. Through his work, Kandakar has served over 2,000 students and he's been recognized by Bloomberg, Forbes 30 under 30, was most recently listed under Forbes Next 1000 and has been recognized by many other organizations. I think what he's doing around bringing more education and access towards mental health resources in the school system is very inspiring and there is absolutely a need for incorporating more social emotional learning in the traditional education curriculum. If you think about it, one of the most important life skills is learning how to handle your emotions and deal with them. So you would think that these are skills that could be taught to us in school, but they're simply not. So Kandakar is really trying to change the narrative on this and in this interview, we talk about how he's trying to open up the conversation around this through his nonprofit and what he's been doing with kids, Ivy tutors, to help better the school system and help kids in the New York City public school system gain access to these learnings. I'm so excited to get into this interview before we jump right into it. I have a brief message from my sponsor, Inker. Hi, Kandakar. Thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. This is one of the only things that I was kind of like looking for today to be honest. Well, I'm so happy that this was kind of the highlight of your day. I know you're just recovering from COVID, so I can imagine like really anything is better than just being bed ridden and sick and you know, now like you're finally healthy and free again. Yeah, I know to be honest, I literally spend the whole past two weeks by myself with my roommate being in this small apartment in New York. You know how New York apartment can be really small, right? So yeah, it's just like a good to connect with another person and good to see you, of course. But yeah, it just definitely, I'm really excited and glad I was able to recover it. So, and I'm really excited for this conversation, to be honest. Me as well. And, you know, we connected, I think it's probably been about two years ago now when I was interning at Accenture for my listeners who don't know, you know, how we know each other. We met at Accenture during my summer internship while you were still at the company. You were leading or helping to lead the mental wellness employee resource group. And that was something I was really interested in getting involved with. And you're no longer at Accenture now. And I'll let you, you know, talk all about your work experience, what you're up to and, you know, your story in a moment. But that is where we first connected. And it's really amazing to see how you were doing a lot of work when you were at Accenture on, you know, advocating for mental health in the workplace. And now your passions have transformed into your own non-profit that you've now decided to pursue full time, bringing mental health into the education system. So let's start there. Would love to hear you talk a little bit about kids, Ivy Tutor and how you got involved with that and how things have now evolved with going into the non-profit sector full time. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I actually remember our conversation briefly, the first conversation we had. And it was so amazing because the passion that you brought, and I was like, wow, it's like similar than the passion that I had. I was like, it was such a great conversation that we had. So we were able to stay connected and doing this. But to be honest, the history behind kids, Ivy Tutors was really personal to me. I grew up in a really long-come community. And I lived in shelters for a few years with my family because we weren't able to afford living here when we moved from Bangladesh. I was born in Bangladesh. We moved here about like 12 years ago. So living in the hood and being in those low-income community, one of the biggest opportunities that I saw was we weren't getting enough resources. We weren't getting enough support. And a lot of my friends either went into the drug route or they started selling drugs or they or some of them even got killed because of the environment that we were living in. And that sparked me. It's like, I made it. I want to give back to my community. And that's when I started, kids, Ivy Tutors, is to really give some sort of resources to these youth so they can have like a bridge to work for companies like Accenture, right? And that's where it started. We wanted to support them in the academic aspect of it. So we started in 2016. And then just from there, we did a lot of research. And we realized that 50% of the mental illness begins at age 14. And I was like, wow, that's such a big stat. And we need to focus on that. And we started talking to a lot of educators, a lot of like professors in different schools around the nation. And we decided that we wanted to focus on this holistic concept of education, where not only we focus on the academic, but we also focused on the social emotional aspect of it, while we are teaching them the 21st century skills. - Age 14 is young. I didn't even know that stat existed. Like that's how young people are on average when they first start developing a mental illness or dealing with mental health struggles. Did your research kind of explain maybe why that is or like what was pointing towards that being kind of like the onset of mental health issues? - Yeah, if you think about it, that is one of the most pivotal moments in our lives, right? We're transitioning from being a kid to a teenager, right? And during that time, we go through so much changes from our body to our like expectation, from our parents, from our friends, that is such a mental pressure on us, right? Because we have to go into like a good high school, where we have to go into like, we have to like be ready for our friends, right? Oftentimes during that time, a lot of us get bullied, right? Or a lot of us like becoming popular, we have to manage that, right? So I think all of those together, and then you have like the academic pressure from your parents that you have to get good grades, you have to do that. You have to be part of a sports team or you have to play sports, or you have to do some extracurricular activity. And then those create so much pressure within our mind and our body. That's, I think that's play a big toll on our mental health, for sure, just looking at all of those. And also our bodies go through so much changes during that time. It's a really great point that you bring up. I mean, I feel like in that time of our lives, there's a lot of expectations put on us. I mean, I can even remember, like when I was 14, I was in high school and just all the pressure that I had in high school going to a specialized school, the Bronx High School of Science, it was very difficult. And I'd argue the content of the work we were doing was definitely challenging, but it was more so like the rigorous environment and the testing and the competition. And I think beyond just like the academics, the people that you're around, content to really stress you out. So when you're kind of thrust in that really competitive environment or even not at a school like Bronx Science, just high school in general is really difficult. So that's a really interesting stat. I'm glad that you shared that. It's definitely interesting, right? And there's so much more that goes into it, right? From like, and then when you look at from the low income community, that's even bigger because a lot of them are single parents, right? Have a single parent or you don't even have any parents, right? Or they just don't have any resources. They don't know where their food going to come in the next meal, right? They don't know how they're going to basically go to school, or write like a lot of them don't know anything what's going to happen in their next hour in these low income communities. Are they living with people who are like drug addicts or just taking drugs? And they don't, they have to take care of themselves. The issue is so much bigger there. It's just ridiculous. Right, because it's like, you know, in those communities, you don't even have that foundation of security and safety and like those baseline necessities. So it probably can seem like mental health is like a luxury because oh, I have the luxury to think about, you know, what type of wellness practice can I incorporate in my life? You know, but in reality, I'm stressed about when am I going to have my next meal? Or, you know, am I going to get involved in gang violence or whatnot? So I think what you're doing, like with this nonprofit is so impactful because I think you're saying, like, you know, this shouldn't have to be a luxury. Like kids need that support and they need, you know, that exposure to fully feel safe and comfortable and healthy in their minds and in their bodies. And if you can bring that into the school environment where kids are every single day, hopefully, you know, these different areas, like these different disciplines are very integrated into one. And so you hopefully can kind of like bolster the kids overall well-being when you're tackling it from this holistic curriculum that you mentioned earlier. And I'd love for you to chat a little bit more about, you know, what does that holistic curriculum look like? So how does social emotional learning differ from what's happening in the academic environment and how do they kind of interplay with each other? Of course, that is such a great question, right? Because we were looking at like how can we support these people, like support these kids throughout, like from like physical mental and then professional perspective. So that's when this concept of this curriculum called whole child curriculum and we have, we created the 16 courses and it's in three parts. Each of the courses has three parts, right? Each course is like it's teaching some sort of technical skills that you're learning from these courses. And then from there, we are kind of like showing them how does it affect us mentally and professionally? And how can we take this to the next step, right? These youth can actually choose, right? If they want to learn more deeper into this course or they just want to move on to the next course and we are really focusing on their passion. So the way we really talk about it is like each course about like 45 minutes and 15 minutes we focus on that emotional aspect of it. Teaching them some sort of coping strategy around different mental health conditions. And then in the other 30 minutes, we teach them some sort of 21st century skills that could be like design thinking or product management or something like that. And then throughout that time, they kind of like work with their teachers to build up on those and how does it affect our academic based on that. So that's how we kind of like portrayed a lot of our courses are like each of the courses focusing on that social emotional aspect while they're learning those technical skills. I think that's so great. And especially in education, like if you're not afforded with a lot of resources or academic help outside of school or whatnot and if you feel like you're kind of falling behind or struggling in school, that really takes a toll on your mental health. And I feel like we don't really equate mental health with like what's happening in the classroom environment. Like school is something separate from our well-being. But at the end of the day, they're so intertwined because if you feel like you're suffering in school or you're falling behind, you may feel like kind of less inclined to actually want to try harder because you can imagine like falling into that cycle of, well, you know, I'm not going to do great anyways. So might as well not even put in that effort or having that fear of failure. That's a huge one. And so I think a lot of those issues are kind of they stem in self-confidence and self-esteem. And so everything that you're doing around this social emotional learning, I think is like really directly targeting those key pillars to what provides a sense of satisfaction and well-being in our lives, being increased confidence, self-esteem, security. And it kind of feeds back into that academic success. - Exactly. I mean, if you think about it, right, often time we cannot recognize the emotions that we are going through, right? So like, I think that's where we are kind of like focusing on is allowing these kids to understand their own emotions. It could be like either they're sad or they're happy, they're excited or they're nervous or anxious around something that so they can really understand those emotions so they can take the right step, right? Often times we don't really understand those as a kid. And that's where we are allowing them to understand different emotions so they can take the right step. That's where we provide different resources for them to kind of like take that. One of the biggest things that we learned, if you think about it in schools, we have no type of psychologist or therapist involved, but we have like 10 to 15 security guards, every schools, right? And that is so frustrating to me. If we invest more money into having like therapists or psychologists, we wouldn't need any of like security guards because they are being supported, right? And then another stat, there is one guidance counselor for average 150 students. What can one guidance counselor can do for like hundreds of students, right? And when you think about that, like these students have no type of support system. A lot of them are being bullied. A lot of them are going through some sort of stuff at home, right? It doesn't matter how much resource you have at home or in schools, they're afraid to talk about it, right? Because they feel like going back to your point about like confidence and trust, right? They don't feel like they have those support systems. They don't feel confident to share about their emotions because they feel like they will be judged. And that's where we come in is to make sure that they feel like they have that support system. While they are growing their self personally and professionally. - That's a really good point about guidance counselors because I think they get such a bad rep, which honestly makes sense because when I think back to the guidance counselors that like I had in school, they weren't that supportive. I mean, yeah, they were doing their job, quote unquote, but it never felt like there was any investment in like me individually. And maybe that's an issue with the education system at large where you like how can you have a better ratio, especially at a school like Bronx Science, for example, where my graduating class was like 750 students. There's just no way you can have a one-to-one ratio at that support. - Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, you can't blame these guardians counselors, right? Because they can't do anything when they have no resources, right? If like 10 students come to this person at a time like how they're gonna handle each of the students, like how they can create a personalized experience for each of these students because they can't, they have to like do all the paperwork, they have to make sure students are being in the right class and writing so how they can't support students emotionally, right? Because they don't have that time. And another big thing is like they are not being trained for it, right? They just put into this job and be like, hey, here is like, this is what your job, this is what you're gonna do. Blah blah blah. They go through this regular traditional training around guardians counselors, but they have no form of training around how to manage emotions or if someone opens up about their mental health conditions, what they need to do, right? We talk to like over, I would say hundreds of guardians counselors, one of the biggest opportunities that came up, those conversations was they want to be trained because a lot of times students opens up, they have no clue on what to do, right? So they want to help, but they don't know how to and like we don't really provide resources to our guardians counselors or train them on the right resources and right language to you. I totally agree because I think that, you know, guidance counselors don't have that training and you can kind of like sense it too. Like you know when there's someone who really like understands how to take the appropriate course of action versus feeling as if they're just kind of checking the boxes and going through maybe like the routine of what they have to do for their job. But you know, maybe that's a larger issue, I guess, like figuring out the future of the education system, like how can we support students beyond the classroom? on the classroom environment in an academic framework. And I guess this is a loaded question, but something that I'm curious to hear about is how you envision schools at large integrating social emotional learning into the broader curriculum because it's a very hard task to do. And when you are in elementary, middle school, and high school, there's so much material and knowledge that you have to learn. So many different types of math classes and science and humanity, there's just so much content. How can you realistically balance that knowledge consumption with also providing kids the skills and the repertoire, the tools to better manage their emotions because it just seems like a really challenging thing to do. And it's something that's necessary, I believe, but how do you actually bring that into practice? - There is so many ways you could do that. One of the first things that the education system needs to think about is they need to see that this is a problem. They need to recognize that, hey, this is important and this is a problem. And the way to implement it is like, when we went through a high school and middle school, one of the required course was health, right? You have to take health and health needs to be broken down. We need to talk about mental health. There should be a class around mental health and it should be required for everyone. From, like I would say, early elementary school to high school, to middle school, like all of them, every single, when we move on, we have to have those mental health classes, right? And the second one is implementing the social emotional concept in each of those courses that you take, right? So math, science, English, history, light, we need to either start with some sort of mental health, like coping strategies, right? Teachings you would like, oh, meditation, or like journaling, or some sort of like that, we need to implement either five to 10 minutes before we start class or at the end of the class, anything that we take. And that's how we were really great at stigma and really make sure that our students are this youth understand these different concepts or these different mental health conditions. And I think that's the best way we could do it. It's like creating those bite-sized courses that we can implement within our courses, whatever we take each day. Yeah, so really like integrating those specific practices into the traditional structure. I wish I could go back to school over again if it was like that. And especially having like a mental health class, I think would be so valuable. I don't think that every single kid needs to know how to throw a basketball. Like you'll make it in life without having to know how to play sports, honestly. And I am a believer that sports can be a very integral part of people's lives and for your physical and mental wellness. Like there's a lot of value around teamwork and discipline and all of that. So I'm not knocking sports. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I think that instead of mandating kids to be in gym class because I can tell you with complete confidence that I did not pay attention, one single bit in my middle school gym periods or even high school for that matter, I think instead maybe creating some sort of hybrid wellness class where yes, you have that physical activity component because endorphins. But then also you actually educate kids on how to take care of their mental health. Because I think also when you're young, you're not thinking about mental health. You think, oh, that's like an adulting, like an older person issue, but don't you want to feel good all the time? When you're a kid, you want to feel a good sense of self and happy and feel like you've meaningful relationships with your friends and your family. So if you can give kids that framework and that education, then they can really start to think about it. Yeah. And then the big component is we need to implement more project-based learning in whole education. Everything that we are learning, it's all memorizing. You have to memorize. The way this world is shifting, we're not getting anything out of memorizing. Most people learn from by doing and engaging themselves into these experiences. So anything that you are memorizing, it would not matter anymore. Because I could find anything I want in Google. Why do I need to memorize something? So education should be more experiential, more project-based. So that way we're actually learning the skills that needed. And I think that's such a big component in terms of mental health because you see a growth within yourself, with these learning and taking tests, it's just like I cheated my whole life, basically. I graduated by cheating, to be honest. Because it was all learning. It was just like I searched up on Google, the answer is there. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's such value to actually being in a more experiential environment, where you're getting that immediate direct feedback based off of the actions that you're taking. There's, I think, a lot of value to the more creative side of learning is also what I'm hearing you say. And I think that sticks also. Aside from everything we've just talked about around, the value of mental health and education and what you're doing with this nonprofit, I want to backtrack a little bit and hear more about how you manage your own mental health struggles and how you were able to progress through your life coming from a low-income neighborhood and not having a lot of opportunities necessarily handed to you. How did you create those opportunities for yourself and conjure up the mental strength and resilience to keep going at all these big ideas and be so accomplished in your life under the age of 30? Well, I wouldn't say I accomplished a lot. There's so much more to do for sure. But one of the biggest things that really helped me was knowing that I have a mental health issue. Like, I've been going through anxiety for like three, four years now, I was diagnosed with. And I've been in therapy for three, four years now. And that has helped me so much. And then throughout those times, I just always making sure like, what am I thinking? How is it affecting my work? And some of the strategies that I use is I try to meditate at least once a day or once every other day, once a day has to be like the thing. And then I do these box breathing where you basically breathe in for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, and then you breathe out for four seconds, and you hold that exhale for four seconds, right? I try to implement that throughout my day, whenever I'm like stress about something or something that's like making me nervous or something that just like, I don't-- I'm not getting it. I just take a pause and just do like four to five times of that box breathing. And it helps me a lot. And that how I keep myself sane. And just I love listening to music and taking walks. So I do that most of my days. Every time I have like a two hour call, like back to back, I just block out my time for five to 10 minutes. And we're like, all right, I'm out. I'm going to go for a walk, or I'm just going to chill, do nothing, come back, and get back to work. And that's how I kind of like keep myself, my mental health healthy. And it's also something that you have to do consistently as well. None of these things are quick fixes, which I think is a huge misconception on mental health practices and meditation. You can't just meditate for 10 minutes, and then your life is better. You have to do it every single day. And I think the beginning can be difficult, because our minds are always racing, and it's like, well, is this actually doing anything? But the benefits, they accrue. And then it kind of hits you. And you're like, oh my god, I feel so much calmer. Something I'm actually trying to do now is get back into a meditation practice that I developed this past summer, or last summer now, because I guess time is moving faster than I realized. And by trying to get back into that meditation, the other day I sat down for 30 minutes before starting work. And I meditated. And people might think, oh my god, that's so long. But it went by so fast, because I needed it. Like I sat down and I was like, okay, I really have a lot going on in my head right now, so let me just do this. And after the 30 minutes, I felt great. And it's not like the rest of the day was, rainbows and butterflies, but I felt like greater, I was in greater control of the day. - I really love that. And I'm glad that you mentioned that you have to keep it consistent and like it's a long process, right? When I first started meditating, I used to get anxiety attacks for a few weeks. Because when you're meditating, you're just so quiet, everything is so quiet. And just all the thoughts come to your mind and you just freak out. But over time, it does help. It helps me a lot. You just have to keep a consistent and mental health is all about long-term process. There's always, if you think about it, if you break your hands and doctor tell you it's going to heal in like three months, there is no way that you will fix it in one month. Because that's the process. With mental health, you have to embrace the process that it's going to take long. But it's guaranteed that you will be better. You will feel better at certain points and you will be able to take control of your thoughts, your mindset, your emotions. Right. And also, I think giving yourself the grace to know that that process is a necessarily linear. It may be up a moment that you feel like you're kind of backtracking and then you make a ton of progress and I think giving yourself the space to be kind if you feel as if you're kind of regressing in your mental health journey or process or wherever along that you feel you may lie. And recognizing that things are kind of always in flux. And so even if you feel like you're falling back, you're probably still 10 steps ahead. You just don't really have the hindsight to see that yet. Right on. Like you said it. And the thing right now, I just put that. That's it. That's mental health. We have it figured out now. But actually, how else would you define mental health? Now I'm really curious to hear because I think there's so many different definitions out there and so many can be kind of fluffy. Like, oh, I need to do XYZ to feel restful and peaceful, but I think there's just so many complex definitions out there or ways that we can think about our mental health. Mental health to me, it's everything to be honest. Like everything that you feel is your mental health, right? It could be a good, you know, oftentimes when we think about mental health, we always go into like the mental health issues or conditions like anxiety, depression, like bipolar disorder, like, you know, we go into that, but mental health is basically everything. Everything together and it's just just like basically combination of your good mental health, your bad mental health. And that's what mental health is to me. I love that answer. It reminds me of this quote by Adam Grant on how he says that the absence of mental illness does not mean the presence of mental health. And that really like struck something within me because I was, I read that and I was like, yes, exactly. Like when we talk about mental health, there's a focus on mental illness. And yes, we need to talk about mental illness because we need to reduce that stigma and normalize that, you know, half the population is suffering with anxiety and depression. And then of course, there can be more severe mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and personality disorder. Like there's there's, you know, a whole range in the DSM that we could get into. But even if you don't suffer with those conditions, it doesn't mean that life is easy. Like life of itself is not easy. Like we all go through challenges and we all go through periods of feeling sad or anxious or whatnot, you know, it's human basic human emotion. And so I think that, you know, this concept around discussing mental health holistically is so crucial and important. And that's really what I'm trying to do with this podcast is talk about, you know, bringing that joy and happiness into our lives. And it's multifaceted and it can you can find it really appear in so many different ways. So it's so fascinating to get to hear people's stories on, you know, how they define happiness and health and their own mental health journey is because I think like you said, mental health is everything and it affects everything in our life. So, you know, from the day you were born until the present moment, there's, it's been a journey of, you know, how you've managed your mental health. And I think that's kind of also got you to where you are now. And, you know, a little segue that I wanted to get into is the Forbes 30 under 30 accomplishment, which is so amazing. Congratulations on that. I know that wasn't necessarily recent, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, what that was like for you. To be honest, it was one of the biggest moment for me. And also recently, I became a Forbes next one thousand, which is was another accomplishment that I just announced, like in in in in in recently. And to be honest, I kind of like see it as a selfishness because I use this as a way to move the work forward, right? A lot of these things oftentimes people are afraid to do a lot of these. I do it the reason because it will give me more cloud to get my work forward because it's so important. And the experience was so amazing that I was able to build so much more connection. And it gave me a platform that allowed me to reach out to people and get the work that I really needed to be done using this, right? So it was it was it was a great opportunity and I feel like these help so much to move your work forward because these are some recognition that like come on being in the Forbes is just like takes you to the next level of be like, all right, this is something serious. People will take you a lot more serious than like if you're not getting any a recognition for the work that you're doing. So yeah, every time like I I don't I don't like to get recognized for it, but like I do it because of the selfish reason of like this will allow me to take my work forward and will allow me to impact a lot more people. And through that, I was able to meet some of the best people who helped me grow this this company, you know, and I'm just so grateful for it because it really allowed me to help so many youth. We just recently announced that we served over 2500 students in New York City and it just this allowed me to do that. That's amazing. I mean, you're clearly so passionate about these topics and people can really sense like an authentic commitment and care for whatever that interest may be. So, you know, it's incredibly well deserved and I can't wait to see the next LinkedIn post because I'm sure there are going to be so many more down the line. And, you know, I know we've moved into 2022. It's just the beginning of the year. So I'm sure you've probably thought about upcoming goals that you have for this year and you know, where you hope to see this company grow. So I'd love to hear, you know, what do you envision the future of kids Ivy tutors to be? Yeah, for sure. One of the biggest change going to be like our branding for sure. We will move away from calling ourselves like tutors to like a lot more focusing on like the mental health aspect of it because that has been our bigger goal. And then the second one is we have been working on this digital platform where we will be creating bit size courses for our youth, our students to go through where they will be able to create their own profile and create a pathways for them to learn, right? It could be like different mental health skills. It could be like different 21st century skills. So we are working on that aspect right now. It's creating that digital component where we'll be able to scale throughout the nation and eventually internationally. One of our biggest goal is to serve one billion new throughout our time. So hopefully we'll be able to get there someday and this will be the first step to do that. Well, I am so excited to follow along everything that you're doing. Slash, you will accomplish with this because I have no doubt that you will hit those milestones. And you know, I kind of like I said earlier, like I wish I was back in school because we were never taught 21st century skills. Like we were never taught these things in school. And I think my education would have been so much more valuable. I mean, it has been very valuable like the education that I've been afforded and I've been very grateful for that. But I think, you know, in addition to just the academic things that we learn in school, like we're not really being taught life skills. And that's so important. And then it kind of hits you like a track when you are in the quote unquote real world. So I think, you know, everything that you're doing is so right on track. And I'm really excited to see how things shape up in the future. I love that. To be honest, I really appreciate like you having me here and this definitely means a lot. I really enjoy this conversation. And I just want to thank you for doing this because this is so important. What you're doing in terms of like mental health and wellness because we definitely need to have more of these conversations and we definitely need to make sure people are like engaging, right? And you're building that awareness, which is my much needed. So I definitely want to thank you and kind of like, off to you for doing this. You will definitely do so much great things with this for sure. Thank you. You know, we all need a little bit extra endorphins in our lives. So that's what I'm trying to do here. And speaking of endorphins, my final question to you, it's something that I ask every guest that comes on to the podcast is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day. Working out to be honest, I love working out. And then I've been going, I've been training to become a personal trainer. So like going, like working out is just, is definitely the thing that brings me to our brings me into our brain for sure. How do you even become a personal trainer? Like, what are you, what are you training for? Like learning how to teach exercises or how does that work? It's like you learn about like you basically take a whole biology course of our understanding people's body and everything. And then you learn like different stash stretches and how to like navigate different exercise and all those kind of stuff. So there's this concept, there's this thing called an ASM. You go through them, you take the test and, um, and then you basically become a personal trainer and I've been, I've been learning a lot of those stuff. So hopefully this year I will become a personal trainer. Oh, that's awesome. Well, I'm sure it also can like broaden your perspective on exercise as well when you get, you know, when you're able to be like a fitness instructor, getting it from that angle. So and we know that exercise brings us endorphins, things to L woods from legally blonde and tons of research out there, of course. So I think that's a great answer. Working out definitely brings me a lot of joy, just at least getting in some sort of, like physical activity, any type of movement every day. I feel like I need to feel like a human. So got to say active. Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Where can my listeners follow you, follow kids, Ivy tutors? Where can they stay connected on social media to see what you're going to be up to? Search your name anywhere. It's basically like all the social media. It's Facebook, Instagram. I'm also on TikTok and then it's linked and just search up my name, kind of car on my, I'm there. Thank you so much, can't a car. Of course, for sure. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening and remember to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things that bring you endorphins every day. See you next time.