Choosing a major in college often begins with a subject we enjoy, and for Dr. Bledsoe, it was no different when her love of reading and writing led her to major in English Literature, which eventually led to a Masters Degree in Advanced Literary to help others learn to love and value reading. Many of us find our calling through our work experiences, as Ripsime did in her first few positions out of school. We never know where we are going to discover the thing that becomes our career focus, so it’s important to be open to opportunities and continue to learn every step of the way, as Ripsime clearly does throughout her story. Because Dr. Bledsoe has years of experience teaching First Year seminar courses, we discuss many topics pertaining to first year college students, including many pieces of advice for both students and parents. Don't miss this valuable guidance!
Choosing a major in college often begins with a subject we enjoy, and for Dr. Bledsoe, it was no different when her love of reading and writing led her to major in English Literature, which eventually led to a Masters Degree in Advanced Literary to help others learn to love and value reading. Many of us find our calling through our work experiences, as Ripsime did in her first few positions out of school. We never know where we are going to discover the thing that becomes our career focus, so it’s important to be open to opportunities and continue to learn every step of the way, as Ripsime clearly does throughout her story. Because Dr. Bledsoe has years of experience teaching First Year seminar courses, we discuss many topics pertaining to first year college students, including many pieces of advice for both students and parents. Don't miss this valuable guidance!
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening.. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We are here today with Ripsime Bledsoe. She is a university faculty member who specializes in student success. She has experience at both two and four year institutions. Most recently, she has a particular focus on using generative AI in her teaching and learning spaces. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, a Master of Education degree in Advanced Literacy, and she has a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy in Higher Education. Thanks so much for joining us today, Dr. Bledsoe.
Ripsime:Thanks for having me.
Carrie:Oh, of course. I'm so glad you're here. And we've talked a lot offline before, as people will probably pick up as we get going here. But I'm excited to talk to you, and I'm so glad you're here today. Me too. Can you start by taking us back to high school and let us know kind of what you were thinking back then regarding your education and your career path?
Ripsime:Yes. Yes. I feel like it was at a time, not to necessarily date myself, but, there was not a lot on focus on careers and degrees, particularly beyond, high school and so forth. But I found myself gravitating like many people towards certain subjects. And that's really probably how I decided eventually what I would major in, what was I good at? And, that is really a normal progression I think for a lot of people. And then, you know, once I got to college, it was really kind of doing the same things, and really trying to figure out what it was that I was good at. It was clear early in high school, probably by middle school that I was good at languages. I was good at speaking. I enjoyed reading and writing. And the math and the sciences, you know, I felt that a lot of it was preparatory. As those who do teach those subjects, it requires a good foundational kind of understanding of the content and I didn't feel like I got that early on. So in many ways, you know what we think we're good at is also really by virtue of our preparation, right? Some things come a little bit more naturally, but other things are just maybe lack of preparation. So I didn't feel like I was as prepared in those subjects, so I didn't gravitate towards those as much. But for sure, the humanities, particularly history, social sciences, and languages and, uh, English literature, English writing. Those were the things that I found myself really finding success, right? I was successful. And then there's no doubt there was also a degree of just internal satisfaction of being good at it. And then the subject matter. But that's really how I ended up figuring out or really the only tool I feel that I remember using to figure out what would be my next step?
Carrie:Well, and it's so important just the skills of being a good writer and being able to discern things as a reader. That can be used in so many capacities across so many fields. And I think that, English isn't necessarily spoken about in that way a lot, but the skills you get from just doing that over and over in that major, it's just essential really for so many different paths.
Ripsime:When I did my undergrad school in California, and I think by state, it's also somewhat different. And by institution. My institution, there was creative writing, but there wasn't an English composition major. It was English literature. And I think one reason why I do love it. And I love that reading and writing were together versus just an English composition major, was that, a part of the draw for me was like the creativity as we typically call it. But I would use a different word. I would say the innovation of it. I enjoyed reading things. That were different perspectives, different, maybe time periods, different cultures, backgrounds, but then taking those kinds of thoughts, comparing it to other texts and bringing together disparate things, which is kind of what innovation is at times, right? Where And that's why Things that are similar. Yeah. Or unsimilar rather, come together in a similar fashion. And I found myself really enjoying that. I think that that's probably why I do what I do. And you mentioned it kind of my fascination with generative AI and so forth is I think it comes from this love that was eventually cultivated through my English literature degree where, I had to innovate. You know, you read something, but then you have to compare it to disparate things. And then you have to find connections and you have to kind of make a whole, and then use it. So I found myself loving that process, maybe a little more than the writing because writing is really hard. But I really love that part. And I think it's a part of the humanities that allows you to do that, that sometimes we forget that is very useful across the board in all sorts of careers.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. Did you have any internships or part time jobs or on campus experiences that you felt like were really valuable to your undergraduate experience that you're thankful that you had moving forward?
Ripsime:You know, I tried, because one thing is, you know, you're an English major, everyone's like, well, you're gonna go into publishing, right? Or you're gonna go into teaching and so forth. At that time, I didn't want to go into teaching, because I, I felt like that was not necessarily what I wanted to do, even though I'm not sure I knew much about it. But, I did do an internship over a summer with a publishing company, but it wasn't a really fruitful one. I felt like it really kind of dissuaded me. I wasn't well structured. It was kind of more like gopher work, I would say. I got to see the texts. That was really interesting. The types of texts that they looked at, though, a little bit of the process, but I never had the opportunity. I will say, I felt like I didn't have the structure, everything from interviewing to what clothes I should wear. I did not know. And that's something I really stress with my students now, but I just, nobody guided yeah. Me and I was first generation student. Also, I didn't have anybody really to kind of guide me who had ever done any of this in the U. S. But I felt I found myself at a disadvantage that way because I didn't have a we didn't really have a career center that was publicized. None that I knew of that was really helpful in any form that way. So I really struggled, I think, And I didn't really feel confident and I eventually feel like that's why I didn't really have any kind of fruitful internship that was more of a little bit. I think I did that for maybe six weeks. But nothing really worthwhile that would have really been helpful in that regard.
Carrie:Did you go straight into graduate school after your undergrad or did you go into the workforce first?
Ripsime:I did some kind of community work, working with different organizations on campus, after I was done with my undergrad. And I did that through some campus organizations, just working a little bit, not necessarily in my field of English, but just working with student organizations. I did that initially. And then what I ended up doing was going back to get my master's because I felt like I didn't really know what to do with an English major and that was part of the problem. Remember going back to: I majored in something I was good at. But that didn't necessarily mean I had any idea what the career looked like, and I never really did. There was law school, for sure. Some of my peers were going to law school. That was initially a thought I had, but the more I kind of found out about it, I quickly realized that wasn't something I wanted to do. I didn't want to do teaching. Mainly, I felt like that teaching had this kind of, I think of the labels and kind of the stereotype. I would just go into maybe being an elementary school teacher or somewhere in K 12. And that just didn't interest me at the time. But I ended up, like I said, working a little bit with just organizations, working with students on campus and helping them with planning their schedules, planning different things, being active on campus. But eventually I felt that I needed to go back. I needed to go back and have a little more direction. And a little bit of work did help me kind of residualize what it was I wanted to do. Which led me back to initially, doing a master's degree, just to be A teacher, K 12 teacher. That was originally my thought, and then I would eventually, through life circumstances, in terms of marriage and children and so forth. I took a step back and I ended up going back and I found that, maybe I needed to go back to the roots of my English major. So that's where I started with and finished my master's in advanced literacy. And my original thought, again, was to be a reading teacher or reading specialist at an elementary school, because I really didn't, again, know what I would do with it outside of that. And Then I eventually ended up getting, while I was looking for work for a full time teaching position, I ended up teaching at the community college, teaching developmental reading and English, particularly reading, and it went from there. I just never went back. I enjoyed it so much, particularly with first year students.
Carrie:It's so interesting to hear so many people kind of try something out, especially if it's a job and then not even know that that's going to end up being their thing and it just clicks somehow. Do you know kind of what was it for you with that particular student population that made you know that that this was the right space? And
Ripsime:We tend to think of careers and even certain degrees as only lending themselves. In my case, I thought that reading or a degree in education was really going to lead me to K 12 settings. And I did want to do that, in many regards, and I think I would have enjoyed it tremendously. When I started teaching first year students at a community college who were struggling to be at that college level reading level, it really provided a forum for a lot of things. One, I felt that, I understood many of them in that, again, a lot of students where English was not their first language, English was not my first language. I spoke Armenian well into elementary school and was my first language. Somehow I have a very distinct memory of the changes linguistically that happened as I moved into middle school and started to really master it. And then I started to see kind of a switch a little bit as well. So I saw this, a lot of students who English was not their first language. And so there was this struggle that they had gone through that had begun well before they had come to us at the college. Second, I felt that it really forces you to fundamentally understand what it is you're teaching. So when you're teaching literacy comprehension, and then you eventually want to move students to what I enjoyed, what I got out of my English degree, which is the love of literature where it speaks to you on the inside. The humanities have just this phenomenal, I think, underrated at many times, capacity in that reading, you get to be yourself and at once get to be a million other people see, seeing through their eyes. And so that's a tremendous thing. You might read a speech, a piece of text that speaks to you In ways that you never thought someone else would have experienced or spoken to. I had many times when reading maybe Charlotte Bronte's Valette, which is one of her lesser known works. And nobody would know that, right? I remember having tears in my eyes and having that kind of an experience because it just speaks to your human condition, right? So going back to that class, these were developmental reading students. So I needed to move them. My goal, and I found myself really enjoying this, moving them from the struggles of just reading, being able to comprehend texts, expository texts, literary texts, and then moving them to understand why it was such a wonderful thing to be able to read. The power of it, the power of it for themselves. as persons. And I just really enjoyed that. And you can do that the adult college level more so. And in very, interesting, innovative ways. So I found myself doing that. And so it just drew me in. Last piece I would say you have to cognitively really, as an instructor, as a professor, really chart that path. And what I mean by that is you really have to understand how you're going to do teaching and learning. Speaking, providing course materials is not necessarily teaching, right? You have to really understand how you're communicating it. What is being delivered? How does cognition happen? What is the psychology of learning? The emotions that Are paired with learning. And then you can bring in some literature that adds to those. This is a whole emotional side, right? So all of this was just so fascinating to me with students who also were, like I said, adults. And so you had to teach them a little bit differently. I just found myself really enjoying that. I really enjoyed that more so than I think if I had been teaching fourth graders. That wasn't a wonderful experience as well, right? But the adult learning level can be very different. And especially for students, adult learners, where they also feel like they have so much at stake. Because they feel like they are behind, but they are also trying to move forward. And of course the community college is a wonderful setting for that. So, those were kind of the things, that really drew me and kept me there.
Carrie:So once you decided that that was the space you wanted to be working in for your career path, how did your teaching career progress and what types of choices were you making within that? both within what you were teaching and where, and then also pursuing your doctorate?
Ripsime:I found myself not just being concerned with the content, but the success of the student. That was a challenge, because you realize the student is a whole student, and then you begin to think, well, so they're in my class here, but what else is it that they're struggling? And kind of innate to both the developmental setting, but also when you're teaching, reading and writing, it's a progressive thing. So you want students to find success at milestones, but overall, the students, I found, if they were not seeing success, they might not return. There were other things that were coming along right outside, and so things would break their momentum, right? Maybe they had momentum, they had signed up to come to college at two or four year institutions immediately after high school, but there might be some things that cause friction, right? Whether it's external factors, academic factors, motivational factors, maybe they don't get the support that they need. Not just necessarily I'm home, but that the institution. And so all of a sudden, I began to have a broader view. And I think that's what eventually led me to educational leadership and policy. What kind of policies are we making? What kind of leaders do we need, educational leaders so that we can create institutions, support faculty and students so that we have these institutions where we support students as a whole, so that they find momentum. And we reduce the friction that can come and impede that. Because we know that if they don't complete a certain amount of credits in their first year, typically, they will lose momentum and other factors, right? And in my space, particularly, especially in the classroom, it has a lot to do with the cognitive side of it, right? The academic pieces, the motivational pieces that the students engage in to be successful in the classroom. So that's really where that happened. And I felt that I didn't know enough. And I felt that I needed to go and really educate myself more. I found myself in spaces at institutions where, it was trial and error, but they weren't evidence based practices, necessarily. And that's something I do regularly. I read a tremendous amount. I am always trying to make sure that I know, not so much that I'm in the trends, but that I know exactly what we need to do, what I need to do to give my students the best curriculum, the best instruction, the best support, and that it's based in research and evidence. And so that's kind of where my pursuit of a doctorate was for that. It was both for myself to be a better educator, but also to see if I could contribute in more ways than I had been thus far for the sake of my students.
Carrie:Yeah. So I know a lot of people who go into particularly doctoral work in higher education come from a wide variety of backgrounds, right? Like the different undergraduate degrees represented or probably all over the place, right? For students listening, you know, as far as like an undergraduate degree and a major, can you talk about, At the doctoral level, when you're working in the higher education space and we're talking about a doctorate in higher education, can you talk about a little bit how that's different from a student perspective? And obviously, most people in that program are likely already professionals in the higher education space. but what types of things are you talking about and what types of things are you learning and what do you feel like you're most thankful that you took from that experience, going into your career path with that degree completed?
Ripsime:That's an excellent question. And let's see if I can do it justice. That's a really wonderful thing. So I will tell you, before I went to the doctoral program, I read everything on the internet that said why you should not pursue a doctorate. Because I felt like, you know, there's many reasons to do this. It's a terminal degree. That's just a formidable word, right? Terminal. And I felt like, well, I really should know why I'm doing this. The program that I did and you're right on that I picked it because it gave me some more broad leway. Originally my focus would have been to do educational psychology. And I would end up doing some of that. Again, reading is a very in your head process. It's unlike reading, writing that you can't see it happening, right? And so that was early on something that I had already delved into the kind of the metacognitive process of learning. Particularly reading, but just learning in general. And Ed leadership was a way for me to pursue that in the space of student success, and retention, and how do we make sure students maintain momentum and academic momentum. There's not a lot of degrees you can do that with. So that was one of the ways that I did that. Another way you select typically doctoral programs is you look at the faculty. You want to be paired with someone that is of interest or can take you further down. Right? And so that was really an important piece of me finding a program that I found two or three faculty, because typically in doctoral programs, you end up working. Besides taking coursework, you eventually may work with faculty on research projects and eventually your dissertation is with a faculty advisor and a team of faculty that becomes your support group for writing your dissertation. So faculty are really important. It's very different to me than a master's or for sure, an undergraduate degree. So I selected some faculty that I knew at certain institutions and departments were going to be really wonderful to work with because they would enhance my learning, take me beyond where I was. And then also, I chose to do a fellowship, which meant I did not continue working in my teaching. I was faculty at the time. And you're right though, many do doctoral programs while they're working. Many are already in the field and all of us were, but I wanted to enhance my research background, which is why I ended up doing a fellowship. And a lot of times institutions will have some commissions that were approved. Wonderful packages, where they can support you to some extent, it may not be the same salary that you're making before, but that's kind of a choice you get to make and some have a variety of opportunities where you can do it on a part time basis. I ended up doing research because I had already been teaching for a good decade or more. And I wanted to really enhance that understanding. Like I said, I felt that I just didn't know enough. And so that was really wonderful. I got to publish while I was a doctoral student, which is not always something that can happen. But I attribute that to being able to be a research fellow. And then eventually the program itself was because I got to really pursue an understanding of higher education, and then I would do some focus on the community college. I had taught there a great deal. My dissertation would be on a sample would be from, community college students. But it really provided me an opportunity to go down this route that I had never done before, which was research, and it was really fascinating and wonderful. It pushed me, I had to do different types of writing, so this was one thing, Like you said, I come from a humanities background, everything was MLA and all of a sudden everything was an APA, right? American Psychological Association. So that was a really big pivot for me. Humanities writing it's just different. All of a sudden I felt that I needed to. Everything needed to be shorter, fewer words, and really pithy. And I couldn't be creative like I wanted to be. It was just not the space for it. That was a real big adjustment. I would say it's still an adjustment. I have a manuscript I've worked on a couple rounds now. It's a lot of cutting out for me. And that's something I've become more self aware. But again, that's The difference between a humanities background writing and social sciences, especially when you're writing for more technically. So those were some of the differences I saw and really in that setting. And ultimately in that setting, besides research, it was a lot of furthering my knowledge. It's a very knowledge heavy space and, eventually you find something really of interest that you want to study and that becomes the setting for your dissertation.
Carrie:What would you say to students who are coming out of a humanities space or like a creative space like we've talked about and they're either in a field or going into a degree program perhaps that is very data driven? Do you have any advice or encouragement for students who may not be used to a data heavy study, but they're still a really good fit for the space where the data's going to be used?
Ripsime:The research space can be very data heavy, right? Especially quantitative studies. Large data sets are something that's so much more commonly used and so much more accessible, along with qualitative studies, right? I've realized more and more, as I've gone through. So part of my fascination with literature was, as I mentioned, very creative, right? This ability to go inward. It's a humanistic realm. A humanities degree gives you this opportunity to understand people, connect with them, understand how they think, how they feel. I think those are super interesting and super valuable, and I'll say why in a minute. But along with that, the humanities, when I was writing, had a very technical sphere, and the data of it was, I had to go back to every text, I had to kind of research. I couldn't just say what I wanted, and sometimes I think that is a, the stereotype of, When you write a paper, especially for English literature or, the classics or, you know, philosophy that you can just write what you want, what you think. And I would say yes and no. It needs to be based in evidence. And that's really what data is. And you have to be versed in it. You have to sit with it. You have to kind of comb over it. And you have to make connections. And I found myself being in this world where I went between and toggled or jockeyed between the technical side and the evidence and why am I saying this, can I prove it, to let's look at this and let me present this in a novel way because I can and that's my creative space. Bring that over to data heavy settings, and what I would say my fascination and why I feel that the current landscape of generative AI and large language models. So generative AI is this very technical space in the sense that it's primarily been in engineering and computer science spaces, right? When you think of artificial intelligence and so forth, then all of a sudden, It is all the user interface for the most part, there's imaging as well, is now through language, writing, dialogue. Yet you have to understand the technical side of it, how it works on the back end and so forth. And so I feel that there's room for the creativity to work within the technology because you have actually done it before. Being in the creative humanities doesn't mean you haven't worked with data. It just has come in different forms, right? It's me going and picking out a line from a poem to support why I feel like this is the argument I'm going to make. That's data being pulled into it. But the great thing is I get to present it in maybe a very innovative way. And I make an argument that's never been made before. I think we just need to think about it differently. And maybe look at what is our skill set? And then the things that, you know, become hard, obviously, when we get into more technical field of coding or whatever the technical spaces or whatever the data is. I think that part, you know, you have to gain some knowledge of it through use. You just have to sit with it. You have to verse yourself in it. It takes time. But, I think that humanities degree or a degree that's not per se, in the sciences or the STEM fields has a great deal of worth because right now we're dealing with a technology that's mimicking human intelligence or trying to mimic human intelligence. So you have to understand neural networks and cognition. And that's part of why I think that it's so useful in the teaching space and education space, because all of a sudden it becomes a wonderful tool in the classroom. It is a wonderful tool for educators and institutions, but I'm no engineer. I'm no computer scientist, but that field needs my innovation, needs my ability to understand cognition, needs my background. And so I think it's up to us how we see it. But, we have been doing it. It's just, yeah, changing. It's changing and it's exciting.
Carrie:So when you came out of your doctorate, with everything that you've learned and all the courses you took and the research that you did and the writing that you did, did it change the path you wanted to take for your career, or did you have a different perspective on what your objectives were for your own career path?
Ripsime:Yes
Carrie:Like what changed when you came out of that space and you were started applying for new jobs again?
Ripsime:My thought was that I would move into maybe a more research based, tenure track position, right? Moving into the kind of ed leadership, but that's not exactly the way it worked out. For a variety of reasons, right? Those kinds of positions, you do need to willing to be move around all over the country. And, that wasn't something that I could do at that time with small children and so forth, which is, we haven't talked about this, but the whole side of also selecting a doctoral program and things like that, you know, Now I was selecting it with not myself alone, right? But now I have this entourage And I have to consider those things which were not bad things. I think you just have to consider them. You want it to be feasible, you know, doctoral programs are very hard to go through. Yeah. Don't want to also add on additional stressors. They will cause you I've seen many peers who are ABD, right? All but dissertation and so part of it is because they can barely get through the coursework, but they can't get through that dissertation phase because it's so difficult. But going out of that, I thought I would, with all the research background and stuff, which I've still been doing, you know, publications and so forth. But what ended up happening is an opportunity opened up and sometime opportunity knocks and it takes you down a different path again, right? Maybe... Much like some of the other things. And it was an opportunity to work with first year programming, particularly a first year seminar, transition it from a one to three credit, populations that were very near and dear to me, first generation populations, working in areas with students that I really felt like I wanted to work with, that I could make a difference. And so I became In this hybrid role, which I was a faculty, but I was also a coordinator director for the program. It actually married the best of both worlds, and I still think that there should be more of these positions. I think there should be more faculty in these kinds of leadership roles. We tend to segment it, especially in higher ed. There's the student affairs, and there's the leadership, and then there's faculty. On the academic side, and I really think that my expertise, which really marries well to ed leadership and policy, right? Because I have an understanding of the whole scheme of things, whether it's from retention to academic momentum, cognition, technology, how that works, all those things to the student population to now. Okay. Now, how do we implement this structurally? How do we create new curriculum, new programming? And so it really married well. And that was the first piece. And I still, I'm still there and I'm in a faculty role now, but I still have a lot of freedom to do other things as well. But I see myself and I did at the time of being in that kind of space and a hybrid space where I'm working with policy making, leadership and leadership roles while always always having my foot in the classroom. I think more leaders should do that. Educational leaders. Because it grounds you. Too much policy is devoid of actual classroom understanding, classroom experience. Working with other faculty, it's a really difficult space at times because you are the boots on the ground. But at the same time, I think bringing those individuals into spaces where they can lead, and make policy, create programming, can be very, very effective, very, very helpful. And I also think that they, short of a lack of a better word, they bring in the buy in as well, because they are coming from the people, you know, who are working in the front lines. So, I found myself in that role, but I always wanted to be in that kind of space, even though I was In the doctoral program, a lot of times, especially if you have a fellowship, you're primed to just be in that tenure track role, unless you're someone who's already got a position. I had many friends who they were already in administrative spaces. They just continued on in their jobs. They just wanted that ed leadership degree for a number of other reasons. A lot of times it could just be you need it to also move up the ladder, for compensation or other things, promotions. But for me, my goal was to always stay in that faculty space, but also be now in that leadership role of policy, creating programs, things like that.
Carrie:No, I totally agree. I think it gets frustrating sometimes for people working in higher education when somebody is so far removed from the classroom. It's hard to have those conversations with people who are in the classroom, because the perspective is just so different. Over the years working with first year students in particular, whether they're first generation students or not, have you seen, um, Some particular issues kind of grow in urgency over time or things that you feel like, as a country or as an educational system where we're not doing a good job to help students prepare or, you know, some things that people in education should really be aware of and probably already are. Maybe some things that students can start to think about within themselves as well as they're looking either forward to college or they're in college.
Ripsime:Because I get them typically right after they've come out of high school, I think one of the key factors I see is, for students who find themselves being successful and those who struggle, is their ability, or how well they've developed their executive management skills. And I talk about the executive management part of our brain. It's that choice making part. I tell them it's the boss part of their brain. It's the part that tells you what to do and what not to do. And that's a big focus in my class, to develop that part in a healthy way where they start to make decisions and start to have mindsets that move them into a space that they've never ever been before. Where they can really find success academically, where they can find success intrinsically, and really start to move towards their careers, their majors, and so forth. We do like, some people call it time management, I call it self discipline, building habits in time. That's what I call it. It's not that we don't know what time it is or where we need to be. It's getting ourselves there. And, what are some of the the metacognitive awareness, building that awareness for them so that they can really understand what it is that it's happening. Particularly with procrastination, things like that. The mindset of, well, I'm just not good at something. I'm better at this. Well, how do we build ourselves to understand? Well, now you have to maybe put more time into something. I'm going to make the choice to spend an hour, an extra hour in my math class, because this is something I'm struggling with and I need to do more problems. Whereas they're coming from a setting sometimes where they haven't had an opportunity to do that or needed to do that. So that is a big transition. I think just cognitively moving into a space where making good executive management decisions within themselves and really building that part of their brain, doing things that are not always easy, but,. They know if they Keep doing it and put some effort into it, they'll find success. The other part I would say, this is the flip side of technology, is I would say that focus is a big struggle and the biggest distractor are cell phones. This is probably, actually I see this conversation on a regular basis in K 12, but it is a common issue I think in higher ed as well. And it's not to say that I'm going to police their kind of their use of their phones and so forth. But what I see it happening is this drawing out of focus, right? This split attention. And so students are struggling with just being focused on a regular basis, whether it's in my classroom or other places. We know that without selective attention, It's very little learning can happen, if at all. And so these are some struggles that the students are having and notice none of what I mentioned has to do with their capacity to learn, intelligence, none of it. It's just these things that are now, we can call them metacognitive, some people can call them soft skills, whatever they are. I especially see this issue because when we think of all the rise in technology, it's all fantastic. You know, I enjoy my phone. I enjoy everything it does and technology. I see the great benefits in artificial intelligence and large language models and all that stuff. But at the same time, we have to also know how to or when not to use these things, but also particularly when it comes to our students and learning and success, where, they can really develop these skills that I think, in higher ed up until now, we have such a strong focus on hard skills, right? The content that you're learning. But with the rise in technology, the content is so readily available. And I would argue, and I saw someone say this, that now soft skills or these metacognitive skills are at the forefront and who can do this well is really going to find success because It's like managing these things now. Right? So I think that's a shift. I'm not sure everyone realizes it, but there is a shift happening. A big part of it is technology. And another piece of it is, our having to change maybe the way we're interacting with one another, particularly in the learning setting.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. So aside from that, in your classroom, with the executive skills, with first year students in particular, what are some of your favorite conversations you have and the things that you see have the most positive impact on students who are coming into college and maybe have a lot of questions or uncertainty about their future?
Ripsime:Building a new identity, right? It's a wonderful experience that I enjoy going on this journey with them. We start with at the beginning of, building a little bit of community. My classroom is very collaborative in the sense that I want them to get to know the neighbor next to them and maybe the five neighbors around them. Right. But with that comes this new emergence of who they are. And I see that happening. And that is such a wonderful experience. And then within that, they start to find out, who am I as a learner? They start to kind of assemble that. Who am I in my degree? Who do I see myself being? And so that whole journey is really happens in almost like this little micro environment in that classroom in those 15 weeks. We have a large focus on career and them building the career, but I don't want it to just be a career. You know, we do a focus 2 assessment that I do like. None of them are perfect, but I like kind of having conversations with that and some of it is like the CliftonStrengths. We do some of that as well. Where it's who are you and what are your strengths? And now let's move on to who do you want to be? How are you gonna build this up, right? And it's a wonderful experience because I find that they start to do things and The things that they do affect their motivation. So one example, I had a student who he said, I want to become a writer. And so the conversation we have, okay, so that's in the future. And I want us to see how we can create that person as you go on. Right. But how can you contribute to that person right now? And that's a question that they don't think about all the time. And I think, well, you're taking an English class and you have assignments. Are you going to do them on time? Make sure you do quality work, things of that nature. What are some of the things a writer, a future writer would do? And that really changes how they do everything. And all of a sudden, I had one student say, A writer would not do their papers last minute. A writer would not turn in shoddy work, a writer. And he went down this list and I was just blown away, but they have that kind of epiphany moment. And I want to move all the things we do in there from choice making. You see, I've gone back to choice making, building who they are now. Connecting it to who they're going to be, but affecting their motivation. He did so much better in my class. All of a sudden he started, once we had those conversations, he was turning in everything on time. Because we do a lot of reflections and writing in our class. And, you know, it was just a tremendous experience. So I think building their identity. Which now starts to, they get to decide all the different facets of who they are and how to build that. I feel that for many of them, it's so refreshing because they haven't had a chance to do that. And it's both in the learning setting, it could be outside of it, right? And then the last piece, we see that in the research, both with first generation and continuing generation students, that students sometimes lose motivation if they don't feel a closeness to their future self. And so that's part of why I want them to kind of have that future self in mind. Whether it's in the career they'll hold, whether it's in the degree, whatever that case is, I think those are all pieces that add to this larger, like, for lack of a better word, like I said, identity development. That's really wonderful and it can really change them. It can really change them.
Carrie:And kind of on the flip side of that a little bit, for students listening, what are some warnings that you have for early college students? Like, what are some things that you see happen to students in your classroom that really do contribute potentially to them dropping out of school or contribute to their lack of success in that education space?
Ripsime:I've done a lot of good research on, and a lot of reading on, this kind of sub population of students of why do they struggle? And what makes some of them return and some of them never return, right? So those are important things to look at. And I think that for students, one piece is just many of them, and this is why this kind of course is important, they come to college and they haven't found the purpose of it yet. Sometimes we move on to the next stage because we feel like it's the next stage or someone told us it's the next stage and we need to be there. And that's fine, because I feel like sometimes, you know, you have to kind of walk and get to where you need to be and then you find yourself there. But once you're there, you really have to put in some effort. It doesn't just come to you. And I think that sometimes students, I tell them, build some agency, find out why you're here. If you're not sure, find out. Get to know your peers. Talk to your professor. But bring in some part where you are trying to figure out why you're here. Because again, some students, they're just not sure. So when you're not sure why you're here, then motivation lags and or you're not sure why you're doing an assignment, you know, and it can affect so much of you. But I feel that first figuring out what is the purpose? What is here for me? What is here for me? And if you're not sure, instead of just letting the semester languish on, I would say, go to an office hour, talk to your student in the class or two, go to an event, go to your advisor, go to the career center, it's agency, right? Make some intentional choices so that you can find your why. Otherwise what may happen is you find yourself failing out of a class or two or three and now you feel even worse because you feel like you started something and it didn't go the way you want it. So you don't want to be in that space. And one way to do that is, some people do anti goals. What don't you want to happen at the end of the semester? Anti goals can be, it's kind of almost along the lines of negative reinforcement, but it can be an important piece. It kind of can show you, well. My goodness. I definitely don't want this to happen. So anti goals can be a good way to also start it. If you're not sure, do not just let the time pass because you will find yourself, maybe on the other end of what you don't want happening. And I would say, get to know those around you, connect, make some effort to make a connection. And you might find yourself figuring out that why, or Some students find out, you know what, this is maybe not the time for me to be here. I might come back, but this isn't the time, so maybe working. One thing that I saw was highly beneficial to students who were, coming back from academic dismissal, they spent some time working. It was a very clarifying moment for them. It both clarified why they wanted a degree. A lot of times what they want a degree in, but also clarified what they definitely did not want to be doing for the rest of their lives. There's nothing wrong with that. I think working is an important piece. It kind of grounds us sometimes and what may seem more conceptual in the classroom. So, those are some things I would say.
Carrie:So, for students listening who do not have a class like this at their institution, do you have some advice for them, for those who do need to do some exploration regarding career path and perhaps even major? What are some instructions, I guess might be the right word, that you give your students who really need some assistance in figuring out what direction to start moving in for their path?
Ripsime:For me, I did not take a course like this and I genuinely wish I did. I genuinely wish I think it would have helped me figure out my major and, maybe it would have been English, maybe it would have been something else. But, for students who don't have a course like this or some students at some institutions, It's only a one credit course and it's just kind of coming alongside them, making sure they're taking the right classes. It's an extension of orientation. For those students, yes, you have to do a little bit of the legwork yourself. For sure, I would start with an advisor. My advisor, I believe I visited her at least once or twice a semester, probably at least twice. Though, she probably was tired of me. But. I just had this scenario in my head that I was going to be in my last semester and I was going to be short two classes and I didn't know it. It's like a bad dream.
Carrie:The universal nightmare.
Ripsime:Right? A recurring one. And so I regularly visited her and we went through just on a paper copy. I would need to see what I was taking and where I needed to take summer school, things like that. The other place that I did not take advantage of, but, is more prevalent now are career centers. Almost every campus has a career center of some sort, and I would highly recommend visiting that career center. They usually have full time advisors there. They can be someone you can meet with and they can help you with internships. And so that's another piece is sometimes we're not sure what we want to do, but an internship can help clarify, you know, what does that look like working? And it may be something you maybe didn't think of, or just being in the working space is also important. But going to a career center would be an important piece. A third one would be attaching ourselves to some sort of either student organization or community or campus events. I found myself being attached to a student organization, which is what I ended up working with eventually later, but, it was really important. It grounded me. It gave me a support network in a large school. I went to a very large school. But even in a small school, you can feel very anonymous and very lost. And so that would be another piece. That one's very hard, right? For some of our students, I have students in our class and a piece of our class is to do that. But for some students, that's very hard because they tend to be maybe more shy. Maybe they're a little bit more reticent to do that. They don't find themselves being so quickly able to talk to people they don't know. But I think giving yourself a goal of going to one event, maybe if you say nothing, you just hang around. Maybe you get some food. Maybe you listen. Just being around that environment and slowly building yourself up and maybe there is a student organization, whether it's related to something personal and interesting to you, maybe to your career or whatnot, but those can be ready made in groups and they can be really effective in helping us figure out where we want to be because you get to meet people and other students begin to articulate their career goals and degrees and classes and all of a sudden the whole world has opened up that you may have never, ever known on your own going back home every day, back to your dorm or driving home, you know? So I think those three areas are really important pieces to mimic what might be offered in a first year seminar.
Carrie:It seems like the environment for the college search and admissions. The national conversation is just so different now as far as the rigor with college preparation and piling on all of the activities and extra oh gosh, accolades and awards and activities and, you know, just this huge surge towards college preparation. As well as all of the Instagram videos of college acceptances and all of these photo shoots for, you know, it's just the environment has changed so much. And there's so much pressure out there socially, but also, just, I feel like the expectation on students is just a heavier weight nowadays, right? There's so much pressure. So do you have any advice for parents and students, especially as someone who has worked in both two year and four year institutions? And when you teach freshman seminar, you see a little bit of everything, right? You see so many different kinds of students. And the resources that they had or didn't have before they arrived in college and you know, what's kind of intrinsic in them versus what needs to be taught. Do you have some reassurances and some encouragement as far as the general landscape of higher education?
Ripsime:Yes. You've touched on probably, many a news article topic. And there's so many facets to it, right? Social media doesn't necessarily make it better because now we're just, you know, watching other people and how did they do this? Again, going back to why you're seeing so many studies coming out with phones being a key part of students mental health crisis. And so I think that it's not necessarily beneficial when you start comparing. It's already a stressful environment like you described. And so I think parents do become a really important piece to it. I have two young sons, one's in college as a freshman, the other is a senior. And we've kind of navigated all through this. They've done it in a slightly different way in that they've done other endeavors with it to determine what school they're going to. But I think overall, I do say this: the preparation that happens, not just in high school, but in middle school is still very, very important. And I think parents role can never be lessened, because it's important for you to be that support there. I've read some stuff from Angela Duckworth and, her famous book is Grit and she's a wonderful educational psychologist that I think provides a lot of context. One thing she mentions is, you know, you want to see students, and particularly your own children, You want to see them succeed and reach their full potential. And so sometimes that is taking that harder class That's more challenging versus the easier class or maybe taking on an extra activity or whatnot I think the key part as parents is the support part. You have to be highly supportive, especially when it's hard. So if you're going to put them in those settings Do not just leave them on their own and let them kind of figure it out. And that doesn't mean you have to become the helicopter parent or the bulldozer or whatever the metaphor is now. But I think that you just need to make sure that you are by their side. Because hard things do lead to good things. It's not that taking a hard path, whether it's taking a more rigorous course or taking on an extracurricular, you just have to gauge where your child is at. You have to have these conversations. Okay, we're gonna do one of these. I want you to give me feedback as you're doing this, and then what support do you need? And so having both conversations, dialogue and figuring that part out with them. If you can't do that, then you find some resources on campus. For instance, I did not have anybody when I was going through and applying and even going through my high school experience. My mother didn't have the capacity nor the ability. English was in her first language and it was a difficult for her to speak, she had not grown up here, she had not gone to school, so I didn't have that support network. So if you don't have that support network, and I say this for either for parents or for students, you need to find those institutional agents, their change agents. They could be the advisor, the career advisor, the academic advisor, the student organizational leader, whatever it is. You find those people to help you so that you can do these things. I think that sometimes we want to kind of back away completely from everything. I'm not sure that's the goal either. Because that preparation, whether it's taking advanced math, science or writing in middle school on dictates much of what happens in college. And I say this because when you get to college and you want to go into engineering and so forth, you need to have a good foundation in certain subjects. Or if you do want to go into linguistics, or if you want to go into some of these more writing heavy majors. So those are things that I think come from the rigor all the way back into middle school. I think for parents, though, like I said, you want to have the support, both you, but then also who else is at the school, at the institution, whether it's at the high school level, and then when they get to college, the student obviously has to now navigate that. But if they're used to doing that in high school, it's a great, great way for them to have the agency to navigate it continue that in, in college. I think in the grand scheme of it, I think, you know, you can do it in a healthy way. It doesn't need to be stifling. It doesn't need to be, you know, emotional breakdown level where I'm taking so many, AP classes, but you just build on it and do it steadily and know that there is worth to it. We just don't leave the students to do it on their own without any support and conversations. So it's a very labor intensive process, as is most parenting, but that's kind of what I've gone through and I've seen, like I said, Angela Duckworth talks about that as well. And that's the path, I think, that is both beneficial to the student long run, but also acknowledging that we don't want to overwhelm them, and we want to make sure they're supported.
Carrie:Can you talk about the other side of that as well, as far as students you've had in your classes who land in college and they have not had that support and resources prior to their arrival? We've all seen a lot of success come from some of those students, too. So do you have some encouragement from students in those positions?
Ripsime:I was a student like that. I didn't have those things, right? I came from kind of the inner city and I went to schools where we just didn't have the resources. I didn't feel that I have a great preparation. And when I got to college, particularly, I did feel the lack. I compared myself a lot. So there's a few things I did. I did the fundamentals really well. I was in every class. I did not miss class. I went and visited my professors in office hours, not before crisis but even before just to say, hi, I really enjoyed that class. My name is Ripsime. Do you teach any other classes? And just starting a conversation. I went to my advisor regularly. The way ours was set up instead of having a tutoring center, we often our teaching assistants were smaller groups. I knew every teaching assistant. I think my teaching assistants in every class I took were probably tired of me. But again, it's those you want to call it soft skills, but it's agency. I made it a point. I knew that, okay, I might not have the preparation yet, but I am going to make sure that I'm accessing everything. And it made a tremendous difference. And you see it in the research. I've seen it with students, again, with probationary students. Those who have agency tend to do very well, and they can get out of probation. They can be highly successful. So this idea that, Well, I didn't have it before. Now there's nothing I can do. And that's not true. I found myself very successful all through school. Did I have to work harder in some areas? I did when I took statistics, I definitely put more hours in maybe than one of my peers, but, that also was for other reasons as well. Right. But regardless, I just knew that it was going to take me making some decisions. And again, going back to that understanding that I can do what I did before. In some areas, and that I needed to do new things, but also I needed to be very proactive, very proactive in seeking out resources in the areas that I found that I was struggling in the most.
Carrie:Yeah, and I think students who are willing to try new things as well and just show up to something different, you know, whether it's a workshop or a guest lecture or an event of some kind or trying a student organization because you never know what could become your thing and what could really light you up that you discover.
Ripsime:I agree.
Carrie:So how did your career path move into this AI interest? Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened?
Ripsime:You know, I think it was last year when I started seeing, particularly the rise of ChatGBT was in November of 2022. I mean, artificial intelligence has been around since, I mean, I believe the word was coined in the 1950s. But it's primarily been in the sphere, like I said, of engineers and computer science and things of that nature, which I was never really a part of. But last year, starting to see some professors at different universities, at a particular conference present and show its capacity, it drew me into it immediately. One, because my thought behind how this could be so life changing and also innovative, in the Figuring out course design, making classes engaging, but also reducing the workload that prevents me a lot of time from meeting my students needs. And an example is like responsive teaching. Responsive teaching is being able to adapt, right? You teach something and you're like, well, did they actually learn it? Maybe you figure out there's some other forms of feedback or assessment that they didn't, and now you're like, well, I need to adjust something. But that's very hard to do in time when you're teaching multiple classes, or you have a class full of 150 students, or in totality you have that many, or whatever the nature is. And all of a sudden you have this tool that is able to take concepts, such as responsive teaching, and put it into practice, and give me a plan, and if I can prompt it in the right ways, and write a response, or write a prompt, which is essentially directions and instructions to it. And it requires me to be innovative with it, but it also requires me, it allows me to do something I couldn't do in such short amount of time. Another example is feedback. A lot of times when we want to give students feedback, well, we have a lot of students, you're not able to. There's also other limitations, but, particularly with qualitative feedback, a lot of times we can give a survey. And here's a few questions. Answer them. But if I have hundreds of students, or even if I have a hundred students, giving qualitative feedback can be really hard. Or once students give me qualitative feedback, processing that data, right, that qualitative data, and doing something with it. Most of us don't do anything. So what do we do? We just teach. We just teach. Most faculty teach. You try to do your best. You try to figure out some stuff. You try to adjust, but you may not. And students in the first year seminar, the interesting thing is I get a lot of them. I meet with them one on one. That's one of the things that I feel like is an integral part in that first year. I want them to get to know how to meet with an instructor or professor. And so when I meet with them, I hear a lot about the other classes they're taking, right? And the kind of the things they like, the things they don't like. And I don't do this as a judgment to anyone, but I feel that we're all in kind of that same boat is like, how do we improve instruction? How do we improve this process? The other part of the interest is what I mentioned before is I think my humanities background of the humanistic part. As wonderful as AI is and especially generative AI, there's ethical implications too, right? Of course, most everyone's concerned with plagiarism and how do we detect it and now it's no longer going to be them writing and things of that nature. But I think with that comes Okay, so students go, they put a little prompt, they write their whole essay, not only is the problem that they didn't write it, but they're going to come to class and they have no vested interest in participating in that class now because they don't need to. There's no motivation to it. So how do we keep the human loop within the technology? especially in the learning space. And so those are some things I've developed. I created like the humanized cycle so that there's essentially this full loop that both takes advantage of the limitations of large language models. These are the artificial intelligence, chatbots, but also, Maintains who we are. You know, keeps us within that humanized aspect. Which is interacting, learning together, engaging in conversation and really just growing ourselves through the growth of knowledge. So those things are important, right? As a humanities in the humanistic realm. I think that that's my fascination. I feel that it's a tool that can really change teaching for the better, but there are ethical challenges with it. Right. No doubt. But that's kind of where I just was drawn in. And then as a ed leadership policy person, I feel like I have to. Because now I'm like, okay, institutionally, what do we do? The other part of the ethical responsibility we have as educators is if we don't teach students how to use this tool. The problem is in two, four years, they're going to walk out with degrees that are in some ways in parts obsolete because they're going to be competing with people in those same jobs with those degrees who know how to use artificial intelligence in their job and they might be faster than them now because they can use this technology. They might be more efficient. And so is it ethical to not prepare our students to know how to use this technology because they will be competing with others who have? So these are some things that really have drawn me in, which goes back again to my humanities major, to my ed leadership and all those, all unexpected, right? But has drawn me in, to really, really pursue it in a more intentional way.
Carrie:So, regarding the higher education landscape, kind of looking forward, what are some things that are really encouraging you right now with the direction that things are moving in and then what are some concerns you have, perhaps, about higher education moving forward?
Ripsime:That's a really big question, right? Those are both really big questions. I think going along with what I just mentioned, the parts that do concern me is typically, Educational institutions don't move at the speed of maybe the private sector or other parts, which has been okay, though, because we're typically separated from that, right? A degree still has its value, whether things happen outside of it, outside the institution or not, but we are now dealing with a case where that's not the case, right? I think if you'd asked a people five years ago, let alone ten. If you asked him about artificial intelligence, we tend to think of it as robots, maybe automizing things, right? Whether it's your drive through McDonald's is all of a sudden there's no person there and things like that. But the fact of the matter is that's not who it's affecting. It's affecting most of the degrees and most of the students who are walking out with degrees at an educational institution from teaching to legal fields to the medical industry everything it's affecting high salary high degree industries and so that is a concern because What happens is, it's not just a technology, I think a lot of people compare it to the calculator, and the clock, or things like that, and I would say it's not quite like that, those were definitely advancements, but this is something that is, it's artificial intelligence, it's trying to mimic human performance tasks. And so now it's far into these industries and the performance and the tasks that these things are doing. So not preparing our students is a concern to me. Even in the degree plan, some institutions have incorporated AI into their first year seminar and utilizing it. It's a part of their faculty development. Right now though, we have no centralized place. There's nowhere to go. Some institutions have created some things but unlike anything else these chatbots are created and there's no manual. I saw somebody say that, they had more instructions getting their garden hose from Home Depot than they did figuring out how to use a chatbot. And it's true. There's just maybe a small article that comes out with it, but nobody really has a centralized place and it's very decentralized, which makes it harder. So that is a concern for me. I feel like for how we're preparing our students. In what way? To paraphrase, there's a Albert Camus quote about how school prepares us for the future that is not yet. And that's really the case. Typically educational institutions don't move this quickly. Now we're faced with A very big dilemma. The key cannot be unturned. The genie is out of the lamp. Even if we stopped AI right now, we'd have to deal with what we've done so far. So that's a concern. The positive side is I feel that we are changing in many ways that we are really responding to students more. Even at our institution, other institutions are very concerned about not just access, but how do we support students? A quote that I read long ago in a paper was access without support is not opportunity. So they come to our institutions, it's a wonderful opportunity, but is it an opportunity if we don't support them to finish to the end? And I think that we're doing more of that. We're doing more of that, whether it's being intentional with these types of first year seminars. Putting more resources in extending it in other ways, more faculty development, faculty doing more, a lot of times faculty are doing strategic objectives, where it's no longer just, did you teach the course in the content, but are you helping support them for a future career? Are you helping support them for passing maybe in a test, for, you know, think of teacher certification students or accounting students getting a degree is not enough. They need to pass that CPA exam. They need to pass that certification exam. So you're seeing a lot of this now being brought into the strategic objectives of departments, and I think it's wonderful. Because now we're really thinking about the whole student and supporting them in so many other ways, and building this into our curriculum, hopefully, and certainly into our objectives. It has been going on for probably the last 10 years, but I see it more and more. And I certainly see it where I'm at.
Carrie:Yeah. And I think in an odd way, the pandemic kind of helped with that too, right? Because we started to really look at students difficult situations and what everybody was having to deal with on top of trying to get through a degree. And I think it really opened the conversation more to make that more of a permanent consideration.
Ripsime:Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I know one big focus I have and I know it's because of the responses I've gotten both from my students and just seeing is I'm very much about building community within our face to face classes because a lot of our students are now. It's funny as much as they use social media. I'm not sure how tech savvy they are in the academic world, but they are social media savvy. And as much as they are, a lot of them chose to be face to face. Not do online. They don't want to do online tutoring. They don't want to do any online things of that nature because they found themselves struggling. They found themselves struggling and that's an interesting point that you bring out because, that at some point we were like, we're all gonna work from home forever and you see all these studies coming out about it's actually not a good thing. I saw one today how you might be interrupted maybe three times in a workspace, but you interrupt yourself about nine to 10 times working from home. Granted, for some people, it's very positive. But overall that online space and online learning and online teaching we thought was going to just be the next wave. And it's not necessarily the case. I find students very much wanting to be face to face. And so I make sure we build community. We hear each other's voices is a huge part. Especially I teach an online class. I very much want them to hear each other. Even if they don't see each other, they hear each other. And it builds community. The human voice is fantastic and wonderful. And it brings us together. And so I think those are things that, you're right. I think we've learned that, you know what? We are social creatures and we need each other and we cannot just be online and at home. Always.
Carrie:So looking back over your journey, not just with your own journey as a student and a learner, but also your journey as a teacher of other students, right, are there some pieces of advice, like kind of general life advice or advice that really hit home for you along your path that you would want to share with students now?
Ripsime:One, I think all of us, even if not consciously, but subconsciously, we think we're going to have this linear journey. It's going to be from A to B and you see B maybe, but at least you see some semblance of it or where you want to go and you're going to go for it. And it just doesn't work that way. It's very scenic. Lots of hills and some valleys and those are okay. I think that to be okay with the scenic journey. Because along the way, what we don't expect and is necessary is that the goal, yes, is to get to B. Or C or wherever it is that we're getting to. But in the process, you find yourself changing, growing, especially sometimes through the harder experiences. But things don't go your way. Maybe there's a bump, maybe there's something you thought was going to go a certain way, or maybe you thought this is what you're going to do and it doesn't work out. But those are the parts where it changes the fabric of who we are. And that's important because I say this because in all this journey, I was thinking of myself and really most of us and the students we think, you know, especially when you're young, you're thinking of yourself and you should. You should be thinking about how I'm going to get. The most out of this experience and grow and so forth. But one day you're going to be on the other end and you're going to need those experiences that changed you because they're going to be how you provide authentic advice and encouragement. And there's no shortcut to that. There's no shortcut to that and to be authentic. You have to have had some hard experiences or at least some experiences where you know you had to process things. And you get to be, one day,that person maybe that you didn't get, or maybe the person you did have. But either way, the journey is scenic, let it be scenic, let go of some stuff sometimes. Let it take you down paths, like you said earlier, where maybe you go out and do things that can grow you. Because like I said, it, In that process, you change. And that's an important piece, because one day you're going to whether it's your own children, whether it's other peers, maybe if you're in a field where you're a helper, and you're helping others, that's where the real benefit's going to come, that you're going to be able to give back. And so I don't think we think about that, right, as we're going through this personal journey about getting from A to B. And so I think that, let that happen. It's okay. Don't be surprised by it, and Don't be upset about it. It's all a part of the journey.
Carrie:Absolutely. I could not agree more. Well, Ripsime, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your insight and just your generosity with sharing your story and your wisdom with us today.
Ripsime:Carrie, thank you for asking all those wonderful questions.
Carrie:Thank you.
Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.