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Auto-Generated Transcript
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:29:12
Speaker 1
For me. I know education was very important to my mom. My mom is Korean and she moved to the States in her mid twenties and had me there, and she always emphasized how important education was. And in her mind, she always wanted me to be number one. Which is a classic. And I was not that I wasn’t the best student.
00:00:29:13 – 00:00:58:04
Speaker 1
I had a hard time paying attention. My report cards always said I talked a lot, that I had a hard time sitting down and I do remember I loved numbers and my mom was interested in math and she would do math workbooks with me. One of my favorite memories was when I had chicken pox and she had to stay home from work and we stayed in bed and she did math workbooks with me.
00:00:58:06 – 00:01:31:09
Speaker 1
So. So sweet. But yeah, and we didn’t grow up or I didn’t grow up with a lot in my younger years because my biological father left my mom and I when I was four. And so it was just her and I for a while. And yeah, so she did the best. She could and she prioritized education. And I remember when the encyclopedia salesperson came to the door and I think, I don’t even know if she must have paid for it for like three years.
00:01:31:10 – 00:01:53:10
Speaker 1
She bought the encyclopedias on a payment plan. And so that was I was a voracious reader. So even though I wasn’t the best student, I constantly had my nose in a book. So I would read the encyclopedia and I told my mom I was afraid of the dark so that I could have a nightlight, so that I could read the middle of the night.
00:01:53:12 – 00:02:05:20
Speaker 1
So I’ve always been sort of, yeah, just curious and always interested in learning despite causing trouble at school.
00:02:05:22 – 00:02:39:06
Speaker 2
I’m so curious what you just said. You said that, you know, despite not doing well in school, you always had your nose in a book. And I’m curious, what do you think it was about the format of being able to read on your own time that that format of learning was more engaging to you than learning in a formal setting with school?
00:02:39:08 – 00:03:07:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s a good question. Like, we didn’t have a lot of money, but my mom always had money for books. So if there’s the book fair I just loved, I would look at every single book to make sure I chose one carefully and yeah, even eating breakfast I was reading something and maybe at school it was just the idea of sitting down and I just had so many things to distract me.
00:03:07:19 – 00:03:29:13
Speaker 1
And I liked talking to my friend that was next to me. I know there were times where I would get hyper focused on certain projects, and I remember this one in particular. I think I was in third or fourth grade and we were given construction paper to make a kite and then tissue paper too, to glue on to the kite.
00:03:29:15 – 00:03:57:21
Speaker 1
And I wrapped each tissue paper square around the end of a pencil and dipped it into glue and then pressed it onto the construction paper. And I made these, like, little flowers or florets or whatever out of the tissue paper. And I had them all tightly packed together. And I worked on it through lunch. And I remember looking at the wall of all the kids kites, and some had gobs of glue or maybe like three squares on it.
00:03:57:23 – 00:04:25:07
Speaker 1
And then you see mine. And I probably had, I don’t know, maybe 50 squares of tissue that was compressed and put together on this kite. So yeah, if something captured my imagination, I would go into a tunnel. And I think that’s what it probably was with books is I got to choose what I wanted to read. It was something I was interested in and then I could go into a rabbit hole.
00:04:25:09 – 00:05:02:13
Speaker 1
It was interesting because I think they weren’t quite sure what to do with me, so I was put into advanced placement math classes regularly and I would always start off well, so I would get 100% of my tests and things like that, and then I’d stop doing the homework and eventually I’d end up with like a, B or C in the class and I was just like precocious and curious and I get these crazy ideas and and then I’d be so intense about getting my way about it.
00:05:02:15 – 00:05:29:11
Speaker 1
My mom would want me to come home for dinner or whatever. And it would always be just, you know, just one more thing, one more thing. And it’s not perfect. And yeah, I think for her, yeah, I think having me on her time schedule was a challenge and then not being sort of interested in the things that she was interested in and excelling at the things she wanted me to excel at.
00:05:29:13 – 00:05:33:03
Speaker 2
What did she want you to excel at?
00:05:33:05 – 00:06:02:05
Speaker 1
Oh, she I wrote an essay about this. She raised me to be married. She really she worked really hard on her feet as a cook, and she wanted me to marry somebody who had an office job. It didn’t matter what they did. If they sat at a desk, you know, if they were a clerk or an analyst, it was better in her mind than a physical labor type job or a job that you’re on your feet.
00:06:02:07 – 00:06:31:00
Speaker 1
So she used to tell me she wanted me to be a secretary. But yeah, I was interested in sports and just like, getting dirty, playing outside, playing with my friends. We even fight over the instrument I would play in sixth grade. Everybody was required to play an instrument. So you either chose if you wanted to be in the orchestra, in the band, and I really, really wanted to play the saxophone.
00:06:31:02 – 00:06:57:09
Speaker 1
And my mom said, No, saxophone is for boys, and she wanted me to play the flute. And so and then both of us being stubborn, we ended up compromising. And I played the clarinet. And then I quit after sixth grade because I didn’t want to play the clarinet. And so it was just something that we really couldn’t connect on.
00:06:57:09 – 00:07:21:09
Speaker 1
And then she loved beauty pageants and really, really wanted me to be a beauty pageant person. I don’t even know what they’re called. And I was such a tomboy. My favorite color was blue, and I like skateboarding and riding bicycles and skinning my knee. You know, I didn’t want to play with Barbie and Dolls and things like that.
00:07:21:09 – 00:07:51:18
Speaker 1
And I think growing up in the small town in the U.S. that I did, I, I think subconsciously I got the sense that boys were prioritized. And I thought if I could like the things that boys liked, excelled at the things boys excelled at, that I could matter. And so it just seemed like there were all of these rules placed on me that boys didn’t have and boys, it just seemed like there was this sense of freedom that they could become or be anything.
00:07:51:20 – 00:07:57:12
Speaker 1
And so I think there’s that part of me that just really wanted to matter.
00:07:57:14 – 00:08:21:17
Speaker 2
So that feels very poignant to me, and I want to know where that kind of came from. You said, you know, you were you have the sense that boys mattered more and they got more attention and maybe more love from society and had more opportunities and things like that. And I know that you have at least one son and at least one daughter.
00:08:21:17 – 00:09:00:11
Speaker 2
From the stories that I’ve heard you share about your son having kind of developed his own confidence to start his own company and, you know, get really into game development and and how your daughter even is starting her own businesses. Right. Not just one. And so I’m really curious about like how you sort of nurtured their kind of understanding of the world and how you chose to educate them based on, you know, like your own journey.
00:09:00:13 – 00:09:28:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I don’t know, like, how much is my influence versus kind of the direction that society and the world is going and the pace of technology. But I do think like when I think about my mom and the sort of seeds she planted, she was always experimenting, experimenting in the kitchen or, you know, she would kind of walk around on her tiptoes when she had an idea and say, I’m making my own idea.
00:09:28:13 – 00:09:56:18
Speaker 1
And it feels like some kind of food concoction that sometimes was amazing and sometimes, like completely bombed. But I think with them, yeah, just seeing that, you know, like you can learn any type of skill, you approach it with a beginner’s mindset and you don’t have to just gravitate towards things that society or people or even you tell yourself that you’re good at.
00:09:56:20 – 00:10:38:16
Speaker 1
It’s you have an interest and then you can follow it. I think my son initially was very much on the traditional linear path. He he’s always been into computers since very, very young. And so it’s no surprise that he got a computer science degree and then became a developer, but then, you know, decided to to build a video game and then I think that taking that leap, maybe I’ve modeled for them to not be afraid because I think of like my parents generation, you really need to be a good employee so that you can be taken care of.
00:10:38:18 – 00:11:02:22
Speaker 1
And I think that mentality has just gone out the window. I think people feel like companies aren’t taking care of them and don’t care for them. They, you know, they don’t have the defined benefit plans and, you know, where you retire and then you’ve got your lifestyle taken care of till your final days. Like we just don’t have that kind of world.
00:11:03:00 – 00:11:33:23
Speaker 1
And so, yeah, I think with with my daughter, she she’s, you know, like more like me and entrepreneurial and interested in a lot of different things. I mean, my son’s interested in different things too, but her more so and I take inspiration from both of them and from her. She just in high school, she started creating YouTube videos before that was even anything on my radar.
00:11:34:01 – 00:12:03:00
Speaker 1
And yeah, I just trust that they will find their way and the thing is, is when you try something new, you’re learning a new skill, and when you learn something, it’s nobody can take that away from you, nobody can take knowledge away from you. So I know I meet with a lot of people. I have a micro coaching business called Unstuck in 15, where I help people get unstuck in 15 minutes with three questions. And a lot of times people are stuck because they want to quit their jobs or they want to try a new career and they just are afraid to take that leap because what happens if it doesn’t work out well? What happens if it doesn’t work out is that you’ve learned a new skill, so now you’re more valuable because you’re more multidimensional. And so my hope is that anybody listening to this, if you’re afraid to step into a new career, like what’s the worst that can happen to me? If you stay in a job that’s unfulfilling and you don’t like and it’s ten years down the road and you’ve been wanting to make a change and you look back versus making that jump, I mean, obviously there are, you know, family responsibilities, paying the bills, things like that. But even that if you really want something, you can restructure your life. So when I got laid off two years ago, I wanted to have a really long runway. So leading up to it, my husband and I were very conscious of saving as much as possible and putting and investing, you know, 30% of our our paycheck or even more. And then when the time came, it was like, let’s just sell everything. We sold our business, sold her rental property, sold our house furnished. I sold my car. We moved to be closer to his family. But I just wanted to have the opportunity to follow my curiosity. So if you’re feeling really trapped, yeah, it’s like, not very convenient to sell and move. But what’s the alternative?
00:13:46:00 – 00:14:21:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And you know something that you said? I reminded me of the book. Rich Dad. Poor Dad. Where Robert Kiyosaki talks about like, how generalization no specialization can is actually the is really dangerous for your survival despite what you know messaging that we get from society in school. Because once you become so specialized in one area, you’re no longer useful.
00:14:21:05 – 00:14:51:10
Speaker 2
If that becomes an obsolete venture or like an obsolete career or field and like, you cannot be I don’t want to say used, but you know you can’t be utilized exact. Thank you. You can’t be utilized in another job because your skill has been so specialized that you don’t even know how to. And so I’m just wondering, like, do you agree with that?
00:14:51:12 – 00:15:18:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, uh, I mean, I would say I don’t necessarily agree only because you would have transferable skills. So, for example, a friend of mine got her master’s in petroleum engineering and she thought, Oh, I’m set. You know, I’m highly employable because I not only have a degree in petroleum engineering, I have a master’s degree. And then look what happened to oil and gas. And she just went through several layoffs and had difficult time finding work. But then she was able to move into data science. So it a data science bootcamp and so because she had, I guess, a way of thinking or approaching problems that she learned as a petroleum engineer, she could take that and transfer that over to a new career. So she just had to fill in the gaps. So I do think it can be really, really challenging to be highly specialized because then, you know, your job can be made obsolete. But I think a lot of jobs will be. But if you can figure out how to repackage what you do, have to help you step into the next whatever that next thing is. So and that’s that’s what’s kind of frustrating about the whole hiring process is because you just had this really antiquated way of creating like this checklist and then measuring people against the checklist. And then the checklist will be like 3 to 5 years or 5 to 7 years of a specific job title experience. And it was like, well, what’s the difference? I mean, I would rather hire somebody that had one year each at three different companies than someone who’s had five years in one company. You know, it’s just so, yeah, yeah. So if you are making a career transition, you need to figure out how to present yourself so that people can visualize you in the new role, even though you don’t have a specific job title, Right?
00:16:50:06 – 00:17:26:08
Speaker 2
Totally. And you know what? I love what you said and you know where I currently am in South Korea. I was teaching basically based skills to students who were changing careers into a new field, and they were all really stressed out because they were getting older. And there are certain cutoffs of like, you know, because in South Korea it’s still very much like a everybody wants to get into Samsung or LG or, you know, one of these like big companies.
00:17:26:08 – 00:18:12:17
Speaker 2
And once they get in, they don’t want to leave. There’s still a lot of that mentality. I don’t want to over generalize and say that’s everybody, but I want to say that that’s still a really thick dominating narrative that you get locked into a career for the rest of your life and then you find safety. And so I would love to hear more about your perspective on why you think you would prefer to hire somebody who spent a year in three different companies over a course of three years versus somebody who might have just had one career or one had spent three years at one job?
00:18:12:19 – 00:18:46:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it comes from my personal experience because it’s with having all of the different jobs I’ve had. It’s not just the different jobs that gave me different skills, but it’s working in different organizations that gave me a different lens or a different perspective on things. So I’ve worked in a bootstrapped startup, I worked in a well-funded startup, I worked in a banking crown corporation, which is like a government bank, which is like as like institution as you can get.
00:18:46:14 – 00:19:17:15
Speaker 1
And so I was able to see many different leadership styles, communication styles, ways that people solve problems and think about things creatively and yeah, and I mean it’s it’s all human. And so what are all the different ways humans can interact with each other? And so by having experience and in different environments, you just have such a richer and deeper perspective.
00:19:17:15 – 00:20:06:07
Speaker 1
And even if you were doing the same job at the three different companies, it’s like, so for example, being a product manager, you can be a product manager in so many different ways. You can be a product manager that is at a very, very large company and you’re so specifically focused on one area of the website and you do a very specific part of that and you have all of this big team that can support you or you can be at a startup and you’re wearing many hats and you know, you don’t have like a marketing research person or a quality assurance person or a product owner, you know, it’s you doing all of those
00:20:06:07 – 00:20:30:16
Speaker 1
things. So yeah, we’re working on a brand new product versus a legacy product. It just gives you more, I don’t know, skills is the word, but just a richer experience that you can draw on and can really be an asset for teams and organizations.
00:20:30:18 – 00:21:10:14
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And another thing that came to mind as you were sharing, that is when you are in three different companies, you’re sort of seeing three different cultures, right? Like how these three different places tackle a problem. Right? And you’re sort of saying, okay, well, you know, we can solve a problem this way because we have these types of assets and resources to access, whereas we don’t have these assets in this other company, but we do have these things that we can utilize instead.
00:21:10:16 – 00:21:48:10
Speaker 2
And so, you know, you’re learning how to deal with certain allocations of resources in comparison to not having them. There’s a lot that comes from having to problem solve with limited because that’s really the essence or definition of creativity is, you know, a lot of people think creativity comes from having all the resources at your fingertips, but it actually comes from limited resources and not, you know, having certain constraints placed.
00:21:48:12 – 00:22:49:12
Speaker 2
You know, you need the box to be an outside the box thinker, right? And so there’s so much benefit that comes from being interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary. And I think, like you said, have a diversification of skills. And I love what you said earlier about having transferable skills. Even if you have specialized in a certain area or a certain field that you can transfer what you need, you know, and apply it to new constraints or new cultures and new problems, how do we teach our children and our students to be adaptable and to kind of roll with the changes and not to put all their eggs in one basket, But even if they do know how to adapt that and transfer their knowledge to new things that come our way.
00:22:55:13 – 00:23:27:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it’s around like not focusing on if your children know the right answer, but if they can ask good questions. So a lot of the traditional school was, well, you know, it was it it’s evolved to some degree now, but used to be rote memorization for exams. And so now they’re getting better at collaborative work and projects and things like that that I think to were born. We innately have this ability to experiment and to, you know, fail and not have it impact our feeling of self-worth. And I think when you’re in that very specific learning environment where you’re meant to know something and know the right answer, and if you don’t, then you’re somehow less then. So I think in the future it’s more, yeah, like you don’t see it as failure. You see it as we’ve learned. We tried this thing, it didn’t work out, but here are all the things we learned. So when we do it next time, we’ll do it better because we won’t make those mistakes. And not that there are mistakes, but we won’t because there were unknowns that you uncover some unknowns and the unknowns you had before became nodes. So then now it informs your next step, so you’re progressing forward. So I think the way to prepare children for the future is to just nurture that curiosity in that experiment. Asian mindset and not have an expectation of children performing duties that are very specific way.
00:24:47:15 – 00:25:25:05
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And, you know, I would love to know more about maybe some suggestions you might have regarding like curriculum, maybe, you know, the the day that the way that the day is structured or, you know, how might we have to change the way that we structure or systemize education on a day to day basis or a yearly basis to make it more friendly for that kind of experimentation?
00:25:25:07 – 00:25:50:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I saw just today actually Bill Gates put out a letter and he talked about the future of education, education, technology or whatever, and he said that in the future, the near future, maybe even now, learning will be individualized. And so when you’re a student learning the quadratic equation, you’re going to be taught in a way that works for you.
00:25:50:13 – 00:26:21:03
Speaker 1
And I was just like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what’s exciting about the future of education. What’s exciting about the future of education is like using technology to enable us to, like, express ourselves more or to create more, to innovate more to. It’s like, I don’t know how applicable the quadratic equation is to a lot of people.
00:26:21:05 – 00:26:47:09
Speaker 1
So if you can use education and to facilitate working with people around the world or I just finished a rite of passage, which to me it’s a it’s a writing cohort course, to me this is the future of education. I don’t know what it looks like for children, but here. So I just compare it to a university English one, a one class English one, two, one.
00:26:47:11 – 00:27:26:19
Speaker 1
You might read some literature, which is fantastic, but you would do some type of analysis, some type of a report. You might learn some grammar sentence structure, things like that. And then in right of passage, you’re learning how to get clarity on your thoughts through writing and learning to write through conversation. So that because everybody gets feedback on each other’s drafts so that you can get outside of your head, see what you’re missing, see things from different perspectives, so that by the time you have your your piece that’s ready to publish, you’ve gotten clarity on your thinking.
00:27:26:21 – 00:27:49:23
Speaker 1
You’re writing about a problem you want to solve, and you’ve gotten feedback from others to see it from a different perspective so that your thinking is enriched as well. So you’re you’re like growing through the process of producing something that can provide value versus learning the quadratic equation.
00:27:50:01 – 00:28:18:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yes. And you know, the way that I, I love those two. I love how you brought that letter and then this example of, you know, completing rite of passage. I love how you juxtapose that, because the way that I understand the future of education is that it is going to be highly individ actualized and personalized and unique to the learner because we can do that right.
00:28:18:17 – 00:29:04:23
Speaker 2
And I think one thing that is really missing in a lot of people, definition of the future of education is how are we going to systemize community in a way that’s also individualized, but also kind of continues like this Socratic method of drawing out your thoughts and the deep questioning that comes with analyzing and juxtaposing someone else’s maybe contrasting opinions or ideas and thoughts and, you know, the things that come about from sort of wrestling with people, not necessarily physically, but, you know, mentally and intellectually.
00:29:05:02 – 00:29:40:03
Speaker 2
The sparring that kind of happens sometimes it can. And so, you know, where is this idea of community? Where is it coming from and how do we structure it? And I know that the personalization, individualization needs to happen, especially because I remember when I was growing up, I was like, this is not how I learn. They’re being they’re teaching me how to do something, a way in a way that is so uncomfortable for me that I’m not that this is not registering.
00:29:40:05 – 00:30:07:11
Speaker 2
But but some of that is important, right? Because it’s really discomfort that gets you thinking of an alternative in finding something that works for you as well. And then also on this other hand of community, we’re we’re heading into this world. I mean, we’re already in it, but that so many people are rejecting, you know, the existing methods of schooling.
00:30:07:11 – 00:30:37:06
Speaker 2
And so we have a lot of people unschooling and micro schooling and homeschooling. And, you know, they are bringing about these certain communities and arranging them in a certain way. But we’re not thinking of it like a mass scale. And I’m wondering, do we need to because there should be a default education system, because if everybody is alternative, then that becomes the main mode of education.
00:30:37:08 – 00:31:03:20
Speaker 2
And so I’m curious for you, like how do you see the future of education at a mass scale that is kind of harnessing the power of both individualization and hyper individualization, personalization as well as the community aspect of having, you know, a culture to grow from and with?
00:31:03:22 – 00:31:45:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it’s like when you have an ability to in school or homeschool or choose an alternative, it’s it’s a privilege like the the children who are, who don’t have that capability. Oftentimes their parents are working multiple jobs. And so, you know, we want to be an educated society. I think no matter who you are, you have to agree with that, because when you have a population that’s educated, you have a population that can take care of each other and be resourceful and all of those things.
00:31:45:20 – 00:32:31:12
Speaker 1
But yeah, for the idea of how to en masse teach children in this to to prepare them for the future, I just think it’ll be more project based work, more curiosity led. I don’t know if you know much about Synthesis School. You know, they’re playing around with a lot and maybe that’s something that’s scalable. But I think with technology you can scale customization, so I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I do see the future of education being far more collaborative and at the same time being individualized.
00:32:31:14 – 00:32:45:14
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And I know I just read The Learning Game by Arnold Reyna for Braga, who I think is a graduate of Right of Passage. So and I know she’s the chief evangelist of synthesis.
00:32:45:16 – 00:32:47:19
Speaker 1
Yes, yes, yes.
00:32:47:21 – 00:33:17:10
Speaker 2
And I, I do love that model. And I think it’s really cool. What do you think is the best thing that society can do to help students fill in the gaps or children or people, adults fill in the gaps of their learning so that they can go on to do the next thing that they’re interested in. That will help them survive.
00:33:17:12 – 00:33:48:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s just like it’s just such a cool time to be alive now because we just have so many options. You hear these crazy stories of people just watching YouTube videos and, you know, making discoveries or building things or, you know, there’s these cohort courses or bootcamps or it’s just like, choose your own adventure. If you really, really want to learn something, you can there’s, you know, Wikipedia is another example.
00:33:48:02 – 00:34:31:05
Speaker 1
It’s just yeah, there’s just so much as far as resources and opportunities to fill those gaps. And then if you catch there’s all this connectivity so you can find people who can, you know, partner with you to do it. Yeah, it just seems like limitless possibilities. And I think the challenge I see that gets in the way of, of progress and, you know, everybody being able to tap into what’s possible is, you know, are we taking care of each other?
00:34:31:07 – 00:34:55:14
Speaker 1
So, you know, when you have people whose personal net worth is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and then you have people who are trying to figure out how to feed their children or they’re forgoing food themselves to feed their children. Right now, I read a statistic that we have one and a half times the amount of food to feed the entire world.
00:34:55:16 – 00:35:12:07
Speaker 1
And we’re not we’re not taking advantage of the abundance. We’re still in this scarcity mindset, you know, winner take all from the industrial era. And as we’re in the Internet age, we need to find a way to bring everybody up.