Graduation #143

Genevieve Morgan:

Who are you, where are you at and what do you really want? Because that's the first part of any decision making, and that's what I hope kids can get out of the book, is to figure out where they are right now and what kind of experience would best fit them right now. Doesn't mean that's going to be who they are in the future. But what's the next best step?

Becki Smith:

It's okay. It's okay to use your network to get in the door. You still have to walk through that open door. You still have to prove yourself on the other side. But don't be afraid to use everything you've got to get to where you want to be. Because once you're there and you've proved yourself, it doesn't matter how you got there.

Tim Sample:

Man is elementally pragmatic. We don't want to know your philosophy. We want to know, do you have jumper cables? And will you stop? It's just we don't really care about your religion, your philosophy, your sexual orientation. We just want to know, are you in this with us or not?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 143, Graduation, airing for the first time on Sunday, June 8, 2014. Tis the season for graduations. As the mother of a high school senior, I join the families and schools across the state who are sending this year's crop of graduates out into the world. What's next for those who have turned the tassel? This week we are joined by Genevieve Morgan, Island Port editor and author of undecided and former 207 executive producer Becky Smith, author of Starting Life Lessons for Graduates, and Tim Sample, a widely acknowledged humorist who is a correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, where he produced Postcards from Maine segments. Thank you for Joining us for longtime listeners, I am pleased to bring back into the studio a voice that you will find quite familiar. This is my friend and former co host Genevieve Morgan. Genevieve is a writer and editor from Portland. She is the author of Undecided, a book that helps post high school grads with the big decisions that affect their education and careers. Her next book, the Fog of Forgetting, Book one of the Five Stones trilogy, will be released in July. Thanks for being here.

Genevieve Morgan:

It's so nice to see you. Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's really great to have you back. And I'm so, I was saying to you earlier, I'm so impressed with the work that you've done and the time that I, that you've been not with us.

Genevieve Morgan:

You've been really busy. I have. But I'm so pleased to come back and see all the great things you guys are doing and how well the show's prospered. It seems not that long ago that we were just thinking of doing this show.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that's true. I guess we're almost, yeah, we're almost three years here. So that's pretty.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, congratulations. It's a great thing for Maine and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

for Portland and for Portland. Well, and you're a great thing for Maine and for Portland because I have your book Navigating Life and Learning After High School in my hands. It's something that I found really interesting to read because you and I both have children in this age range, the range where you're trying to decide what do I do after high school and is it necessarily college? Tell me why this is an important book for you to write.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, first of all, I have a junior at Portland High school and a 14 year old coming up into Portland High School. And my junior at that point, who was a sophomore last year when I started the book, was not doing very well academically. He seemed fairly unmotivated when it came to school. And there was a lot of conversation in our household about whether college being so expensive was the right choice for him right after high school because as you and I know, in order to go to college now, if you're going to try and pay full boat, it causes extreme hardship, except on the most wealthy people in the country. And if you can't afford to pay full boat, your kids end up with ruinous debt after they come out of college, unless, of course, they can get scholarships. And there are ways around that, but it's a, it's a much more difficult decision now. And yet two thirds of every high school senior wants to go to college. So My thinking was, well, what if you don't get into college? What if you can't go to college? What if you can't afford to go to college? What are the options? And I started to do some research, and luckily my publisher, Zest Books in San Francisco, had already been thinking of doing a book along this topic. And when I spoke to them about it, they were so excited because they felt like it was a necessary topic to cover. And I think it's so important I learned that there are so many options for kids right now. I mean, so many ways that they can go, and college is one of them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You started the book with asking kids to really understand where they are right now and by understanding what their personalities kind of, at least at the time that they're reading this, what their personalities were like. Because we all know personalities can change.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes. And particularly at that age.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, exactly. So talk to me a little bit about that. I know there's the standard introvert and extrovert, but you had a few other interesting things you talked about. The person who is the maestro, for example.

Genevieve Morgan:

There are a few areas of the book that I'm asking kids to look at. They're very, very basic. I don't profess to be an expert in psychology, but I, in my research, try to help kids understand where they are at at this moment in time. And some very basic, fundamental stuff about their character and their temperament. And the first one is introvert or extrovert, because it's a very important thing to know whether you get recharged with a group of people or recharged alone. Because you can imagine if you're an introvert and you go to a big party school or you go to a big service program with a ton of kids, and you're never given any time to relax, you're going to be miserable. So that's just a waste of time. Then there is something deeper than that, which just has to do how you process information and how you utilize information and also how you are in a group. And there are two different, very basic categories. And I really attribute this to Nicholas Lohr, who is a researcher in this area. And he, you know, three quarters of us are tribal. We like to have a group around us all the time. And then a quarter of us are maestros. You know, we march our own drumbeat, and we don't necessarily need the validation of a group. And obviously, if you're a maestro, you might have a little more success or be a little more excited about doing something that doesn't Require the support of your community. I mean, you could go off and train tigers in Tanzania or something like that. You know, you could just, you might be able to feel a little better about if you can self identify as that, as an adventurer. That doesn't mean if you're a tribal person, you'll be unhappy doing that. It's just that you might be better off in a program with a bunch of other kids.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is an interesting thing to be thinking about if you're 15, 16, 17, 18. Because much of what we know when we're younger comes from our families and comes from our peers and comes from, you know, all these external things. So we're just starting to get to understand ourselves.

Genevieve Morgan:

And many kids don't. They want to do what's right. They want to make the right choice. And my point in the book is there is. There really is no wrong choice at this point in your life, except the choices that end you and in jail, in rehab, or in the morgue. I mean, those are the three places where I want you to stay away from completely when you're 16, 17, 18. Other than that, what you really need is a plan. And that plan, I hope, will eventually lead to higher learning, because I do think that a college degree really impacts your earning capabilities over the long term. But these kids are going to live to be 110, I mean, hopefully, and to jump off from being 18 into a life of debt service, steady job. We're putting a lot of pressure on our kids to do that because of our economic instability. But I wonder what happens to their personhood in that. And that's a very important thing for me and for my children. I know that they will eventually get the education that they need to hold down a good job. But I also want them to have a bold and adventurous experience. And if they get a degree at 28, I'm really not that worried about it, honestly. I'm here to tell you I don't think they're going to be that worried about it when they're 60 and they look back whether they got their degree at 24 or 28.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Jen, you describe your own experience as being someone who is sort of, I guess. Let's see in the back, you say Genevieve Morgan has made a career out of being undecided.

Genevieve Morgan:

It's true.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, you've been a writer, an editor, a producer. You've lived in different parts of the country, You've written for different magazines, different publications, you've written different books. And you really, you're a bit of a free spirit yourself.

Genevieve Morgan:

I am. And yet I have those same fears for my children that everybody has. However, I do think that if I look back at who I was when I was 17, I really wanted to be an actress. That's all I wanted to do. I was good at school and there was an expectation that I would go to college. And I was lucky enough to be applying to college in the late 80s when it wasn't so hard to get into. But I remember distinctly I was going out with a guy who played in a rock band and I wanted to. I wanted to move to Hoboken and live with him and basically go on auditions. My parents were thrown into just spasms of anxiety over this. And I remember I got into Bowdoin, which is one of the reasons why I'm in Maine, and I spent half an hour in front of the post office with my matriculation card thinking, do I send it in? Do I not send it in? Do I send it in? I mean, the epitome of undecided. I eventually sent it in. The boyfriend dumped me. And so I did luckily have a place to go and it turned out to be a great thing. And I was able to continue acting. I won the theater chair at Bowdoin and I went out to California to become an actress. I got to California, realized I wasn't going to make any money being an actress, and got a job fact checking at a magazine. And as the tides of life happened, I started to write more. And that's where it took me. But it was never a conscious choice. And I think that's what many people. People are really lucky if they have a passion and they can actually say, okay, this is what I really want to do. I really admire those people. I'm not one of them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you talk about that in the book, that there are going to be people, and maybe those are not the people who are going to read your book. Some people will say, well, I want to be a doctor. I've already decided I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to go to medical school. So then that kind of dictates where they go to college and what courses they take. And it's a relatively clear path. You suggest that maybe it's okay to not know what your passion is, to take some time to think about it. And even if you've taken some time to think about it, you still may not know what your passion is. And that really is okay, that it's just a lot of pressure. We're putting on kids these days?

Genevieve Morgan:

I think so. And I think that many of us get into our 40s and we realize we've been living somebody else's life because we thought we knew what we wanted to do, but we didn't have the maturity or the insight or self knowledge to understand that we were actually working with somebody else's script. And I think that's a reason for a lot of midlife crisis. I'm trying to say to the kids, try to get to know yourself a little better now. Or if you don't know yourself, be brave enough to experiment. And one of the things that I do really appreciate about college for me and for a lot of my friends and what I want for my own children is it is a safe place to experiment with very wise people guiding you. I think it's a great privilege to be able to go to college, a good university, and throw yourself into the mix and figure out what it is you like and what you don't like. I wish I could give that gift to everybody. But there are a lot of people who can't afford it and a lot of people who can't get in. And so what I really want to get across to those kids is that there are ways to cobble that experience together on your own that will lead you into a crazy, bright, shiny future and to not be afraid to take the road less traveled. There are other maps. College is the best known map, but there are tons of other maps. And even if it's community college in your own community, travel abroad, international studies, lots of kids are now looking to go overseas for a year and then they end up at college in Scotland or England or Ireland at I will say, a third the price. Now who's to say that that's not a fabulous path for anybody? And I look at your son Campbell, and I'm so impressed by what his choices are. He went to Guatemala right after high school, correct?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. Kimball went and spent time with Safe Passage in Guatemala and he helped educate children whose families were at the Guatemala City dump picking trash.

Genevieve Morgan:

Right. Bold and adventurous choice. And has he regretted it at all?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

No. And I think that as a parent of a then 17 year old, I was very anxious. But you're absolutely right. He went away. He had been accepted to Bowdoin, he was accepted to Cornell. He went away, spent time with people who really for whom money was a very, was thought of very differently. So he came to value money himself very differently. And then when he came back to the United States, he said, you know, I think I'm going to go to the University of Maine where I have a scholarship. I'm going to go on to be a doctor and also study Spanish because it makes me happy. But it was all as a result of being away for a year and spending time in a different culture and getting a completely different perspective.

Genevieve Morgan:

And then his choices are his own and he's going to feel so much. I mean, I think there's an intangible maturity that comes with that. You know, we're all saying to ourselves as parents, do I really want to spend $60,000 a year or go, you know, have my children or myself take out these, these loans to pay $60,000 a year and have them party and do whatever it is they're going to do at college? Now I think that's also a really big part of college. So I'm really pro college. I think everybody really should go. I'm not trying to say that, but I do think Campbell's experience or Doug Drew, who's a guid over at Portland High School, he went to college, got into a great college, had a full scholarship, but he was so burnt out by the time he got there. The effort that it took to get him there. He spent his freshman year miserable. He failed his classes, he ended up dropping out. And he went on what he calls a self guided gap year where he pedaled, he biked across the country into the wind. I love this story, but at the end of that bike ride, however long it took, he stayed at strangers houses. He put himself out there. At the end of that bike, he was ready to go back. Took 18 months. He asked to go back to the college where he'd failed out and he ended up graduating with high honors and is now a guidance counselor for other teens. So there are all those kinds of ways and paths to success. It isn't just the straight and narrow. And that's what I wanted undecided to say to the kids out there, to not be afraid. There are many, many, many, many options and many paths and you can cobble a bright future together. You don't have to just go to a brand name college.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you took the time to put many different case studies in the book you talked about. I believe the founder of Kinko's was one of your examples. But then you also spoke with a, I think a urologist living in this area and an author. And you spoke to actually our audio producer John McCain, who's also a musician. So you spoke with lots of different people who had made great fortunes, had made success in other ways, and had these as examples to people, kids who were reading this book.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I wanted to show them that the adults in their life and even their teachers had all had a crazy, twisted path. And that when adults speak to them about the future, they want the best for them. And this includes teachers, coaches, parents, relatives. But nobody had. I mean, very few people. Yes, there are people who had real determination and real desire to achieve in one particular field. I don't know if there's ever been any study. I mean, look at yourself. You were very determined to be a doctor, but then halfway through you decided you wanted to open the horizons to alternative medicine. And everybody's growing. We're human. I Mean, I make the case that being undecided is the state of being human, because even the best of us, I remember my dad said being adult means that you're about 70% sure you've made the right decision. There's always that 30% you're not so sure. And I think as parents and teachers, we don't talk about that 30% with our kids because we want them to feel secure. But nobody's totally 100% secure. You know, that's a generalization. But nobody I know is 100% sure they've made the right choices. We all do the best we can with what we have. And I make the case that the more life experience you have, the more resources you will have eventually to draw upon. I think the most important thing, if I get anything really across, is that kids start to understand that it just means doing something. Sitting on the couch and playing video games is not going to take you where you want to go. But going out and driving a food truck or selling your own silkscreen T shirts at a concert, or getting a day job and taking Russian at night online, you know, it may not seem like a lot, but all of those things are going to take you somewhere. And so right now with the Internet, there's just a vast, vast pool of resources for kids to draw on right now and their parents. And some of it's covered and undecided.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You do talk about college. You talk about college as an option. You also talk about, and you mentioned traveling abroad, but you also talk about the military, and you also talk about going to work and you talk about international and American service programs. So you really are providing resources, or at least the beginnings of resources that will as teasers for people to explore.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, that was the most amazing thing. I had no idea how much was out there. I mean, had I known. When I was graduating high school, I filled out a questionnaire for my publisher and they said, well, what would you do differently now? And I said, okay, I would definitely take a year off. I would go nanny for a family in the south of France and learn. I spoke French at that point. I would come back, take acting lessons, Skype with my newfound friends in France, and go to work on a retail job to make money. And I had no idea that it would be as easy as it is. It just means you have to plan for it. You have to make a decision that that's what you're going to do. And then there's this wealth of people and experience and programs that will come up behind you. To support you. And if you have good grades, that does make a difference. For instance, the government has a number of government sponsored internships. There's a wonderful one through the State Department where you can go and live in a consulate anywhere in the world. It's very competitive. So it helps if you have good grades and good recommendations. But that's a terrific thing to do. I mean, who wouldn't want to do that and have that on their resume? That's just one. There's another one called Pathways to success on doleta.gov for kids who don't, who want to learn more of a trade or who want to to get an internship. There's over a thousand different paid internships that guarantee pay from day one. Some of them are like oil rig workers, but some of them are computer programming, Some of them are pipe fitting, some of them are sound engineering. And that's all through the government. And who knew that that was out there? I didn't before I started the research.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then there is the value of work itself. Showing up, applying for a job, getting the job, showing up on a daily basis, being responsible, understanding what it's like to pay your bills, and the experience of getting along with people in a non school environment and the possibility that that could really lend itself to some real life and very valuable experiences.

Genevieve Morgan:

And work doesn't have to be paid to get that value out of it. I make a big case for volunteering either abroad or in your own community or through AmeriCorps or Vista, because there's a lot of need in our country, There's a lot of need in the world. And if you agree to donate your labor, what you get in exchange is education and a lot of responsibility. And that can often lead to paid work eventually. I mean, Campbell, again, he went down there and he donated his labor and that completely changed his outlook and his horizon. And I think volunteering is a great way to, to blow the roof off your life. And it doesn't. Some programs you do need to pay a stipend. I mean, you do need to pay a entry fee. Some of them actually pay you a stipend. It all depends on the program. But I highly recommend volunteering for anyone who really has no idea what they want to do, because you can do a lot in many different fields.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the strong points that you made in the book is understanding that what you're doing when you decide, whatever it is you decide to do, is you're making an investment in what might happen next. Even though you may not Know what the outcome is. In one case, you're talking about colleges and really understanding that, you know, if you pay $16,000 a year, if you pay $56,000 a year, it's an investment. And it's an investment that may or may not pan out and also requires repayment.

Genevieve Morgan:

Someone said to me, will, you know, you've underestimated the effect of going to a brand name college, because what you go to a brand name college for, the networking. Yes, you get, you know, it's great to have a known name on your diploma, but what it is, you meet all these other high powered individuals and they're going to come out and rule the world and you're going to be friends with them. And I think that that's a paradigm that you and I grew up in. I'm not so sure that's the paradigm for Generation Z. Generation Z is an alternate, the ultimate social network. And their networking goes far beyond bricks and mortar colleges. And I think that working together at Ben and Jerry's for a summer can be as much of a bonding experience as being in someone's philosophy class. I think that the person makes the college, the college doesn't make the person. So I think you can get a terrific education at a trade school, at a community college, at Bowdoin, at Stanford, if you really want to. And that goes back to the first part of the book, which is who are you, where are you at and what do you really want? Because that's the first part of any decision making, and that's what I hope kids can get out of the book, is to figure out where they are right now and what kind of experience would best fit them right now. Doesn't mean that's going to be who they are in the future. But what's the next best step?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My middle child has decided to go to college next year after thinking she might take a year off, after thinking she might go to one college, another college, maybe she would work, but she is going to go to college next year. And one of the very difficult but important things that we had to do was to sit down and actually run the numbers together and to say, if you, you know, we can as parents put in this amount, this is what

Genevieve Morgan:

the college expected family contribution.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, there is the expected family contribution and then there's the reality as parents. They may expect that we can put in this amount, but what we have is X. And that means that anything that's additional, you know, you as the rising college student, you're going to have to Find a way to pay for this. And this is what it's going to mean. So there are all kinds of things, all kinds of calculators online that say if you are going to take out a loan of this many dollars, this means that it's going to be this amount of a payment per month and it's going to be you're going to need this amount of income in order to do that. And I think it was frightening and eye opening, but also very grounding for my child to have this conversation. And it's not a conversation that I think parents find very comfortable.

Genevieve Morgan:

No. And it's also very obfuscated because the cost of college and tuition is standard. You look it up online and there's a certain number. But when it comes to what you, your kid and your family will actually have to pay, different colleges may give different packages. But I do think there's a value proposition in that conversation. And so if you end up, let's say you as a family have $10,000 to give towards your kid's education, what does that mean? How much debt are they going to have when they graduate? I think also too that we tend to forget that tuition debt is on top of credit card debt and all sorts of other debt that can make it hard to get a mortgage, hard to do, you know, basically do all the things that we want our kids to, to do. So if you have that $10,000, would that be better spent going to school in Canada or Ireland and having your child come out debt free? Possibly. So you have to have, if, you know, if you feel confident that there are other options, you can really look at the opportunity cost of that money. But I don't think it's a bad conversation to have with your children and for them to understand that if they do go to a particular college and it is going to cost them a lot of money, then they better be serious about it. You know, they better do the work. And if they can't do the work, then they need to let people know that they can't do the work and they can defer for a year or take a year off or, you know, work for a year before they go and make money before they go in. No college that I talk to Dings students for taking a year off in between high school and college. In fact, they love it. They love gap years. There's been a lot of research, a lot of data coming out about gap years. And the dean of admissions from Middlebury ran a study a few years ago and he actually Said that the kids coming back from a gap year or the entering freshman who'd had a gap year had an average of 1 to 1.5 rise in their GPA. So colleges, like mature kids, they don't want to waste money or time either. So what did she decide? I'm interested.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, she has decided that she is going to go for the smaller liberal arts college, which is going to be quite a lot more than the state school. And she's decided that she's willing to accept the contributions that our family can make and she's willing to accept the loans. So it's a big and heavy thing as an 18 year old, but this is what she's decided to do and I completely support her in that.

Genevieve Morgan:

And again, that's where she's at. And that's an empowering thing for her because those decisions are hers. And so that debt will. She'll be able to own that debt and hopefully when she graduates, have a degree or a network where she can get a good paying job and there are great paying salaries out there. So I don't want kids to be afraid. And I feel like there's a lot of bad news. I mean, around this time with all the college admissions, you turn on the radio and it's just all bad news. But I'm here to say it doesn't have to be bad news.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, speaking of not bad news, in fact, very good news. You have the Fog of Forgetting book one of the Five Stones trilogy coming out not too far away, not too long from now. I can't wait to read it. It's not much like your Undecided book or really any other of books that you have written.

Genevieve Morgan:

No, it's my first work of fiction. In a funny way though, I was thinking about this. I started the trilogy a few years ago and it actually does relate to Undecided because. Because it is about finding the landscape of your heart. It's a young adult book, young adult trilogy. It has five characters and they all are searching for something. I didn't really realize that until recently that the books were related, but my message is somewhat similar in both books. Although the Fog of Forgetting has a lot more action and swordplay and it's a great book. I'm so excited to have it out there and you can actually pre order it on Amazon.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did it help that you have two boys when it comes to the whole sword play?

Genevieve Morgan:

Very much, very much. They got to act it out with me, so it really helped. And they've read it and approved of it it's for a little they were younger when I started it, but I think the core reader will be maybe 10 to 14 years old. So you can read the Fog of Forgetting in the Five Stones Trilogy and then move on to Undecided and contact me@gah morgan.com because I'd love to hear your stories. Any teen who's listening to this, I'd love to hear what you're thinking about and what you're deciding to do well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. I do encourage people. I've read Undecided myself. I got a lot out of it as the parent of two children who are now college age and another child who will be college age in fairly short order. So read Undecided, get the Fog of Forgetting, book one of the Five Stones Trilogy, and get in touch with Genevieve Morgan, my friend and former producer of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. As we've said, Genevieve is a writer and editor from Portland, the author of Undecided and the upcoming trilogy, the Five Stones Trilogy. Thanks for coming in and thanks for doing the work that you did to bring this information into the world.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thank you so much, Lisa. It's been a pleasure

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

as a physician in small business. As a business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth Main to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy

Becki Smith:

when asked, most of my clients say

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the same thing about what keeps them up at night.

Becki Smith:

Money making.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Certain cash flow is there to meet day to day operational needs. Oh my gosh, is payroll going to

Becki Smith:

be able to make it? When we dig deeper, we understand that those sleepless nights are symptoms of poor planning and forecasting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And more often than not, the reasons

Becki Smith:

for not doing it are a lack of time and a lack of resources.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So here's a suggestion.

Becki Smith:

Instead of living in fear of the numbers and losing sleep over them, make

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

peace with them by paying closer attention to the financials and creating positive cash flow. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in the studio with me today, we have two individuals that I believe we could describe as the royalty of Maine media. One of them is Becky Smith. She is the former executive producer of 207 and Bill Greene's Maine. She is an adjunct professor of writing at the Southern Maine Community College and is also the author of Starting Life Lessons for Graduates, a book that compiles advice from successful professionals throughout New England. One of these professionals we have here in the studio, Tim Sample, a widely acknowledged humorist who is a correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, where he produced Postcards from Maine segments. Thanks for coming in.

Tim Sample:

Thank you.

Becki Smith:

Our pleasure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it is very interesting to me, especially because I have a daughter, I have a son who graduated from high school, and now I have a daughter who's graduating actually from high school. And as a parent sending a child out into the world, and I know both of you have been that parent, it's kind of an interesting time. You want to fill them full of advice and send them out there. But, you know, but you also want

Becki Smith:

to hold on to them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But you also want to hold on to them.

Genevieve Morgan:

Right.

Becki Smith:

And I think that Eleanor Clivens, who is a cookbook author and a frequent guest on 207, she's an older lady, but she's wonderful. And she gave me the best advice when my son was exactly at the point where your children are. And I was lamenting, it was like August and he was heading off to NYU in a couple weeks, and I was just lamenting that he wasn't going to be around and I was going to miss him and on and on. And I think she just really got tired of me and finally said, but you really don't want him to be living at home with you when he's 40, do you? And it just hit me. And I thought, well, kinda, but not really. So I learned to let go a little.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. And you. And you did in a very, in a really great way. You actually brought in the copy of the book that you gave him when he graduated from Tisch at nyu. And you called it Dust Never Settles.

Becki Smith:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this was a collaboration. This is a, I guess a compilation of all of these amazing things people have said over time for graduates.

Becki Smith:

Yes. The book came about when I was searching for a gift. I asked him, what do you want for your graduation? And he said, I want a new laptop and my Heart kind of sank because we had a graveyard of technology in our basement. And I just thought in two years that computer is going to end up down in the basement too. And then 20 years from now, he won't even remember what I gave him for his graduation. So I wanted to create something really special for him. So one night I sat down at midnight and sent out 100 emails to friends that I had made through the shows and titled it Favor and simply asked people if they would be willing, all of whom had successful paths, to share a little bit of advice for him. And within a week I had 90 responses. So. And the dust Never Settles comes from actually Don Campbell's entry. And it was relevant because whenever I would go to the dorm room at nyu, Jake would look at me and say, where does all the dust come from? Not realizing he wasn't cleaning. But as it turns out, Dust Never Settles is also the title of Don Campbell's new cd. So we both, we were really in sync there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I do like the fact that in this original book, all of these are actually addressed to Jake. So the beginning of each page it says Jake and then it goes on to give the advice.

Becki Smith:

And I think that's what made the book so special, is that because people, when you do a show like 207 over 10 years, we followed, we had frequent guests, contributors that came regularly. We followed people's stories as their lives grew. But at the same time they got to know me. We became friends over the course of time. So they had heard me yak about Jake for a number of years too. And so they felt like they knew him and they actually did write to him. And I think that's what made it so personal.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm gonna have Tim read what he wrote to Jake because I like it and I actually like a lot of the intersections. It's a very main entry and it

Tim Sample:

goes something, but not exactly like this. Life lessons learned along the way. First of all, let me congratulate you on completing a marvelous college career and extend my best wishes as you embark upon the next phase of your life. I've been asked to pass along some words of wisdom based on my own experience. I'm more than happy to oblige since it is my belief that in, in real life experience is the best teacher. Here's just one memorable example of a personal life changing experience which I hope will find helpful and instructive. I sure did. In 1976, I was 25 years old, working very hard to establish myself in the entertainment business. I got A big break when I was offered a gig as a opening act for Noel Paul Stookey, Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary. The first show went so well that I was hired to do several more. And over the next two years we became good friends. In 1978 I moved to Blue Hill and began working full time at Noel's company, New World Media. We continued to perform together. Noel even produced a five song music album for me. And I was convinced that it was just a matter of time, weeks, days before I became a big star in the music business. Around that time, Noel was also producing another young singer songwriter named David Mallett. And in the summer of 1979, Noel, David and I were scheduled to perform a big series of concerts with several other singer songwriters. During a break in rehearsals the day before the first show, Noel took me aside and told me that he thought there were too many singer songwriters on the bill and that since I had a real talent for making people laugh, I should leave my guitar backstage and emcee the show doing a series of five minute comedy bits in between the other acts. This was a watershed moment. Should I change my act or insist on doing my music? Well, I decided that since Noel was the only person I knew with several gold and platinum selling albums, Grammy awards, etc. Perhaps he knew more about show business than I did. It was the right choice. I was very successful that night, went on to do more comedy bits for the rest of the tour. About a year later, Noel produced my first album of Maine Humor. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I love that because it does say, you know, you may start in one place and end up in a different one, and that's okay.

Tim Sample:

Gradually you find connections with human beings and the right thing at the right time. And that's what life teaches. And what I love about this book and what I loved about the idea was that none of this. This is not theoretical advice. Becky didn't ask us, the folks who contributed to theorize and speculate. She asked people to share from experience. But they're all talking very matter of factly. You know, Don Campbell, I remember Don. Don opened for me. I don't think it was more than he was playing banjo, but you see these lives that have played out and had these impacts and connections. And what better gift to give a young man starting out with dreams and goals than a kind of a roadmap from real people?

Becki Smith:

I'd say I collected a village of people who actually created a path for Jake to follow and now for other graduates to follow. And I'm very grateful to people because they didn't. I mean, they could have easily just, you know, sent some very placating words of advice, but they didn't. Don Campbell, for example, I cried when I read his because he sent me the note and he said, you know, and I knew this, that his nephew had a 15 year old nephew was killed by a drunk driver on the Main turnpike. And he said, I am writing to Jake. What I would have said to Cooper on his graduation. That's very personal. That's a very generous gift more than anything. And other people wrote their life stories, other people sent funny lists, other people sent calls to action. But they really came from the heart. They weren't just plain words of wisdom. So you can't help but be grateful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

what I really love about all of this is, you know, with this, with our radio show, you know, we have our audio producer John McCain who's also a musician, and we have Kelly Clinton who does our online work. But there's an entire team that makes this all possible. And everybody is so important. You know, the producing of the show isn't just about the voices that come across the microphone. It's everybody is crafting something to make it really powerful. And you did that with 207.

Becki Smith:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're doing it again with this book.

Becki Smith:

Very nice analogy because when I gave remarks at the book launch, that's exactly what I said. That when you produce a show, every person, from the engineer to the audio guide, to the director, to the guests, to the hosts, everyone is a piece of the puzzle. Everyone is equally important to the success of a show and the same in raising a child. Everyone that child meets is important to his or her success. From the lady that cut Jake's hair for 20 years to his grandmother, to anybody that crossed paths, you know, his pastor, they all play a role. And so then to collect a group of people, like I said, to sort of become a village was a very cool way to sort of end that career in a way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I know that Don Campbell had a lot to say in his words to Jake, and we won't have you read all of them, but maybe you could read some of them for us.

Becki Smith:

Sure, sure. As I said, he would have sent this to Cooper. He said, who would have graduated from Chevreuse the same year that Jake graduated from nyu. So he said, these are some words that I think you will find useful. Always laugh, but only at your own expense. Never find laughter in another person's pain. Accept that life is a kind of a roller coaster with turns you might not expect. Knowing this just helps hold a door for people. And don't wait for a thank you. You don't need that. Remember, dust never settles, which is so true. Sleep on big decisions, but take risks when you feel confident in your gut. Enjoy the nobility of paying off debts and thank the lender. Remember that every living thing is here for a reason. Try to be at least 15 minutes early. Always. Don't sweat the small stuff. If you look closely, most stuff is small. Be generous to those you believe in, forgiving to those who don't know any better. Celebrate your every victory, and remember to also celebrate the victories of those you love. And this was one of my favorites because I never knew this, and I've used it repeatedly when assembling something. It's righty tighty, lefty loosey, and remember Robert Frost. And once in a while, take the road less traveled by. Finally, always listen to your mother. Very good advice, I might add.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's pretty wonderful to me that. That your son went to NYU and went to Tisch and came coming from Maine. And it's actually interesting that Tim is here. Tim Sample. We've all known Tim Sample for years and years and years as somebody who's made his way up in the ranks of humorists, but it's not a straightforward path for artists and performers coming out of Maine. It takes a lot of courage, and it takes a leap of faith. So it's interesting that your son decided that this was going to be the path that he would take.

Becki Smith:

It was something he always wanted to do. He used to set up his mechanical Godzillas on our bed and take the video camera when he was 5 and make little movies with Godzilla on my bed. But when he was in eighth grade, he made a film that won the main student film festival. And I think from that point on, he was just on his path. He knew what he wanted to do, he stayed focused and he's never veered from it. There's no plan B for him. So I think that helped. It helped to have a very supportive family. You know, someone's got to have your back. And he has very good professors at nyu, several of whom he still is connected to, still sees every other day. So he has a great network in New York to help him on his way. And it was one of his professors who said to me after graduation, you need to know this child is never going to be in a corporate environment with a 9 to 5 job. It's always going to be up and down, up and down, because that's just the path of someone in this business. And so, you know, don't feel bad when the check from the company isn't coming on a weekly basis because that isn't how it's going to work for him.

Tim Sample:

I have to just add that, you know, from my own experience, experience and observing the experience of others, Maine is an amazingly supportive place for creative individuality. You know, it's the state of Steve King and Louise Nevelson and on and on and George Mitchell and I mean, these sort of people who carve their own path and a variety of different things. But in Maine, the idea in Maine, I've said this for years, people think Mainers are backwards and Mainers are very open minded, but we don't brook fools gladly. And you know, if you go to somebody who's been making lobster traps with lathing for 10 generations and your new way of doing it out of wire is better, demonstrably better. They'll change in five minutes. But if it's just some variation on a theme that's not particularly better than what they're already doing, forget about it. And if you have an original idea, an original thought, I've always said when I started out in Maine and I was a kid, I was in my 20s, I went to art school here, I'd just go knock on. I created a calendar and I'd knock on doors in gift shops and I just say, hi, I'm Tim. I write, I do this thing, I like this people. You hear this story over and over again. If that had been New York City, but, you know, I'll tell very quickly, but Porteous people, Porteous was the anchor where Mecca is now. Okay, I was literally out on the street. I was 21 or 22, I've been to art school. I created a line of greeting cards. I had them printed at the little print shop. I was selling them on the street. It sounds like Dickens, but it's really true. Out on the street. And some people went for a buck and people were buying some gift cards. And then somebody said, you ought to go inside and ask them if they want to sell them in the store. And I thought, why not? And I walked in and within a couple hours I was talking to Bob Porges and we were up in his office and he liked them and they bought them. But you see, that's a story that you hear. People in Maine tell stories like that. If you have integrity, if you're straight up, you're not trying to scam anybody. You just want to get a leg up. If you tried to list all the people that Steve King or Noel Stookey or many, many other people have helped that. I mean, I was at Steve's house 20 something years ago, and he gives me the galley. He said, read a few pages of this, make a tape, send it to this guy. And he ended up narrating the best selling book on tape in America for a few weeks back in the summer in 91. That doesn't always happen. There's a lot of environments, urban environments, where you have to go through channels. You got to know somebody who knows somebody, and it doesn't always work this way. But a lot of what Becky is talking about and a lot of what her scientist experience is, you get this idea growing up in Maine, that there's possibilities. You do have to work hard, but you're not always shut out because you come from a little town in rusted county or you don't have a lot of formal education. Maine is elementally pragmatic in its own. We want to know. We don't want to know your philosophy. We want to know, do you have jumper cables? And will you stop? It's just we don't really care about your religion, your. Your philosophy, your sexual orientation. We just want to know, are you in this with us or not? And that spirit infuses the main way of life. So I think kids rightly believe, yeah, I got to have something going on, but I'll get a hearing. The worst part is when you go, I mean, I didn't call Charles Kuralt, he called me. How did that happen? I have no idea. But the worst part is when, when you know you've got something and you can't get in the door. And in Maine, most folks, you can get in the door.

Becki Smith:

Yeah. And that's one advice that I give to I supervise a lot of interns through the course, and they come to me and they say, you know, I want to work at NBC. And I'm like, okay, how are you going to do that? And they're like, I don't know. I don't know. Well, my mom knows Brian Williams, but I don't want to ask. And I'm like, ask. It's okay. It's okay to use your network to get in the door. You still have to walk through that open door. You still have to prove yourself on the other side. But don't be afraid to use everything you've got to get to where you want to be, because once you're there and you proved yourself, it doesn't matter how you got there. So I think that that is a real main thing that you can ask in Maine and people will, I think, help.

Tim Sample:

Well, and he had this experience of, you know, you have, you know, people are coming and going through the show and they're real flesh and blood people. It's startling when you meet people that, you know, knew see on tv. I mean, the first time I did Good Morning America, a long time ago, David Hartman was hosting Good Morning and then Charlie, I did it with Charlie Gibson later on. But David Hartman, I was like, oh, no, that guy from David, he gets out of the limo, I go, I know that guy. But then you realize they're people and it's okay. But you know, you be yourself and you be substantive and they, you know, everybody that most people there are a few, you know, bad apples. But most of the time, I think you probably have found this, too, Becky. Folks that have been successful, who have been able to see their dreams and their goals and their visions reach fruition, have a sense of gratitude, appreciation. And every once in a while, somebody's just a horse's bought. But that's rare. Most of the time, people recognize in others what they needed nurturing in themselves when they, you know, they've got some mentors that helped them. And that Cap Weinberger used to bump into down in Southwest Harbor. I'm thinking of hitting, it was like he just hired on time. But that's a point, Tim.

Becki Smith:

It's a good point. When I took 2007, Steve Thaxton was general manager then. And one of the things I said is if I do this job, it's going to be a 60 hour week job. But I've got a son who's in middle school and I need some flexibility because I don't want to not be there for him. And he said, fine, you can bring him anywhere you want, bring him to the studio, bring him on shoots, I don't care, as long as you get the job done. So I did. And because I knew that Jake wanted to follow this path, I thought it was really important for him to meet successful people, some of them in his field, some not. But to see that, to not be. I didn't want him to end up enthralled by celebrity because I wanted him to see that people who got to that point were real people who worked hard. It wasn't overnight. And. And I think he learned a lot from that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I am very grateful that both of you took the time to come in here and be in our humble digs and record the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour with us today. I mean, as I said, I think part of my quietude today is just in my awe that I'm sitting here with the two of you who clearly have done so many great things in your own lives. I'm going to finish out a little. I like Robert Chatterley. He's an artist. I'm not sure everybody who's listening will know exactly who he is. He was a pretty great artist, pretty well known, wonderful stuff. And so I'll leave with this quote from your book, Starting Out Life Lessons for Graduates, which of course, Becky, Becky Smith, you have put out there. We must all rise to the requirements of our time, even when it is not the challenge we would like to confront. James Baldwin said, people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction. Our task is not to shy from that reality. And where we are now is both a real and a mythic moment in human history. It's mythic in the sense that it's the kind of situation we loved experiencing vicariously in the Lord of the Rings or the Darth Vader series. Now it's upon us, and it's harder than we could have imagined. Grim, yes, but the only way through is in joy and in love, determination and courage. The same values we have always admired but never needed so much. One for all and all for one. I really believe that this is the reason that you're both here today sharing this with us. And I encourage people to look up the work of humorous Tim Sample Also to buy the book Starting Out Life Lessons for Graduates by Becky Smith, which is put out by Islandport Press. You've been great guests and thanks so much for bringing this light into the world.

Becki Smith:

Thank you Lisa for having us.

Tim Sample:

Thank you Becky for asking me to tag along. It's fun. It's really fun. Great book.

Becki Smith:

Thank you. Thank you for contributing to it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio RM podcast show number 143 graduation. Our guests have included Genevieve Morgan, Tim Sample, and Becky Smith. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit drlisabelisle.com the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and on Instagram as bountiful1. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Doctoralisa Radio Hour to your you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our graduation show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and Happy graduation day to my daughter, Abigail, Yarmouth High school class of 2014. To all graduates who are enjoying this graduation season, including my brothers John and Brian who are graduating from law school and from graduate school, May you all have a bountiful life.