Katie: Museum Professional in Washington, D.C., Federal Worker, Educator, Private Security; Bachelors Degree in History, Masters Degree in Cultural Anthropology, Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies

Growing up in the Washington, D.C area with two parents working for the Federal government, it’s not surprising that Katie was raised to love history and eventually work in the Federal Government and the rich museum culture her city is famous for.  How does her love of music and theater lead her down this path?  Listen to hear about how Katie has woven together her multiple interests and experiences to form her career path, and like many of us, it’s still a Path in Progress!  

Transcript

Carrie: 0:01

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 Katie. Katie has a bachelor's degree in history. She has her master's degree in cultural anthropology, and she has a graduate certificate in museum studies. Katie's worked in education. She's worked in museums. She's worked for the federal government, and now she works in a private security firm. Katie, thanks so much for joining us today.

Katie: 0:57

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Carrie: 0:59

Can you take us back to your high school days and tell us a little bit about how you approached your college search and if you had anything in particular in your mind for what you wanted to do for pursuing either a particular major or career path?

Katie: 1:14

Where I wound up is definitely not where I wanted or initially started. I'd always loved history. That had been a passion of mine since I was a child. English and history and reading, and discussion, you know, topic discussions at the dinner table, all of those kinds of things were very much the norm in our family. So it wasn't weird to get into a philosophical debate over Saturday dinner or to discuss history over Sunday breakfast or anything else like that. That was very normal.

Carrie: 1:45

I love that.

Katie: 1:46

It's great. And the thing is that is still the same today. I blame my parents because when I was eight, I wanted a cat and my mom didn't want to get a cat. So instead they took me to see the musical Cats. And I was hooked. Oh, I was absolutely hooked. This is exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And my parents went, Oh God, what have we done?

Carrie: 2:11

I remember seeing that tour too. We also saw a performance of that tour, that 80s Cats tour. I love it.

Katie: 2:17

That was everything. I still remember bits and pieces of that. That was okay. This is what I want to do the rest of my life. No question. Yeah. So what I started focusing on after that was. You know, yes get good grades and because I liked doing that and I liked studying and I liked learning things I still do. Later on that's what appealed to me about anthropology. But I started focusing, especially once I got to high school on singing and dancing and acting and I've danced for a total of about 12 years. I've done nearly everything including hula which is a lot of fun and a lot harder than you think it is. Did live theater all through high school. I did summer camps for theater. I sang all through high school, both in the church choir and in the upper choirs in my high school that you had to audition to be a part of. And what I was looking for when I went to university was a conservatory or someplace where I could really hone those skills, and give the musical theater world a shot. My parents Were not really supportive of this but part of the reason is because they had watched my dad's sister go down this path, And she hadn't gotten a backup degree. She hadn't gotten anything To kind of help her out. What they were scared to death of is watching me go down the same path and them having to bail me out. I understand their concern. I do. However, large part of me is saying you should have looked at me. I wasn't anything like my dad's sister and I love her. She's a wonderful person, but that was never going to be an option for me. I would have found something. So I started looking into some things like okay fine. Let's go ahead and we'll do a distinction here. I was in love with liturgical music. I've sung in church since I was two. That was the music that my parents loved. So that's most of what we listened to around the house was Baroque, Renaissance, and then up to early Romantic. So I went, okay, let me find a place where I can study liturgical music. I can get a degree in that. I can get a degree in music history. I can still keep going with, you know, a theater program and do what I want to do, but okay, I will have this solid background. So, they were okay with that, and we wound up looking at a lot of places, and I actually surprised myself because, some of the schools that my parents were like, just go ahead and apply here, just, and I was like, okay, I'm not going to get in, whatever. I got in. And when those acceptance letters came, I was like, wait a second. Wait, what do you mean? I got in. What do you mean? Wait, wait, what? So, it became apparent that the conservatory path was not going to happen, but these other higher institutions did want me. And they did have sacred music programs, so eventually I chose a private Catholic school in northern Indiana.

Carrie: 5:09

Nice. So people can probably figure out what that is.

Katie: 5:12

They have a fairly legendary football team, and that's the last thing I'll say. Yeah, I wonder who that could be. If you don't fall in love with that, there's nothing I can do for you.

Carrie: 5:23

While we're kind of on this, I wanted to touch a second about how you feel like being in the arts and being comfortable on stage and being a performer has helped you in other spaces. Because I think that's something that, you know, right now there's so much talk in high schools and parents are pulling their kids out of the arts because they're saying, you know, this is not college preparation. They need to be in more AP and they need to be studying more academic things. And we're losing the conversation about the value of participation in arts activities. So can you talk for a minute about how you feel like that has really benefited you in other areas of your life?

Katie: 6:02

Yes, I would love to, because, oddly enough, I've worked for a company that worked in education and AP testing and getting kids ready for APs and getting them ready for the SATs and things like that. I worked for a year for that company. The last thing we need. Is more APs. I may not have gotten a career in what I thought I wanted, but I have used the performing background every single day of my life. I have used it to talk to people. I have used it to communicate ideas. I have rephrased ideas so that they were more palatable for the audience I was going to be talking to. Even if I'm not feeling well, I can put on that bright shiny face and no one will ever know. There's a lot to be said also for body awareness. And you can, you kind of have that in sports. I'm, I can't really speak to sports cause that just wasn't something I was interested in, but especially in dance and theater, you have to be aware of where you are, where the other person is and how the two of you are working together. Having that awareness, and also then being able to emotionally check in with that other human being. I have used what I trained to do every single day. Yeah, that has been priceless.

Carrie: 7:16

Yeah, agreed. I know that there's a lot of educators out there trying to put this out in communication to parents. I always like to bring it up because I think sometimes we don't even realize that, you know, as we look back on our lives, like there's so many Yeah professional situations I was in, or even social situations that you're in, where that performance background is so helpful and just, you know, it kind of formed who we are, as people, of course, but like the skills that you gain from that are transferable across so many spaces.

Katie: 7:45

Those skills are invaluable. I may not have gone into a career in the performing arts, but I use those skills every single day, every single day. And they have gotten me out of some pretty tight situations and have also made me very valuable to employers.

Carrie: 8:03

Yeah, absolutely. So, can you talk about your undergraduate experience and some of the things that you chose to do during your time as an undergraduate student and how that kind of formed moving forward for you?

Katie: 8:18

Absolutely. I came in as a music major, one thing I liked about my university is no matter what you wanted to do or you thought you wanted to do, every freshman had the same basic two semesters. There were certain courses that you had to take. There were certain introductory courses that you took with your classmates, whether you wanted to be an engineer or a doctor or, a historian, or you wanted to be an artist, but you all took the same classes and you had a similar background, which gave a lot of my friends the opportunity to say, okay, Yeah, I know what I want to do. And a lot of others to say, you know what, what I thought, I don't want to do that anymore. And so having a college that had that freshman all, that had that, you know, freshman 101 program basically, we called it the core studies program. That was invaluable. That was invaluable.

Carrie: 9:12

Yeah, there's a lot of research, especially since we were in college, there's been a lot of research about the value of those first year experience programs, you know, curriculum, and they vary across institutions, of course, but just the value of connection to other people in your course, but also just kind of that overview you can get to really Think through what it is we're walking into and how we want to approach this and spend our time and it's so helpful to students.

Katie: 9:39

And it doesn't really matter whether you're public school or private school. There are some, at least as far as I found, there are some courses that you're just, or some experiences that you're just not going to get until you hit that course in college and until you hit that course and you start doing it and you realize, oh my gosh, I really like this. I'm good at it. This is that is what opens up doors.

Carrie: 10:01

So how did that play out for you?

Katie: 10:03

Let's see here. I started off in the music department because that's what I wanted to do. The music department after my second year. Actually we had to do juries and when you're doing juries and performance for anybody who doesn't know, it means that once a semester you get your, Okay. Like a professional program set and you perform it in front of the professors in your college and they rate you and they see how you're doing, especially if you're on the performance path. And they told me that this was not going to happen. And I was out of the music department and I needed to change my major within the next two days.

Carrie: 10:45

Wow. Yeah. And that is more common than we hear about. Because obviously a lot of people don't advertise when that happens to them. But that's a very real thing. It's kind of amazing how a lot of us have some part of our path where something like that happens, whether it's in education, whether it's something personal that happens to us, whether it's something in a job, and it ends up you know, being the thing that sets us on a different path that moves us forward and does something that maybe, maybe we didn't think about, but ends up being a really great thing in the end.

Katie: 11:23

It is interesting that you say that, because I think one theme that I'm noticing is coming out in the jobs that I've worked, the times when I knew I, what I wanted to do and what I wanted to have happen, something has always happened that is completely beyond my control that shoved me off that path. And I'm still not exactly sure where it's going, but for most of the time, the path I would have liked to have been on, I have been somehow, by outside forces, shoved off and made to go in a different direction. So we're still waiting to see the results of that.

Carrie: 11:59

Aren't we all? Yeah. That's okay.

Katie: 12:02

I think it's led me in some very different directions. And again, experiences that I would not have had and experiences that were extremely valuable.

Carrie: 12:11

So how did you work through that? Because there's probably students listening who've had something similar happen, perhaps even recently, because that's, that's a really hard thing to go through.

Katie: 12:20

I will also say that particularly where I was my background was musical theater and there was no musical theater program where I went to university. It just it didn't exist. There was a student run organization that did musicals, but musical theater was looked down on and very much mocked And that I didn't realize until I got there. And that was not a healthy part of that culture. So the first few days and weeks, it was a shock. It was just, okay, I've been told no before. You get told no all the time in auditions. But this was a, you are not allowed to follow your path and you have to pick something else. So this was a, okay, you have no choice on this one. It's not that you didn't get this role and you can try again. It's you're not going here. So pick someplace else. So I went into autopilot mode. I, you know, resigned from that college in that program and pitched my lot in at first with English. Because I love to read and write and discuss books. When I say leave the college, I mean, the College of Music. I had to pick something else, so I knew I was going to do Arts and Letters, I didn't have the science background to do anything, even remotely close to those. Math was a no go, so, okay, I knew it was going to be Arts and Letters. This was this semester before the music program told me no, I did the Walt Disney World college internship program.

Carrie: 13:47

Oh, nice. So what did that entail? Because I'm I know a lot of people have heard of that. So could you take some time to talk about that.

Katie: 13:55

They had a couple of different programs at the time. So I went down and I did a five month internship. Essentially it was learning, living, thriving. So the idea was you went down and you could request the different jobs you wanted at Disney, but if they accepted you they would assign you a position in one of the kingdoms and what you would do. You lived on Disney property. You had Disney housing. So part of your pay, part of your paycheck that got deducted each week was for your rent. And then you had whatever else you had to live on. You did laundry. You could take courses down there that would count towards college. They all had to do, you know with business, but two of the best courses I ever took were down there. They weren't in a college setting. They were down in Disney, you could take courses and then, you know, you show up to work and you punch in and you punch out and you did not pick your roommates. You figured out who those were the day you arrived and moved in. And it was okay, figure out how to get along with each other, figure out how to live on this. And there you go.

Carrie: 14:54

So the two courses that you thought were some of the best you ever took, what were those?

Katie: 14:59

Organizational leadership and hospitality management. Nice. Which has, I have used that in, every single job I've been in. Oh yeah. Because crises happen. They happen and they affect people and customers. And this entire course was how to manage it and how to take the situation back down to a workable level and how to scramble when you have to and make something happen. Yeah, absolutely. That has, oh man, I have used that so, so, so often and I will for the rest of my life.

Carrie: 15:33

And that's such a great reminder to tell students to seek out opportunities to learn outside of your university classroom. I mean, obviously you're going to college to learn and to be in the classroom and take classes, but there are a lot of opportunities during that period of your life, whether it's, you know, something off campus, whether it's an internship, whether it's a workshop, whether it's a guest lecture series, I mean, who knows? You never know what those things are going to be that impact. Do the most, but I've heard so many people say that a lot of the things that stuck with them, you know, they may not have been in that situation without being in college at that time, but they were actually outside of their institution classroom.

Katie: 16:11

And the Walt Disney World program is something that I'd wanted to do and thought about for a long time. But it actually also happened because I applied to the university's London program for a semester and I did not get in. So after I didn't make that, it was well, um, cool. We're doing Disney. Because Disney said yes, so let's go. Absolutely. So I was abroad without being abroad. Because I went down and I lived in Florida for five months. That was also an interesting experience because that's when 9 11 hit. Oh, wow. Yeah, I went to the gym that morning because my shift wasn't until the afternoon and everyone's staring at the TVs. And I start working out and I'm watching the TVs and it wasn't until about 10 minutes in when I realized, Oh my God, this is my country. I thought we were looking at someplace else in the world. But then I realized oh my god, this is us Yeah, so, went straight back to my room all my roommates were in that day it is the Second time in disney history that they've shut the parks down completely we were all huddled around the tv And I was trying desperately to get through to my dad. Because my dad was working in the capital at the time and it took 32 minutes and 16 seconds until I was able to get him and it was brief, but he was fine. He was walking across the bridge, the fort street bridge on to the Virginia side, but he was, he was, he was fine. And the heroes on flight 93. Intelligence has confirmed, that was headed for the Capitol and those heroes saved my father's life. Hmm. So I have a dad thanks to them. Yeah. So, one of the things that I then had to convince my parents of is dad had access to different parts of intelligence and Walt Disney World was right at the top of their list. It represented America. It represented freedom of economy, Freedom to do what you wanted and that was on the top 10 list of targets. So the next thing I had to do was both argue and convince both my parents why they should let me stay down here because I wanted to stay and I wanted to finish out the program and I wanted to do this. They agree with my reasoning. I'm still not exactly sure what that was, but, all of a sudden, then we're in the very initial stages of the post 9 11 world. And the first thing that we had to change with the soap dispensers. Because in all the parks, the soap dispensers, you pushed up on the little handle and some pink powder came out and you scrubbed your hands with that. And that turned into soap and bubbles. And then you wash them off. First thing we had to do was get rid of all of that because it looked too much like anthrax. Oh, my gosh, so the first thing that happened is all the soap dispensers and all the parks had to get changed immediately. Wow. You know, you don't think about the little things until you realize, okay, on the ground, you know, again, hospitality management, what's the first thing that we have to deal with that people are going to see the most. Soap dispensers. Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie: 19:16

What a time to be working for a company like Disney who's just at the top as far as thinking of all the details. Yeah. And organization and customer service.

Katie: 19:28

They literally, they wrote the book. Yeah, absolutely. The other companies absolutely based their programs and I've seen their programs. They've based it around what I learned at Disney.

Carrie: 19:36

Yeah, and what a time to be there when you're seeing in real time like this very unique time period where everyone was having to react in so many different ways really quickly. Wow, that's quite a unique life experience.

Katie: 19:49

It is one that I am, I wanted to be a part of, and I'm very glad that I stayed down and was able to convince my parents. The internship itself was. very difficult. From that, I would encourage anybody if you have a place that you loved growing up, whether that's a theme park, whether that's a national park, it's a museum, it's whatever that is. And you're like, I want to work here. This is great. I love being here. I love who I am. Get an internship, find out what it's really like, find out what it's like in the background, find out what it takes to keep the place running and the kind of people that you're going to have to work with. Because what you see, what you love about that place is not what is going on underneath the surface. So do the internship, work for them, find that out. And if it's still what you want to do, go, but if it's not what you thought, then okay, no problem. You had that experience and now you know that you can move on with a clear conscience. You won't ever be asking, you know, what if I'd done this? What if I'd done that?

Carrie: 20:56

So you said you were there for five months. So once you got back to school, what did anything change about your path or did you kind of start looking for something different at all?

Katie: 21:05

The school had an American studies program, which I liked the idea of because it kind of combined history and English. So combined two of my favorite studies. American history is still something that I'm, I love and I'm passionate about. I credit part of that for growing up in Virginia. Cause you're surrounded, like there's a major civil war battlefield five minutes down the street from where I live. You've got Yorktown, Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. You've got that triangle. My family went down there a lot. And again, you know, for us, that was fun. That was a vacation. Because we could look around and we could talk about the different structures and we could talk about the history and that, that was what we enjoyed doing. So I looked into the American Studies program. One of the things my college didn't do, which I support, I wasn't happy with it at the time, but I support it now, is they did not let you design your own curriculum. You may be able to throw other classes on top. If you were in a particular studies program, you were going to take their curriculum step by step. You can add onto that if you want, but you will not subtract from it and you will follow that curriculum and now I support that. But at that point in time, it was, well, okay, what if I moved this and moved that? But then I could come out with this focus on data, data, data. This was my junior year now. There's a thing at my college called junior parents weekend where, you know, you've still got your senior year to go. And the parents of all the juniors come in town and They can go to classes with the kids and they can meet the professors and they can attend talks on the different colleges. And there's a big fancy dinner and a dance. You really get to enjoy your child's experience at the school. And then you still got one more year to go. My parents came up for that and it was wonderful. And the lasting message was pick something and stick with it. Which which again, you know, now I look back and it was like, no, no, I get it. I get it. You wanted to make sure I came out with an actual degree.

Carrie: 23:03

I think a lot of people can relate to that, being in that situation, that conversation with their parents.

Katie: 23:08

So, at the end of the day, I came out with a degree in history, a minor in music and a concentration in medieval philosophy, because I discovered philosophy courses there and I absolutely loved them. And I discovered this entire different world that I could be a part of and debate and that had formed the underlying structures for the Western world. And I just was hooked.

Carrie: 23:31

Yeah, well, I've had so many students over the years who because of the messaging that students get where you need to pick something and stick with it, which we understand the validity to that, but it's harder for students who have a huge variety of interests, right? When you like a lot of different things, it's really hard to do that. And so, when I've had students over the years who got two minors, like you said, or who started in one major and switched to another and then did another minor over here and did that, you know, sometimes they're like, Oh, I look like a mess. And it's like, no, what it looks like is you're interested in a lot of things and there's nothing wrong with that. You're graduating, you're getting your degree. So what if you have two different minors and you changed your major twice, like. That's what that looks like. You don't look like a mess. You look like you're interested in a lot of things and you're taking the time to figure it out.

Katie: 24:16

Any job that's looking at your resume is not going to see that you changed majors. They're going to see in whatever subject from this university. So my major point for that would be again, Do pick something you like. Pick something that will also teach you how to read and write and argue with people. Because no matter what field you go into, you will have to have those skills for the rest of your life.

Carrie: 24:43

Yeah, especially the communication piece. Oh my gosh. I mean, there's, there's no job that out there that you don't have to have strong communication skills. So I was gonna ask you, as you were going into that senior year and you were making those decisions about, okay, this is what I'm finishing and graduating with, were you starting to form any ideas of like, okay, I think I want to do this after graduation? Or how did you kind of move through your senior year in that way? And then what did you do upon graduation?

Katie: 25:12

Yeah, there was one course, it was Late Antiquity, which translates to the fall of the Roman Empire and the transition into the early Middle Ages. I took a course in that from a history professor who was very, very well known and very well respected in the college. And another thing I would throw out there is, as you go through your college career, as long as you're getting the credits you need for your degree, start picking courses based on the teacher, not necessarily the course. Because whoever the teacher is, given what they are able to do with the course material, you will learn a lot more than if you pick a course that you think, oh, this more closely aligns with my field, maybe, but the teacher is what matters. The educator is what matters.

Carrie: 26:00

Yeah, it can have a huge impact.

Katie: 26:02

For instance, one semester of my senior year, I'd love to be better at languages, I'm not. I studied French for years and can barely get by, but for one of my senior semesters, my daily schedule was I was taking a course in old Aztec and old Spanish because it was the Aztec Empire and the Spanish arriving in colonization of the new Americas. I was taking a course on Chinese ways of thought, which fulfilled a theology requirement, so I was studying Old Chinese, and then I was working in Old English, because we were translating Beowulf from the old English. And that was

Carrie: 26:42

So did you just dream in like gibberish?

Katie: 26:44

Pretty much, yeah, pretty much, yeah, and again, just from someone who likes languages but isn't good at them, never thought I would have been in any of those courses, and I love them and they have been wonderful. And I have been able to use them and say, look, what I was able to do here, that means I can do A, B, and C over here for you. So I've been able to use them to translate because again, I was taught how to argue and read and write. Yeah. So when you graduated, what were your next steps? Let's see. There was a personal issue that I thought was going to work out one way and didn't. So instead of moving to Georgia, I moved back home and, you know, I went on autopilot, found a place to rent, found a roommate. My grandmother happened to be downsizing at the same time. So I picked up a bunch of her pieces that she couldn't take. So I was like, great, cool, free furniture and moved into my first apartment. I started working for the federal government as a Schedule C employee, so that's a presidential appointee, and I was working on the federal side, so I worked for, Department of Energy, and then I worked for Department of Health and Human Services.

Carrie: 27:54

I know that there's just kind of a whole culture with like young professionals in DC. There's a lot of people who, you know, that's their dream after college, like to get to DC and be boots on the ground, working in the federal government and building career from there. So do you have any like experience that you'd want to share with that or any advice or just give us a little insight into what that culture is like as a young college graduate in DC?

Katie: 28:19

Definitely. Keep in mind that those three branches of government that you learned about way, way a long time ago, those exist. You had the executive, the judicial, and the legislative, and all of them pay differently. I worked for the federal government, but I worked in the executive branch. So Department of State, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, all of the Department of Homeland Security, because that was just being formed. All come under the executive branch. So our salaries are able to be a lot higher than the people who are working in the congressional offices in the house and senate which is a legislative branch And the reason is because their salaries have to be reported back to their districts at home and the cost of living is So overinflated in DC, but since their numbers still have to be reported to the home district so that they know, What are you paying the people that are going there? It's really tough making it in the legislative field. I had a bunch of friends who talked about yeah, we'd combine resources and whatever was in the fridge we threw it in the stew pot and all five of us ate out of it because We had 20 a week to buy groceries and that was it Because, you had to live in D. C. because you needed to be close to work and anything outside of D. C. and around the D. C. area is going to be monstrously expensive. So, you're definitely going to be with, you know, probably about three or four roommates. You're not going to be making much, you're not going to be getting much sleep because you're going to be networking every chance you get, which is what you have to do to rise up in the D. C. ranks. So, I would say those three branches of government. Look at what you want to do. Being in government is a wonderful career. It is a very noble path and it is very self sacrificing path. Make sure that you've looked into all of the different options. Because my career was on the executive branch, whereas my parents both served on the legislative branch and they wanted me to move over there and I took one look at the prices and said, the first thing I'd have to do is as wonderful as this job sounds. First thing I'd have to do is find two roommates, ditch my apartment and sell half my stuff because there's no way I could maintain where I was living and I wasn't living in any place expensive, but there's no way I could maintain that on the salary they were going to pay me. I was just like, I'm sorry, that's just not smart. I can't do it.

Carrie: 30:45

Yeah. That's great advice. So as you were working for the government, was it changing at all the way that you saw your own path or were you seeing it as a stepping stone or how were you viewing that part of your career while you were in it?

Katie: 30:58

Well, the government was something that I had wanted to try both of my parents had jobs in the government, they met each other there. They fell in love. They're both still very passionate about it. And of course my father still worked there. So that was something that I wanted to try'cause we'd had political discussions around the house for, you know, as long as I could remember. All of my adopted aunt and uncles were all in politics. So I wanted to give that a try. But you know, again, executive branch means there's a little bit more security financial wise. But there's not nearly as much happening. The majority of my jobs were boring because you know, you'd have a spurt of activity and then nothing. Whereas in the congressional offices, things are going on every day. Every minute is all you're always running. There's always something going on. I enjoyed my job that I had in the government. It was much different from both of my parents experiences, but I also determined that, okay, I'm a person who needs to keep moving. I need to keep moving. I need to keep busy. I don't like sitting there and waiting for something to happen.

Carrie: 32:05

Yeah. And I, I love that you said that because it's so important. I mean, a huge piece of this is knowing yourself, right? And knowing what environments you thrive in, what environments You I don't want to say struggle in, but you know, some people are in particular environments where they just can't really utilize the best parts

Katie: 32:23

of that struggle is actually a pretty good word. It wasn't that I wasn't mentally prepared for this job. I had the training and I had the background and I could do it, but it had no interest to me whatsoever. And I thought it would and I tried to make it happen and I just couldn't.

Carrie: 32:38

And it's good to recognize that because it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. I think some people get frustrated because they're like, why can't I do this? Or why isn't this working and it's okay, you know, we're all different humans.

Katie: 32:50

Absolutely. It is okay to make that change. Don't think it's not. Yeah, absolutely. It is fine to make that change, especially if you're not happy and you're not doing your best work where you are. Absolutely. In that case, it's not only okay to make that change, it's essential.

Carrie: 33:07

And then on the other side of things, sometimes you can be really good at things that you don't enjoy.

Katie: 33:14

I could pull that job off. No problem. But you know, I was unfulfilled at the end of the day. I didn't feel like I'd done anything worthwhile. It was not a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but it taught me that this is not the career I want to have.

Carrie: 33:28

So what steps did you take to change?

Katie: 33:30

Well, at that point, about one or two years before, I left the federal government in January of 2009, right when the initial financial crash happened. So yay, go me. Nice timing. I've been looking around and some of the courses I took in college, the late antiquity course, the course on the indigenous tribes of what became Mexico and the Spanish. Those classes had us looking at original documents and different findings and different archeological digs and results from those digs that were changing the history record because we were finding more things that either supported the story we knew or completely changed the story that we thought we knew and it wasn't that at all We just found this piece of evidence over here, exhibit A that says, okay. Yeah. The story that you thought you knew. Yeah. We gotta rewrite that entire thing. It's not right. I'm a puzzle person. I love doing crafts. I love making things. I love figuring out how to make things work. I love to learn and that is a passion that if you have that, you should pay attention to it because it means that you can assimilate changing information. You like changing environments and you can handle that and not everybody can. And again, that's fine. But if that's something that you can handle, there are a couple different career options for you that will open up that will not open up for other people. So I started looking at archaeology. my parents were classic movie fans. I saw the search for the holy grail when I was very young and that got me hooked. And yes, I recognize to anybody else listening, Indiana Jones is a terrible archaeologist. He destroys the situations he's in. He does not do it properly. None of his methods work. Yes, I absolutely admit that. But that thrill of discovery and that thrill of following the clues and finding the answer that grabbed me that absolutely grabbed me and I knew that that was something that I wanted to do because I could be active. I could be a part of the history that I love. I could specialize in a period of history that I love. Yes, it'd be tough work, but I'd be surrounded by doing something I chose and I was interested in. We all wind up picking something to do for the rest of our lives that we like, and this is what I picked. I will never be bored. I traded in my suits for dungarees and a trowel. And the only thing I missed was the paycheck.

Carrie: 35:56

Yeah. So what were the steps you took toward that? Cause making a big adjustment like that, even if it's exciting, right. It can be a little scary just because you're making a big shift and some people feel like they're kind of starting over in a way, whether it's going back to school or, maybe starting in a different place than I was. a hierarchy structure for work. So how did you approach that? And what steps did you take to move toward that?

Katie: 36:19

When I broached the idea to my parents, cause they're both very smart people. I wanted to get their opinion. They said, you know, either go back now, go back sooner than I wound up going back or go back in something different. I did a bunch of research. What my research told me is that we can teach you to do archaeology on the job. You can go to a field school, you know, we can teach you how to do that. That's more on the ground. What we need you to have is a master's degree in some kind of solid discipline. So what that led me to is anthropology, and that's how I wound up in the graduate program for anthropology.

Carrie: 36:57

So were you looking for something in particular with your grad school search?

Katie: 37:01

Well, I knew with archaeology I wanted to work on human artifacts. I didn't want to work on you know, primitive man. I didn't want to go dig up some of those graves, I wanted to work with actual living, quote unquote, living history. I wanted to do Viking. I wanted to do medieval Europe. I wanted to do something where, you know, we had some solid clues to put together. Archaeology is anything people have touched or used. So I figured anthropology was a very natural addition to that, because that's looking at how, that's looking at how different peoples and different tribes react with each other, how they get along, what bonds they form, whether those bonds work, what changes. What concessions do they make? That kind of thing.

Carrie: 37:46

So with your graduate school experience, again, like as you were going through that, did it shape you at all as far as seeing what you wanted to do moving forward? Did you have any kind of internship experience or work experience that were the next steps on the path to where you ended up going?

Katie: 38:03

I wound up getting a lot of teaching experience because I was accepted on a full scholarship. So I was TAing for the archeology 101 class. Which any 101 class you get in for a college, you're going to get a mix of kids. About a third of the kids are really interested and think this is going to be cool, they might want a career in this. A third of the kids are, okay, I've got to do something for my social science. This looks interesting. And the other third of the kids are, I don't care. I had to sign up for something and this is all that was left. So no problem. You're going to face that. My deal with them was, look, you don't have to love this. You don't have to come out and want a career in archeology. I expect you to work hard. I expect you to do what I ask you to do. And if you are having any trouble whatsoever, as long as you can show me that you're trying, I will meet you halfway and I will bring you the rest of the way. So, open office hours, talking to students, recommending things at the library, writing tests, designing tests, grading tests, writing essays, writing the essay prompts, grading the essays, all of that was on me and another student. I loved doing that. I loved teaching that course. The class met twice a week, and then there was a study group on Friday. The study group was my responsibility, and essentially it was another full length class, and we went over everything that we had just covered that week in the class. And the students had a bit of a tough time with the person who was teaching the class, as did anybody who worked with him. So, I basically wound up reteaching Archaeology 101 every Friday for an entire two semesters.

Carrie: 39:41

Wow. I mean, First of all, obviously we shouldn't have to do that. But the fact that what you're recognizing and what the students needed and taking that on and also, I mean, I'm sure you learned a lot within that process.

Katie: 39:56

I learned a ton. I had to be on the top, on top of my game. Because it is never a bad thing to answer with a, I'm not sure I will look it up and get back to you, but you can't answer every question that way. You've got to be prepared. Which means you have to know the material backwards and forwards and inside and out. So it made me a better archaeologist because I had to memorize this as I was reading it, as I was doing it, I had to get it right the first time. I love doing that. I learned a ton about archaeology. So I'm like, okay, I'm getting the archaeology side of it. I'm getting the anthropology side of it in my courses. This is great. I'm in a learning environment. This is where I want to be. I am happy here, except for a couple of things. And these are things that again, We talked about this, you know, things that have happened to me are generally outside of my control that have pushed me in a different direction. So the archaeology professor that I was doing the study class for, for most colleges, the students rate their professors, and the teaching assistants, at the end of each semester. Right. I got way higher marks than he got.

Carrie: 41:00

Sounds like it.

Katie: 41:02

So, he was let's go with pissed. That's, can I use that word? I think that's the gentlest word I can use for what he was. So, he was actively involved in archaeological digs. And as soon as those student reports came in, there was no way I was getting any kind of recommendation or any help from him whatsoever. It wasn't going to happen. And he was the only practicing archaeologist at the college. There went that.

Carrie: 41:31

Unfortunately, that is super common to happen to people, right? Where your best intentions and hard work,

Katie: 41:40

will come back to bite you in the butt and you will not get credit for it and it will seem like a waste of time. And the reason I'm putting that out there is because it is going to happen and I'm sorry, it's going to happen, but it is so get ready for it because it doesn't mean that you get to give up.

Carrie: 41:55

Yeah, and it doesn't mean you did anything wrong either.

Katie: 41:57

You could have done everything right and you still lose. Sometimes that's just the way it works.

Carrie: 42:03

Yeah. So did you seek out other, other options? Or what did you do after that?

Katie: 42:08

Well, the other was the chair of the department, who was my advisor, for my graduate degree, who looked at one of my colleagues, We didn't have a very big department. We all happened to be women who were there, amazing women very good at their jobs still are. But he looked at one of the women and he said women bring this whole profession down. And he wasn't joking and he was tenured and there was not a damn thing we could do about it because he would have retaliated. This is the person I had to put up with for two years, who was advising me on how to write my thesis, how to do research, how to argue, and he was not a good teacher. Because if you didn't do it his way, you were wrong. That's an experience that I did not plan and did not foresee.

Carrie: 42:53

I hope the generation listening doesn't have to deal with this as much as we did in the previous generations before us did, but unfortunately, if you talk to people who are, I don't know, if we want to say 35 and over, It's common. And for the older generations, it's even more common as an experience for women.

Katie: 43:15

Very much so.

Carrie: 43:17

So for students who may find themselves in some kind of situation like that, obviously, you know, you're on a full scholarship. You're planning on finishing the degree. This is the situation that you're in. What do you do? Like, how did you work through that?

Katie: 43:31

You make them eat it and what I mean by that is I had this same teacher telling me well you you can't Do a thesis paper your it's not gonna work. You're not good enough to do that So you're gonna take your comprehensives and don't worry if you don't pass your comprehensives There are a lot of people who don't pass it on the first try, maybe not in the second or the third try so it was incredibly rewarding To watch his face turn purple As he had to hand me my degree Because I passed my comps with flying colors on the first try because I worked my butt off Yeah, I worked my butt off. Yeah, so The best advice I can give is if that's the game they're playing fine play their game and beat them at it. Make sure you win.

Carrie: 44:18

So coming out of that degree, thankfully, got to leave that situation. That wasn't the experience that you wanted going in, obviously. So coming out of that, what were you looking to do?

Katie: 44:29

Something I will also say to the younger generation, anybody listening now really doesn't matter what generation you're in. The little things matter. And what I mean by that is, is this. I was hired as an interpreter at Mount Vernon. So I was working in the house. I was telling the story of George Washington and what the rooms were used for to, you know, a couple thousand people a day. And I was on a historical property and I was loving it.

Carrie: 44:56

That sounds amazing. I just,

Katie: 44:58

I absolutely loved it. It was a great job and it could have gone a lot of different places and it didn't because I couldn't get my act together and get to work on time. And I also had a pretty big ego chip on my shoulder at the time, which kind of follows back to college and some traumatic events that happened there. But I had a pretty big ego chip on my shoulder, and I lost that job. It was a great job. It was exactly where I wanted to be, and I blew it.

Carrie: 45:31

Thank you for saying that. That can't be easy to say, but it's important for people to hear who need to hear it.

Katie: 45:37

It was incredibly embarrassing. I'd made a lot of mistakes in different careers at that point in time Because emotionally mentally. I didn't believe I had a lot going for me. All I had was my brain. So I allowed that to translate into Thinking that I was better than everybody else and shooting my mouth off when I should have kept it shut. And saying things that really didn't need to be said. It wound up coming back and it hurt me. And it wound up coming back and hurting my parents in some instances.

Carrie: 46:12

And I think that's so relatable I'm, so appreciative of you to to say this because I think there's a lot of people who start their career and looking back, there's something like this, you know, there's something like this, like I behaved in a certain way. I thought a certain thing. I made a certain assumption, whatever it is, right, that a lot of us have something like that, where we look back and go, Oh, that was not a good look, or I shouldn't have done that or but we learn, right? And I just appreciate you saying this so much because it just shows, you know, a lot of us are going to have something like that. And sometimes there's larger consequences than others. But it's just something we learn after a young professional, and, it's great for people to hear it earlier that that's a real thing. That's common for people to hopefully just be more mindful of that for themselves.

Katie: 47:02

I will say it doesn't matter how many degrees you have, and it doesn't matter how smart you are or how smart you think you are. If you can't show up to work on time for them and be there for the morning meeting and be ready to go or even be a little bit early and show them that you're committed, whatever's in your brain is going to make a damn bit of difference. All they're seeing is they can't rely on you. So if they can't rely on you, they'll find someone who they can.

Carrie: 47:27

Yeah. So what did you do after that? I mean, obviously you're very thoughtful about it now. Was it something you kind of realized it like after that happened, was that a wake up call for you?

Katie: 47:39

That was a pretty big one. So let's see here. in the middle of this time when I was getting my degree, I also went on an archaeological dig in Romania. And I picked Romania. It looked amazing. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see different places and areas, you know, that was what thrilled me about archaeology, was having the chance to travel and do this stuff. And also that was the only dig I could afford to go on because digs, that's the thing is, even if you need the experience, digs all cost money. So you're paying them for the experience. And if you're a poor college student, then you need to find the cheapest one possible.

Carrie: 48:16

So can I ask, so when you want to go on a dig like this, what do you do? Is there like an application? Are you like applying to it? Essentially, yes. Like it's a position?

Katie: 48:24

You're applying to help, and you give them your skill set. And then also make sure you can give them your degrees. That's fine. Make sure they know that you're willing to get wet and dirty and messy because you will get wet and dirty and messy because if it's raining, that does not close the site. It's snowing, that does not close the site. If there is a hard freeze and it's below freezing, maybe. If it is 110 degrees, you're still digging. So be prepared that those conditions are what you will be working in. And it's not the, well, yeah, spend the day in the lab. No, no, no. The upper people who have earned that position get to do that. You're out digging. Mm hmm So, in the middle of that I went on an archaeological dig to Romania and Something that I'd suffered as a child, which is homesickness Had not bothered me in years and it reared a very ugly head. So that was Still learned a lot on the dig But that was kind of a wash because mentally I was just battling myself the entire time I was there. So I came back and I tried to make sense of the, okay, how am I going to be an archeologist if I can't travel, if I physically can't travel and can't go to these places and can't stay there for more than a couple of days because I can't handle being away from home. How the hell am I going to do this career? And what I hit on was, okay, museums. That will put me in one place. I'll still be able to do what I want to do. There's a lot of research going on at museums. You know, I think this is my ideal. I'll be able to help design exhibits and write this and I won't have to travel. The pieces will come to me.

Carrie: 50:09

And you're in one of the best cities in the world for that. Exactly. I could just add that in.

Katie: 50:12

So this is after Mount Vernon and I applied to the largest employer in the area, which is Fairfax County Public Schools. And I got a job there. And then I applied to George Washington University for the Museum Studies Program.

Carrie: 50:28

Nice. So, okay, I want to touch on a couple of things. So one thing I appreciate you talking about your personal struggles with the archaeological dig, because that's another thing for students to think about. And I think it's kind of in line with, g etting to know yourself and obviously there's some things we learn about ourselves as we go along. We don't know everything about ourselves. And things change. Sometimes, you know, you're totally great with traveling all the time when you're 24. And then, you know, a decade or two later, you're not because you're in a different season of life and things change.

Katie: 50:58

In Romania. I have done other digs since then. I was in England for three weeks, about like five or six years after that and I was fine. I did not have a problem. I was there for the entire three weeks. It was not an issue. I was totally fine.

Carrie: 51:11

And I was just saying all that for students to think about is there are not just things like you were mentioning, you know, things totally out of your control that happen, but also there are personal things that happen, whether it's something within yourself, whether it's something that happens to someone else in your family that you have to adjust your plans and what you're doing, there are going to be outside personal things along the way that may drastically impact your path. It may just do it temporarily, but it's just something to keep in mind as we go along our path that even if you feel like you're designing this particular thing for yourself, there can easily be things completely unrelated to your education and your job, that are going to factor in that could cause you to have to change what you're doing.

Katie: 51:54

And the other thing I would like to add to that because everything you said is very, very true and pertinent mentally, you're going to have to be dealing with all of these upsets at the same point in time that you're showing up for work on time, you're dressed, you're ready to go, you're doing your job 110%. So you either learn a balancing act, you deal with it in an unhealthy way, like drugs, alcohol, things like that, or you go find a good therapist and eventually buy her a beach home. Which is what I did. At least for all the years that we were together, she better have a damn beach home after all this. Oh, I love that. Well, I'm glad that's the path you chose. There's a lot more opportunities for therapy out there now, and there's a lot less stigma on it. But again, to put that forward, the only shame in getting help is not getting help. If it takes the form of coffee with your mom, if it takes the form of girls night with your girlfriends, where you are in a safe place, and if you want to drink, you're not driving. If it takes the place of therapist once a week, twice a week, if it takes the place of medication prescribed by a psychologist. Fine, but do not let that stop you from getting the help that you need. I am able to actually with the medication and the diagnoses I've gotten, I'm able to actually live a fairly normal life and none of that would have been possible if I hadn't taken those steps.

Carrie: 53:29

Yeah, thank you for saying that because that can be a huge fear for people too, because you don't know what's going to be said, what's going to happen, what diagnoses will come out of that, how that will impact your life, but it's so important.

Katie: 53:40

You find that therapist you click with. You have the help and you have the support that you need and you are all of a sudden you're able to do anything you want to do. But don't let that stop you from getting that help.

Carrie: 53:52

Absolutely. Thank you for saying that. So the other thing I wanted to bring up as you were talking about looking at education for museum studies. And I just want to point out for students who may not know is even after your bachelor's and or master's or even after doctorate, if you go that route. There are a lot of certificates out there, that are in the form of post baccalaureate. They may require a graduate degree. They may not, but there are so many out there that, you know, some are as little as like nine credit hours. Some may be more like a 15 to 20 credit hour situation, but, depending on what they are, but there are a lot of options that you can seek out for higher education training without having to get another entire degree. So I just want to throw that out there. Cause it sounds like that's the path that you chose for the museum studies?

Katie: 54:38

My intention was actually initially to get another master's. The program was a great program. I was at George Washington University, here in Washington, DC. It's one of the top rated museum programs in the world. But something that I didn't realize is I was going for my master's and then after two years, they said, okay, two more years, a couple more thousand dollars and you'll have your master's at which point I said, okay, we're going to stick with the postgraduate degree because I don't have that money, but yeah, you could, but I got a solid footing. And you can absolutely take a couple courses in maybe museum funding, maybe fundraising is what you want to do. Museum education, designing programs for visiting school kids. Museum exhibits, cleaning the exhibits, getting those ready to go. You could absolutely take a couple different courses in that, because then you can say, hey look, I have this specialty, and maybe that specialty is exactly what you need. You don't need the full degree. You need to be able to, you need to show them that, hey, this job that I want, I can do exactly what you want.

Carrie: 55:38

Yeah, that's key because a lot of people like, oh, I want to go back and get another master's degree or another whole degree. Well, you may not need to, Look into the options that would not require that and look at the jobs that you're interested in. Do you really have to go back and do that? Sometimes if there's like a, you know, a licensure or something that may be necessary, but if there's not, you know, look into it because you may not have to do that.

Katie: 56:00

Something that I I know now after the fact something that I would have done for myself because i'm not great with computers before I went in Adobe acrobat is one of the programs that is still most frequently used in museums for designing exhibits and things like that I would have taken a summer course at the local community college in Adobe Acrobat alone, just so I had that foundation because that would have helped immensely going into this. Cause again, I'm not a computer person. I'm not good with them. I'm perfectly happy to admit that, but that formed a huge base of what I had to do for two years. And I wish I had known that because I would absolutely have gone to the community college, taken a course in that and been ready to go. Community colleges they have so much flexibility. You can do it online. You can do it from the house. You can do it at night You can do it on your on piece by piece on your own time They have a ton of flexibility because they know who they're catering to.

Carrie: 56:56

Yeah, just because you already have a master's degree. It doesn't mean that the community college doesn't have an amazing course or set of courses or even a certificate or anything. I mean, there's so many options there. Sometimes that really is the best choice.

Katie: 57:10

You know, you train and you push for one specific purpose and you know, one goal and there's no guarantee you're going to get there.

Carrie: 57:18

Yeah. So thinking bigger picture about flexibility and preparation and how can you have the most to offer and be prepared for other options.

Katie: 57:27

One thing that, that I will say really fast that helped in when I worked in Fairfax County. I have two younger brothers. One of my brothers was born with Down syndrome. So I've been working in the special education field for about 34 years now since he was born. And I've watched my mom have to navigate his education and figure out what he needed. And as these programs were just coming into place, they weren't in place yet. All the stuff people can know to apply for and they know the terms now. None of that was known when my brother was growing up. That was all new. So, based on just how I had grown up, and who I had grown up with, and what I liked doing with him, I was able to parlay that into a very specific niche that I was very good in and that was one of the first times where I was actually getting requests from teachers. We need her here because she's helping the kids the most.

Carrie: 58:24

Yeah. When what a great example of something that is just part of your life, right? You learned it from your life experience. And a lot of people have these incredible strengths and specializations, not necessarily that they learned in a classroom, but that they learned from their life experience. And we don't want to forget those because that's just as valuable, if not more so sometimes.

Katie: 58:46

It's like, I don't have a degree in special ed. And my argument has been taken as valid so far that, you know, those 34 years of growing up with a special needs brother, in the county and doing special education have pretty darn well prepared me.

Carrie: 59:01

Absolutely. So I want to talk a little bit about work you've done in museums, just because I think museums are someplace, you know, they're not for everyone, but there's a lot of people out there that have really Treasured their time in museums and have that as kind of in their head as, Oh, I would love that. I'd love to be in that space, because you have such fond memories or you learned so much. So when we say museum studies, and you've had jobs in various museums. What's the kind of work that you were doing? Like when you would go to work each day in these different settings, what is it that you were doing?

Katie: 59:37

Okay. So for Mount Vernon, I was an interpreter, which is basically you're the talking head, but that's what we call them in the museum field. When you're teaching the history to other people in the museum, you're called an interpreter. My responsibility was to memorize the script of facts that they have on Washington for different places in the house and be able to do all of those places in the house and stick to the script. And I had a time limit that I had to do, cause we had to get people through the house. So that was its own set of challenges. Okay, get the facts out. If the house is moving faster because it's the summer and we're loaded with visitors. Okay, we're going to the shortened version of this.

Carrie: 1:00:17

And can we say there's that theater background? There we go. There's the theater background.

Katie: 1:00:22

Most of the time Especially at places like Mount Vernon, you're going to have a whole lot of people there and a lot of tour groups for whom English is not the first language, and it's not even the third. And you're going to have to figure out a way to get through to them and work with the interpreter who is trying to interpret alongside you while they're being rushed to the house. And get the major high points in so that you know. They've paid their ticket money the same as everybody else. They deserve this they want and they want to come they deserve this experience. Yeah, so how do we get them this experience as fast as possible and as completely as possible and still stay on schedule? Yeah. Yeah. So let's see. I did a internship at the Freer Sackler gallery. That focuses on indo european and east asian art. That was a wonderful experience because we had artifacts from Saudi Arabia that were coming to the United States for the first time. And I was one of the interns they brought on to help get that exhibit arranged and built and designed. We opened it up when we did family days. So hey, All of you donors and all you people who live in dc who this is cool. Hey, bring your kids We've got all this stuff for the kids to do. So I talked to caterers And I talked to vendors and I figured out setup plans and you know, how much space do you need? And what programs are we going to do for the kids? And what do we have the capacity to do and who do we need to do those programs? We had a little mini archaeological dig going on where we Put stuff in a bunch of sand and we just kind of kept refilling it throughout the day and the kids could dig in the sand and find something and, okay, cool, that little plastic dinosaur, you get to take that home. It was something that they could do that was part of the exhibit upstairs. We had somebody serving Arabic coffee downstairs. We had Middle Eastern sweets, things like that. You know, something that went in accordance with all of this. I had a wonderful time working with that team. I worked my rear off and unfortunately I did not get the job. It went to the other girl. And again, you can do everything right and still lose.

Carrie: 1:02:19

I mean, we learned this in theater too, you know, sometimes you can have an amazing audition, but they need someone shorter or taller than you, you know, or something that's just, it's not going to change. Right. And it doesn't mean that you didn't do an amazing job. You just, you don't even know what they're looking for. You don't know if there's basic criteria that you just, you can't fight, you can't change.

Katie: 1:02:40

And to touch on what you said about theater that it teaches you as well, in situations where you don't get what you want and you are disappointed, you're going to have to act your butt off because people will absolutely remember how you took that news. And you need to paste that smile on your face and say what a great choice She's gonna do an amazing job. Thank you so much for this experience I had a wonderful time working with you guys. If anything comes up, could I keep in touch with you? Could I send you my resume? you know something along those lines. And our grandmothers both said this and it's true as then as it is now, you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. I don't care if you don't want to be nice, being nice and being polite is going to get you a lot further then saying exactly what's on your mind at that point.

Carrie: 1:03:28

Right, right. Well, no, that's because you never know. There may be an opportunity there in six months. You don't know, right? So you want to make sure that you're leaving that possibility there if you'd like it.

Katie: 1:03:38

And generally you find that no matter what world you choose, the world that you revolve in, whether it's the museum world or it's the federal government, it's not as big as you think it is. Which means that everybody knows everybody else. And word gets around and people talk. So your performance, months ago might get brought up in a meeting at a completely different museum months later. And because it's a small world and not everybody is doing what you're doing, even in D. C., even with all the museums going on there, there are still only a handful of people who are really at the top and making decisions. I worked at the if you want to talk about politically charged, I worked at the National Firearms Museum. Oh, wow. I, I enjoyed that. That was a fun museum, because again, Museums are repositories of knowledge. The idea is that you can get something there that is available to everyone, that they may not have had a chance to encounter reading or in school or in college or anything else like that, but everybody has access to that same information. You can all learn. And You know, as elections happen, things are rather charged in DC and, the National Firearms Museum was operated by the NRA and it was housed in NRA headquarters. In Fairfax, Virginia. Oh, wow. So, I did not get much credit at all for doing that in the museum world. It was a valid museum. It was a legit museum. I was administering, I was running the budget. I was taking care of all of that. And to this day, I'm not sure if I should put that on my resume because I was so politically charged that. I won two directors awards when I was there. I did a good job. And that was a good job. I learned a lot because that was the administrative side of things. And that was something I hadn't experienced before. So let's see. During my time at George Washington, when I was doing my degree, I did an internship at Sully historic site. That's one of the homes of the Lees here in Northern Virginia. That's also now politically charged. I recently interviewed for a job with them. And especially with the conversations on compensation to the families of former slaves, how we're treating the narrative about the civil war, that is an incredibly politically charged place. Unfortunately, wherever you go, you are going to encounter politics. I'm sorry. I really am, but it's, the sooner you face that and deal with it, the better. Because there is no job you're going to go to where there is not some form of politics involved.

Carrie: 1:06:16

Well, as far as all of the different museum settings that you've been able to work in, if there's a student listening because they're interested in that world and they think that they want to, potentially do that, whether it's in Washington, D. C. or somewhere else. Do you have some advice regarding like what types of experiences they should seek out?

Katie: 1:06:37

Something that I can definitely put on my resume from the National Firearms Museum is that I was in charge of the budget for three years. My boss agreed to it and he stamped it and said it was okay, but I'm the one who came up with it. I'm the one who is responsible for administrating it through that the next year, anything having to do with money will give you a leg up. If you know how to manage that.

Carrie: 1:07:00

That's really good advice because I think a lot of times in the liberal arts, nonprofit sector, the art sectors, there's a lot of people that come up through there who, that's a big piece of training that they're lacking within their education, right? Is the budgeting financial piece.

Katie: 1:07:15

And a lot of times, most of us who come up in that field, math is not a strong suit. It's not something that we really want to do. So we tend to shy away from it, which is understandable. But every single person on this planet is going to have to balance checkbook. So, as long as you can add and subtract, you can figure this out.

Carrie: 1:07:36

Right, right. Like, don't be scared of it. It is something that you have to learn, especially if it's within a particular context, too, that may be a little more manageable. Do we need to explain what a checkbook is for our audience?

Katie: 1:07:47

Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Yeah, I think we do. So, you guys can log on and you can see your bank statement. We used to have books. This means that you write everything down. This means that it helps you look ahead to make sure you have all the money to pay your bills.

Carrie: 1:08:03

I think that's the key, right? Because we get so used to online things, it's all in real time, but the checkbook made us think ahead more, right? When you were in charge of the budget at that particular museum? Was there something that you felt like, like when you started that part of your job, was it mostly your personal experience you were using with the budgeting or did you feel like you needed a workshop or a tool or some kind of resource to kind of teach you or did they teach you on the job? How did you feel walking into that situation to feel like you really got a good grasp on it?

Katie: 1:08:34

The previous administrator had left a ton of files and paperwork. She gave me a brief walkthrough and stayed an extra week on the job, not getting paid so that she could walk me through how to do this job. Oh, she left a great notes. My dad has done budgets and he is very good at budgets and math and actually started off as a math major. You know finished with international diplomacy. So, you know, there you go. Again, it doesn't matter what path you can do, but I also could ask him. All of these questions because he knew how to do this. So I took questions to him. I spoke with people in other departments around like, Hey, what is your budget look like for this? Or, Hey, what did they spend last year? That kind of thing. So asking a lot of questions, do not be afraid to ask questions. You might think that that makes you someone who's annoying. What you will actually be seen as is someone who cares enough to make sure they're doing their job right. And any good employer will welcome you asking them a thousand questions, versus you thinking you can do it and doing the job wrong. So that they have to redo it.

Carrie: 1:09:41

Yeah. Cause on the other side of that, you know, is people will learn as they are in the workforce when a new person comes in and they don't ask any questions and they're like, I know it all. I don't have to ask anybody anything. I'm going to do it my way. That's not usually received. Don't do it that way. And you'll learn, like asking those questions on the job, even if you don't want to do it exactly the way they were doing it before, or you find a better way, learning about how they did it before is super valuable, because that can be a lesson either way.

Katie: 1:10:10

Maybe there is a good reason that you don't know about that they've been doing it this way. So find that out too.

Carrie: 1:10:16

So you've mentioned that now you're working for a private security firm, which, sounds like something as just someone listening to you, list your resume. That sounds kind of out of left field. But if it's one thing I've learned with interviewing a lot of people is, first of all, there's always connections, right? As we talked about with our theater and as historian and as a translator at Mount Vernon. There's all of these connections with previous experience. So can you talk about how you transitioned out of museum work into this private security firm?

Katie: 1:10:45

Actually, this was, something where I got my dream job. COVID hit, I was on my dream job for three weeks, and then the job was closed, because it was a museum, and no one was going out. Right. So, again, my resume is incredibly varied. I will say, and again, learning how to write and how to sell yourself is priceless because my take on it is yes, I've worked a bunch of different jobs. I have always kept myself employed. I have always stuck to my budget. I have made all of my bills on time, even in the financial years that we've been living in and I have always been earning a paycheck and I have always been someone that has been looked to as one of the leaders in whatever job I've been in. So if you've had a bunch of jobs, think about how to phrase that. Think about how you can say that. So after leaving that job, I wound up working retail for a while and a friend of mine suggested private security and I never thought about it. They were like, you know, you've got the skills, you can do this, you've got the brain for it. It's a very tough job. I have to not fall asleep. And then I have to sit at a desk. Yeah, it's really challenging. But it also ties into something that I did in theater in high school, which was stage combat. So fighting safely for the stage and screen, you see this on movies all the time. Captain America, everybody who loved the Marvel. Yeah, there are tons of stunt doubles for those guys. And that's part of the work that I was trained to do. And I found it in high school and I loved it so much that I kept working at it. I'm an advanced actor combatant now with the Society of American Fight Directors. And I've choreographed a couple shows for high schools in the area. That didn't take the musical singing and dancing musical direction I thought it was going to take, but I'm still in the performing arts. This is a private security job where I am respected for the job that I do. I am well paid. There are health benefits. It is a quiet, secure environment, and there are strong chances for upward growth if I want them. I could stay where I am, or I could move up, and my intention is to move up and see how far I can go. And for me, this dovetails nicely in with the stage combat work I do, which again, is not real combat, but is simulating combat. This also ties in with anthropology, because what I've decided to do is try and get back into the field by writing about why people fight and why people feel the need to fight, especially when they have something worth defending. So I've decided to try that.

Carrie: 1:13:15

Yeah, and it's so interesting to see how at a certain point in people's careers, a lot of people are, first of all, doing more than one thing. The narrative a lot of times with having more than one job is this negativity thing, you know, tied to income or tied to need. And I think the reality, of course that's real for a lot of people, but there's also a lot of people out there who are doing, you know, You know, whether we want to call them side gigs or, you know, an additional thing, it's because they love it. A lot of people have something they're doing because they love to do that and they love to keep that in their life. And it's an interest they have or something that they're bringing back that they used to do that they want to be able to do again. And I think it's so important to point out that a lot of times that can be done because we have that really stable You know, quote unquote, nine to five, that gives us the stability we need to be able to go and do this extra thing that we live.

Katie: 1:14:15

Having a steady paycheck is nothing to be sneezed at. Again, how you get that paycheck can be in a variety of different ways, but I fell in love, doing this sort of work when I was in high school. Again, doing part of the performing arts career. I thought I was going to have, and I was working on having in high school. I took a sword class and I fell absolutely in love with it. I continued studying it, even when everything else fell by the wayside, because it made me happy. It fulfilled a need I had in me. It touched something in me that I could do, and I could do well. So, having a regular 9 to 5 that pays you is nothing to be sneezed at. It doesn't matter if it's what you thought it was going to be or not. If it is a respectable job. That you can do that gives you the freedom to do what you love.

Carrie: 1:15:05

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Katie, as you look back on your journey, I know you've shared a lot of great advice through this conversation, but are there any other things that you have learned along the way, or perhaps advice someone has given you that really helped you in a certain spot on your path that you would want to share?

Katie: 1:15:25

I would say be humble about your abilities. You can go to the schools and get the degrees and yeah, you might be the one who knows the most about what they're talking about in the room. But if you come off as someone who is pretentious and someone who knows everything and isn't willing to listen to or work with others. You're never going to get that job. So be humble. And also, honestly, if you're the kind of person who loves learning, you might learn something that is very, very prevalent to the job that you're trying to do. And if you hadn't listened. And made a point of paying attention, you might have missed that. Usually it's a good rule of thumb. When you're meeting people for the first time, when you're starting a new job, keep your ears open and your mouth shut.

Carrie: 1:16:17

Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story. It's been such a pleasure to talk with you and to hear about these different experiences that you've had. I just love hearing about your path and all of the things that have stayed with you and you've brought into other spaces and all the connections between it all. Because I think that's something we don't talk about enough is even if on paper, you know, it looks like a huge change there's all of these threads that just stay consistent and help us as we go from one step to the other.

Katie: 1:16:45

You never know what you're going to be able to use. And quite frankly, you will be very surprised at what you're going to be able to use. You have no idea where that's going to lead you.

Carrie: 1:16:55

Yeah. Which is exciting. It can be scary, but also super exciting. Thank you, Katie.

Katie: 1:17:00

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Carrie: 1:17:04

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.