Get Interested, Change Your Life with Dennis Trinkle

Dennis Trinkle was the son of a pastor and on a similar track until a teaching job along the way inspired him to go back to school. He liked teaching but knew he would have better success with more education. When fulfilling a liberal arts requirement led him to a philosophy class, he discovered an interest that would shape his next move and his continued education for years. There are more pivots in Dennis's story--all sparked by pursuing the paths he found interesting. Dennis is a longtime friend, thankfully always willing to discuss big ideas with me. I couldn't wait to hear his work story and learn more about how his current job fits into it.

Chapters
05:15 Indiana Jones (early work thoughts) 
08:30 Being a pastor's kid and wanting to be like Dad
15:31 Bible College and church work
20:22 Pivoting! Enjoys teaching, goes back to college
24:14 Choosing a major from the life of J.R.R. Tolkien
26:35 Philosophy is interesting, adding a major!
31:26 After college...more college (pursuing a doctorate)
35:56 New career track ("This sounds interesting")
40:45 Let's talk Liberal Arts
48:52 What is a Senior Quality Analyst?
56:19 How it matters
01:02:16 Taking things apart, including thoughts and Ideas
01:06:43 Big ideas, social media, and understanding each other
01:14:53 Talking to kids about work and education choices
01:21:16 It worked for me (learning HOW you like to work)

Links
Dennis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-trinkle/
The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix: https://www.johnhendrix.com/the-mythmakers 

I Do This For a Living is independently produced. 

@serenitylive

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:02

Welcome to I Do This For a Living, a show that questions everything about work culture and asks how we can spend as much time and energy on the things that matter as we do on the things that pay. Sometimes the things that matter pay, and we'll talk about that too. I'm your host, Serenity Bohan. I created this podcast so I could have work I love. Today's guest is my very longtime friend, Dennis Trinkle. We have a lot of shared experience, including many conversations, blog comments, and email exchanges as we grew away from those shared experiences and into our grown-up lives, which have been less shared. Welcome to the podcast, Din.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_04 0:47

Okay, you are actually a third. Dennis Trinkle the Third, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

The second.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Oh, you're the second.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

Din. Did I say it wrong in my book? I quoted you in my book and I swear it's third.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

If you did, I I didn't sweat it.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

That would be so terrible. I totally did. I'm looking at it right now. Everyone in the whole world. Go by go buy my book. I mean, that would be awesome. The thank you room. And um, yeah, Den, you're quoted wrong as Dennis Trinkle the third. Oh, that's so sad. So it doesn't even make sense for me to ask the question. I was going to say, okay, so that's something your friends know about you, is that you're the second. Um what are some other things that your friends know about you kind of as a matter of course, but my audience would not?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Oh, um, what do my friends know about me?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Um That's that's an interesting one. Is it's sometimes it's hard to know what they might say, right? Like what would they say about you versus what do you think about yourself? Um my friends know that I have a hard time passing up on making a joke when I when I see an opportunity. Um even if that's just a dumb pun or some play on words, especially. Um they would know that I would do that, much to their consternation, annoyance, or delight, depending. Um and the strong reaction in either direction can be uh a motivator for me. Getting the groan or getting the laugh either way can can be enough to keep me going.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

Either one, groan or laugh.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Okay, good to know. That's awesome. Do do your friends know what you do for work?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Uh that's that's a good question. I think most of my friends probably do. I would say at this point, a lot of the people I spend time with are people I know through work, honestly. So um I know like a lot of the people in Madison I know I know through one or another of the jobs I've had. Um, it's either that or graduate school, but most of my graduate school friends have moved away. And so I keep in touch with some of them. But like the people I see the most often I've met through uh one job or another here. Um the question of whether my kids know what I do, even though they're adults, is it is it a one I I I had a question recently from like I said, wouldn't you say, how would you describe your job or what you do?

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

So even though you know it's over a decade they they could have known these things that like were asked about it.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

But I don't think we talk about it. I I when I I don't know if you heard my my podcast with Michael, my husband, but he said I didn't talk to them about that. That's not what it was important to me to talk to them about, which I totally back and support. But I also, because of this podcast, have started thinking, I wonder if we should talk about it more. Like just so they're prepared. I could have used a little more prep for some some things, which is not about my parents. Um, but and I actually might talk about that later if we get to it. I'm gonna make you therapy me like I do pretty much everyone. Um okay, so you you've been there for for me a long time. You have seen, you saw me start start my blog. You were so supportive. Some of your comments are some of my favorite things um on my vlog. You have been very encouraging about my writing. This is my question. Do you was did it surprise you that I started a podcast about work?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Uh I would say there was a time it would have surprised me, but given the like it it's been a theme for a while, right? So like you've you've been thinking about it. It's been bugging you, you've been looking for a way to do it. And I do think you're someone who enjoys and appreciates a good conversation, as well as being a good conversationalist. And that's that's what I love about podcasts, right? Is like a lot of times it's people having a good conversation.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

Exactly. I I'm so excited to hear from you. I always am. Um, as you know, sometimes I reach out to you on purpose because I want your thoughts on a thing. So yeah. This is this would be an example of that. Work, work and life and how they go together. Um, let's go to your beginnings in life. Um, what are your early memories of what work is?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, this is what this is one of the questions I've enjoyed listening to people talk about, I think, because I I always go there in my head and like I spend time thinking about it. Um the things I remember earliest in terms of like thinking about what I wanted to do as a job. Uh the first one I remember is archaeologist. And that's totally because of Indiana Jones. I had no idea, right? It wasn't like I understood what an archaeologist did or might study, or they would go to school for that. But it was like, oh, that looks exciting. Um I think I would have been pretty disappointed had I made it through a PhD program and seen the work. Interesting, but not Indiana Jones. Uh another one I think about a lot is I I wanted to be a I wanted to be an author, but my picture of that was you would go to like the factory, basically. There would be like a place with all the desks and all the authors sitting down writing the books because they, you know, they come from a publisher, so I'm imagining it's like any other production line where you just have a lot of people doing the work. They just get hired as the author, you write the books and they ship them out. You know, that's how you get them.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

I mean, I think that exists. I think the guy who um I think is it the guy who wrote that million little pieces memoir that got kind of debunked? He'd put a lot of fake stuff. I think he started a kind of a novel factory.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Okay. I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

Something like that. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

James Frey.

SPEAKER_04 6:51

Yes. Yes. What else? Is that it? That's amazing. I have never heard anyone say they had that idea of an author. Also, okay. What do you think Indiana Jones really is? I mean, if someone was like, no, seriously, I want to be Indiana Jones. What is he really if he's not actually like an architect?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

I mean, a lot of the things he is is are are illegal and unprofessional. Like, I don't think. But it's not gonna go well with the the archaeology convention when he talks about like snagging an idol and running out of a a temple and you know these kind of things. It's like that's not that's not good artifact handling. It's not you know, working within the laws of the country you're visiting. Um yeah. Good stories, though.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

I mean, I know you're totally backing up what I say, which is we as kids, all we know is if we've seen it like as a Halloween costume, a movie. That's all we know of jobs.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah. You have the smallest possible conception of what jobs there are in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

It bugs me because I don't know what the answer is because I don't it's not like I want to, you know, I don't want to diminish kids' dreams by any means. I want kids to dream really big, but I do think I wish there was more to schooling that says things like, What what do you like to do? Do you like to work with your hands? Do you like to work with your thought? Do you like to work with computers? Do you like to not? I it's just do you like to work outside? We just need more of that. I think kids don't even realize. Um yeah, we don't even realize what jobs are. So what did you see? What did you see from your parents work-wise?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah, so my uh I I did, I did have a lot of inclinations to be like my dad. I liked him as a kid and thought he was pretty cool. So I had a lot of a lot of aspirations there to just because I liked him, uh, kind of like follow that. Um and when that was most formative, I think like kindergarten early or like early grade school, he was working as a he was working as a pastor, he was an associate pastor, and then we moved because he got a job at a however you think of that. Like he he took he took a new spot at a different church, become the head pastor, right? So it seemed like great, he was doing good, you know. Whatever I obviously, like my conception of why or what was going on or what how that decision looks like, I have almost no memory other than, oh, we we went to this other town now. I don't remember the point, like there must have been some discussion ahead of that of like, hey, this might be happening, we're gonna do this, why we might be doing that. You know, and I don't I just don't even have memories of that. I just remember like we were in the one place, we were in the other.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

Interesting. How old were you?

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Uh I was right after third grade. So I finished third grade and then we moved.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

So I do think it's interesting how much we parents just do the things we need or want to do, and it we don't involve our kids. Like we don't we don't ask them for sure, but it there's not a lot of discussion.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

I don't know how much input I would have had at that age either, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Yeah. So was that De Coin? De Coin, Illinois?

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah. That was DuCoin.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So he becomes Yeah, the place I uh so where I where I lived until then was West Frankfurt, Illinois. So it was they were like 30 to 40 minutes apart, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere around that.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Um was that your entire childhood, high school, youth, your dad a pastor?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Um almost. So uh when I was born, my dad was a coal miner.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, but I don't rec I don't recall that. It's like I my I think the first Halloween when I was well, I don't know if it was even the first, probably the second Halloween, because I was born in early October, and so I'm I don't remember the picture of me as an infant um was a toddler, so presumably it was my second Halloween. But uh I was I was dressed as a coal miner for that. So like uh little flannel and overalls and some some kind of dirt on my cheeks to make it look like I've been underground.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

But um Do you want that to be the picture for your ed episode cover?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

I don't know if you can find that or not.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Didn't as a coal miner. Um, okay. What about your mom? Did she work outside the home?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

She yes and no. Uh a lot of it I guess it depends. Like she did work, I will say. That's that's very clear. Um, but a lot of times she didn't have a job as much as she was helping with the ministry. So she did a lot of like the bookkeeping and things, but there was no she was the pastor's wife, which is not a paid position, and she didn't have like a separate position as bookkeeper, at least as far as I know. Like so that's that's what I I that's a lot of it. She was a teacher for a while. Like uh because I did have her uh for my like my the first year I was in school, she was my teacher, which was awesome, right? Because like your mom's great. So I guess that that was a job, I should be clear. Uh although again, she may not have been paid for that, I don't recall. There was a lot of there was a lot of volunteering going on.

SPEAKER_04 12:09

So Yeah, these are the things we don't know. My mom was my teacher at one time too, also one of my favorite teachers.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:15

Um so our our our shared experiences are are this church world. Am I correct that that's how we met? Um we came we came to your church for a youth camp or to put on a play or something. We love to put on plays.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Um so I also met my wife there, and we we have this conversation where we have a slightly different memory of the sequence of events.

unknown 12:37

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

I'm pretty sure I came to Kirksville to the like summer camp, and then the King's Tapestry play came to Ducoyne like a month later or a couple weeks later, something like that. That's how I remember this. She tends to think of them as like reversed.

SPEAKER_04 12:53

Interesting. I can't I can't win this argument for you. I don't know which one it was.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I could put it on the city. I know I met your parents before I met you.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

Sagan. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

I could probably put it down if I did the the work to like like figure out details.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Like Yeah. We probably have that play on record recordings of VHS somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah. I think we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

Typecast as the rebellious child, typically. Okay. Um yeah, so I met your parents before I met you, I'm pretty sure, because they came to my own.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, they would have come up before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:29

Yeah. Okay. So kind of uh maybe not along these lines. You said you wanted to be like your dad. So would you say you kind of thought maybe you would be a preacher?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, at different times I thought that more or less. Like there was a time when it was like, oh yeah, I I I like what dad does. I want to do this, and that's like like seems like the best, the best thing you could do because it was connected with the most meaningful thing in the in the in your world, right? So like, oh, it's like the this gotta be the way to do it. Like there's a lot of attention put on that person. Uh there's a lot of like emphasis on like the calling and the role, and it's like pretty obvious how they're doing their thing. So I think that that was appealing. Um, I don't think that I thought a lot about what that meant. Like, did I want to spend the time on all the stuff that happened during the week? Um, it's also interesting because in the the situation we were in, the size of the church and the kind of thing it was like some of what my dad did as a pastor was like hanging drywall when the church had a you know, like a construction need or like mowing the lawn, fixing lights. There was things like that, right? That like you definitely don't put in your normal box if you ask people like, what does a minister do? That's not that's not high in the list, but it it was in the circles we ran in. Like uh that that was my experience was he kind of did everything. Um And I think there was a time I really didn't want to do that. I was like, no, that doesn't seem so cool. Um and part because my my dad went through a period where maybe he thought it wasn't so cool either. Yeah. So um I thought about other things. I remember in high school for a while entertaining the idea of being an architect mostly because I liked drafting class. So I I took a class and we did drafting. I was like, oh, this is awesome. I'm not good at drawing, but with these tools I can make good drawings. And so I thought that would be good. But I didn't have like a focused, serious intent. I didn't figure out what that meant or how you became one. It was just like, oh yeah, this is cool. Maybe I'll do that later.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

And never really followed up on it.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

Okay. So what did you do? You graduate did you graduate high school into coin?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

And then how did what was your next step? Is it what I think it was?

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Yeah, yeah. No, it was. Uh so that was when uh so I meant we talked about that summer camp that I came to. And then like that seemed really cool. I I met a lot of people that were fun to be around. And again, it was like connected to the most meaningful thing in the world. It's like this, like all about like for like I guess I should say, like my dad was a minister, and we weren't like casual about that. It was really intense.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

So it was like Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

It was like the most the biggest thing to me wasn't like just part of my identity, it kind of was my identity for a while. So I was like, well, I should go to Kirksville because they have this Bible college, the two-year program for after high school before something, or whatever that something was, being somewhat open-ended, but yeah. And at that point I probably thought too that that was a path to becoming some kind of minister or you know, version of that. Doing something was a church was at that point the the the kind of the dream, although not like a direct path. It wasn't like you got ordained and then you could go right through those things. So it was it was still nebulous, but at least like I was like, oh, that's what I want to do. I want to go focus on these things.

SPEAKER_04 16:53

Okay. Yeah, it was not a direct path to anything. Uh I think about this a lot. We I write I've written about this as a I've been work writing out my work story to try to understand it better. Yeah. What my problem was, basically. And when I talk about Bible college, it was um I say it as kindly as possible because the the intentions were so good. It was they really called it a 13th and a 14th grade. And knowing 17-year-olds really don't know who they are or what they want to do, typically. So let's give them a little more time. We'll ground them in this stuff we really believed strongly in. As you said, it was not a casual Christianity that we grew up in. And um, it was it was our it was our whole identity. And so they wanted to seal that a little better, 13th and 14th grade, and then did. They would say, then you'll go on and do these other things, university or this or that. And what I write is it is super hard to go to school after you go to school. Just not very many of us took that path, certainly not immediately. We all did kind of get into that um conveyor belt, not knowing what how how we were gonna pop out on the other side or what in the world we were gonna do. So I share that experience with you. Um, what did you do after did you take the two years, three years to do Bible college?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:12

Then what?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

And then then I actually I I did that and then I applied to Truman.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

Right away?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Right away. And I started that fall after graduation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Truman State University. Um, great college here in the town I live in. Um, so you applied right away. Did you know what you were headed into? What kind of major and stuff?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Oh, I at this point I don't remember which we can come back around to because there's a reason I don't remember. Uh I made it three weeks.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

And I was like, oh, I I can't do all these church things I'm involved with and school at the same time. And it just like, and in my life at that point, there was clearly the thing more valuable to me was the church stuff. I was like, because I was still doing the I was living in the dorms where the Bible college was, and like I had, you know, was helping out with things and working there and volunteering and going all the services, and I was just like, there's no way I can do both of these things at the same time. It takes too much. Like, college takes work. And I I was like, okay. So I I dropped out of that point of Truman after three weeks because it was I was doing the more important things, you know, for the for the kingdom of God as it as we would have said it, I think, at the time.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Were you being paid?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I was. I uh exact chronology, I'm gonna have a hard time telling exactly what I was being paid for at that point. Because I did a lot of different jobs during that period. Um, but I had oh I you know, I do remember now. Okay. I would because I was working part-time at the bookstore. That's what I was. So I was at the Truman State bookstore. So like that that was an advantage for like working at the bookstore and going to college. But then when I dropped out, I was like, hey, uh, would you need anyone to work more hours?

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

So you dropped out. And then so this is so this is what what I would what I'm hearing kind of. You were on you were on a path that seemed inev seemed um natural. This is what we do in this world, in my circle. And um not necessarily thinking you were gonna be a pastor or whatever, but it's just we go to Bible college and then we just we serve in the church and we can you give me an idea of your first glimmers that maybe there was a different path for you, or that you were questioning whether you were on the path that belonged to you, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah. I will say I think there was also an aspect of it where we thought we were special and so knew we weren't quite normal, as it were. Like it was normal in that circle to do what I did. And no one like really freaked out when I was like, oh, I'm not gonna go to college. I'm gonna like spend my time on working dumb as volunteer stuff for the church and being involved. But I think we also knew we're like, oh, we're trying not to be normal because normal is broken or deficient, or you know, whatever. Like it's it it wasn't good. So we wanted to do something that was different. Um and I I followed that and just kind of like went through boys. There's a lot of this could get this could get long. But I the I can give you a I think the next transition point for me, I had like done a couple of things, like a lot of things had changed in the in the group at the church and stuff. There was an opportunity I was teaching, I went and I spent a year teaching seventh and eighth grade at the church school.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

Oh yeah, you had to rescue me from Music class a couple times when I was teaching it. Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

I forgot about that. It was a lot at that time. Yeah, that was um an interesting time for sure. But during that year, I had the feeling that I wasn't able to do it as well as I wanted. I liked teaching, I liked working with the kids, but I felt like I needed, I was like, oh, I actually could use more education if I want to do this well. And that was the point where I felt like I didn't like say, oh, I don't need all this other stuff, but like I need something, the the schooling has a at has a point to me that I see it as like tied to what I want to do. And I think I need to go get a degree, not not just for the sake of having one, but to actually know what I need to do to do this better. And so that was that was for me the probably the biggest decision point that like changed things in terms of my later trajectory. So then I was going back to Truman, uh starting there as a 23-year-old freshman, you know.

SPEAKER_04 23:06

Did you feel old?

SPEAKER_00 23:07

With a child.

SPEAKER_04 23:08

Oh gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

So um a different student experience than a lot of people, but yeah, but um you haven't heard it yet, but the episode that's gonna air right before you, very similar. She um she left school because she hated it and wasn't doing a good job. And then um, and then the work made her want to be more educated for the work. That's I love that story. I I uh yeah, I totally agree with our um the leaders in our past who knew 17-year-olds don't really know what they want to do. I I do wish there was a little more room in this world for those years for the kids who don't know. What can they do instead? How can we put them in like these situations where they can just figure out what do I like to do? Do I care to maybe I do want to learn more, but I was really burned out after my senior year of high school. I don't really want to go straight into freshman year of college. And there's gotta be ways. And I would love to, you know, fix the world and make all that perfect. Okay. Right. So you had now you head into Truman. Did you have a major this time?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

I I did this time. Uh so I think the first time I must have been history, because I know I the like that was appealed to me in some way. But uh the second time I was coming in, I had decided on classics as my major. So it's classics.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

Was it like Felicity? Because you liked to read. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's the big the big misconception uh that you explained as a classics major is what that means. It's it uh it as far as the the academic discipline goes, it's not like, oh, Jane Austen's a classic novelist. That's not the sense of classic, it means classical civilization. So it's you you learn Greek and Latin, at least one of them, uh usually both, and then it's about Roman and Greece history and architecture, and you there's different specialties or areas people go into. It's basically knowing that world. Like what are the foundations of the Western world as it would have, you know, like deconceptualized. So and and that was uh You know, you make a lot of decisions in life and you look back on them, you're like, huh, that was maybe not the most informed. My my reason for choosing what that was because I had read a biography of J.R. Tolkien.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

And philology was what he did. And the closest thing I could find at Truman was classics.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

Philology.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Philology.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Didn't even know that word.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, it's we don't really have it so far anymore, like his departments. It's it's kind of linguistics, kind of some other things. So it's like that's classics mapped onto it. In my mind, I was like, oh, I'm learning about languages and old stuff.

SPEAKER_04 25:55

Because he needed to write an elf language.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Right. Exactly. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

Have you read The Myth Makers? Pardon me. Have you read The Myth Makers? I meant to I meant to say this in Josh Smith's episode. The Myth Makers is like it's like a graphic novel. It's not a novel. It's a graphic book. It's a um about C. S. Lewis and Tolkien's friendship. Oh my gosh, I loved it so much. Um so check that out.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

But classics.

SPEAKER_04 26:27

How long did you stay in that one? Because I know you didn't l finish there, did you?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

I didn't. You did? You did, but I I added a second major. What was the trick? So um part uh so especially Truman as a liberal arts and sciences college, the the liberal arts track, you have to take a certain number of interdisciplinary classes or classes and other disciplines than just your major. It's not a, you know, it's like there's a bit of broad focus there, and the goal being to educate a person's mind and character for being a citizen in a free world. Um but I I took a philosophy class my first semester, just like, oh, that sounds interesting. I've never studied this, but it sounds cool. And I really fell in love with that. Um in part, I had a great professor. And in part it was it's like it was talking about, in my mind, it was like talking about big questions. Like, what are the things that matter? And how do we think about them? And so I was just like, I was instantly hooked by that. Um it was it was the kind of thing where it's like, oh, I didn't know this was a thing people did, but this is what I love to do.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

That was first semester?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:35

And say that again. So you you summed up classics for us. You would would you sum up philosophy that way? It's the big questions and how we talk about them.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

That that's yeah, that's a 20,000-foot view of it. Sure. It tends to divide into um sub-areas, and you the more you go on, the more you specialize. Um, but it is the big questions in general is a is a way of framing it. Um particularly questions of like what we can know and how we know it, what what the world is like, what it's made up of, and then values. So like what's what's good, you know, what's beautiful, those kind of questions.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Those are like some of the big areas.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

What's good, what's beautiful? Do you think I would like it? Studying it?

SPEAKER_00 28:23

I I think you would like parts of it, yes.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

I do too. Um I have so many more questions about philosophy, but um I might be.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

As with any academic display, I think the more you get into it, the smaller your questions have to get. Because it's you can't write about the biggest questions normally in the like broadest way. You have to be like really deep on one narrow topic, usually. And so I think it's fun to talk about those things. I think there's a lot of interesting and worthwhile work. The more you go into it, the harder it is to like understand them what someone's talking about. And there's a lot of reasons for that, some good and some bad.

SPEAKER_04 29:00

But interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Think about it like the way that like watching uh, you know, a a science program about space is really awesome. But the day-to-day of an astronomer is like, you know, tracking patterns of gases coming off of the star or something, you know, something where it's like uh radio signals that they're plotting data points for and all these things that probably aren't as exciting to the person who isn't into that.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

Yeah, I totally, I totally get you. There's a friend's quote in my head right now that I'm trying to keep myself from saying, but I don't think I can. But I do it to Michael sometimes. I ask him a question about some concept or something he's interested in, maybe hunting or golf or something. And he'll start answering me. And there comes a point where I feel like um Phoebe in a scene where she says, she asks Ross a question, he starts answering. And they kind of have some back and forth, and she goes, Huh, I might be losing interest in this. It's just like I my interest is like for a bit, and then kind of like Felicity talked about how she loves to process faith conversations and religions and how that and she can get her husband to talk to her about it for a while, but maybe not as long as she wants. I think that we all have that probably.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

One thing I definitely learned being a philosophy major uh and then going to grad school for that is that people do have a limited interest. And so when they ask you small talk questions that seem like they want to know what you do, you have to like gauge it. It's like give them enough to be engaging in the conversation, but don't tell them the way you would tell your friends in grad school because they'll be like, you know, the eyes roll up in the back of their head. And like it's clear, it's clear that it's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. No, I'm like, yeah, I've lost interest.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

I hope this I hope in this podcast you can get as granular as you want and we'll just handle it. Like there's a comedian who talks about Tosh, the guy whose last name is Tosh, I think. He talks about how he loves his jokes to weed people out to where by the time he has really specified the joke, there's one person in the room who gets it. That's he likes to do that. But yeah you can do that if you want. Um so you graduated with a major two majors, two majors, classics and philosophy. You're a very well-rounded person. That's a that's beautiful. And then what?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

And what are you gonna do with that?

SPEAKER_04 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

So this this one made a little more sense to me in terms of like, I I understood kind of what I want to do. I I loved college. I thought it was a great one. It's like, oh, I thought I liked school before, but I really love college. It's like the good version of school in a lot of cases. You know, obviously there are some some that aren't. All right. But like for me, it was it. We every class I took, I was like, we're talking about something interesting with people who care, with people who know things, and you can like you could just learn a lot. And it was like that was super interesting to me. Like it I didn't there were and I like there were things I just didn't know I liked from like school through high school and grade school that when I like got them in an interesting form, and it was about me ha you know, choosing to do it, not having to do it. I was like, oh, this is a grand, and I would spend a lot more time on this. You know, I would have just kept going to school at infinitum, had that been an option.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Um, so my thought was, well, I should teach because that's great, but I'm gonna teach college instead of teaching kids. Well, you know, little kids. Um, so I applied to graduate school uh in philosophy because I still liked those big questions. And I got into a couple of them and came to Madison, Wisconsin for the University of Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_04 32:50

Which is where you are now. Oh, this is amazing. Okay. So you were kind of on the teacher track. Is is becoming a philosophy professor similar to if Felicity E wanted to teach um writing, she has to be published a lot. Is it like that for philosophy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah, that's and that's the thing that I think is the weirdest kind of mismatch in my mind of like how you encounter things as an undergrad and then what you have to do to get back on the other side of the desk there is you you do all this studying in class and you have conversations, all about this engagement with the students and all these things. And most of the time you're not reading the professor's books, right? Like you're you're reading other people's books and you're talking about reading other papers and talking about these things. And so you you may not in the classroom think, oh, a lot of their job is probably doing research and writing papers that I don't think about, right? Maybe they talk about, maybe they don't. But like as a student, especially in an undergrad situation, I think you just don't necessarily appreciate that. You're like, oh, teaching, that's what they do, because that's what I see. And it turns out then when you get to the graduate level, it is really all about the research and the writing of things and very little about the teaching. And it's like they have to they have to do the teaching so they can do the research for a lot of people at a lot of universities.

SPEAKER_04 34:14

They have to do the teaching to do the research? They have to do the teaching to do the research, they have to do the research to do the teaching.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Well, you have to do the research to get the degree to get the job. The job requires you to do research, and that's what everybody cares about at the level of people who give you a job. But the universities require you to teach. Like if you think about uh a lot of it comes down to where does the money come from. And like the the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, for example, are somewhat loath to just give professors money to do research and like let them figure out what they're gonna research. But they have the idea that they're they're young citizens and people coming from other places should learn things so they can be educated. So they're like, well, we should hire people to do this education. Right. That that's a simple view of it, but that's kind of how a lot of it comes down to is then so then you have people who've like specialized in doing research, and that's what they really want to do because that's what their colleagues care about. But the only way to do that is to like then teach students. Now, to be clear, some of them actually care about education and like teaching students, but like the incentives are all at a research university. So Truman's different because it is more focused on teaching. But a University of Wisconsin, which is a research school. You kind of have to teach, but like you're really there because they want you to produce papers and produce research and these things.

SPEAKER_04 35:43

So your postgraduate was how many years? I ended up. Because you have to write a what? What did you have to end what ended it?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah, you you well, so the natural progression would be you you take an amount of coursework and then you do a dissertation. Yeah. And you defend that dissertation.

SPEAKER_04 36:05

That's the word I was looking for that I don't know because there's no way in heck of doing it.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Um and I did the part of the coursework. And so I got a master's degree for completing that part and doing some of the other requirements. And I started on a dissertation and I was working on that. And this is where it turns out I wasn't as good at that part.

SPEAKER_04 36:26

The research or the writing or Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Mostly the writing.

SPEAKER_04 36:30

I Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

I it it was a lot different than writing a paper for a class where you went over something and it's like, oh, write a paper about this. It's like come up with a new idea, figure out how to like, you know, ground it in other people's work, but then like do something novel and produce that. And that was for a lot of reasons, I found that challenging. Um I probably won't go into all of them today, but like it was the part where I was like, oh, I kind of got into this thing to because I liked engaging with students and I wanted to teach. And I got to do a lot of that as a as a graduate student. You do helping with either the discussion sections for a lecture. Uh, I was able sometimes to do the lecturing myself. So like that part was great and I loved it. And if I could have just got the job doing that, I would have taken one. But you have to finish the dissertation and apply for the, you know, and do all these things. And it also turns out that uh a lot more people want to be professors than there are jobs as professors. And so I was looking around at people who are like, oh, they're they're a lot better at this than I am, and they're having a hard time getting a job.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

How am I going to like pull this off where I get the job, even though I was like, if I was if I was picking, I would pick them because they're doing it better. They're doing this better than I am.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

Well, I don't believe that, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Um But I so I I was there for six years.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Six years.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Before I was like, I've got to find other work. Um, because it's not I'm not eminently close to finishing this and getting a job, but I do still have children who need to eat.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

Yeah, those di those darn children who need to eat is like decides a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Probably it was good for me and was the right thing to do, and I should have figured it out a little sooner.

SPEAKER_04 38:24

So I'm the job, getting a different job.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:28

Were you still pursuing the dissertation?

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Um I see yeah, when I started So when I started looking, I realized I needed work, I I just took a break. I was like, can I put this on hold? And I was gonna like take a year to figure some of this out. Pretty quickly into that, I wasn't really still working on the dissertation because it's a lot to go to work 40 plus hours a week and then like come home and try to do something else. There are people who are motivated. There are people who pull this off and do this. Uh I was at least not at that time one of them.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

So do you do you have a PhD? Did you do it?

SPEAKER_01 39:09

I do not.

SPEAKER_04 39:10

Do you care?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Not especially.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Um I I think, you know, about things that could have been different, but I I don't like walk around like, oh, if only if only I got that done, my life would be complete.

SPEAKER_04 39:26

Okay, good. I I might have more questions about have you seen the theory of everything about yeah. I that so I now have this thing that I say that inner t movies seek the truth in me like a heat missile. Um, for instance, when we were teenagers, we kind of had this um no dating thing in our lives, no rules or whatever. But boy, when I would watch romantic movies, I would know I don't care what you say, that's all I want in the world. And um, the theory of everything, when he presents his, would it have been his dissertation? Would it have been okay? Yeah. And he's you can just see the nerves on his face. Is it gonna be accepted? They tell him it's good. I can't remember if he tears up in the movie, but I like stopped. And I thought that apparently I want someone to say you did it. I don't know what I want them to say it about. Because I don't want to write a dissertation about the theory of everything, but boy, did I feel that moment.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

You want the approval, the the stamp that you've done the thing that was You've done the thing you were supposed to do, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever have that feeling, but I I have a let's go backwards for a second because I want to know based on um everything you've experienced in life and education and work, how do you feel about liberal arts as an undergrad? Do you think that that concept, as you said, it the point is kind of let's be well-rounded here. Let's not just learn what we think we want to learn but other things. Do you believe in that? Do you think that's a good approach for all kids? Or is there something a kid could ask themselves about whether that's the way to go?

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Yeah. I I do think so. Um, I'll give a caveat, but uh I do think so in that, like I think education should be about more than getting a job. I think going to school for a job is often a bad idea. I'll say there are like professional schools that is like that makes clear. Like going to medical school to be a doctor makes a lot of sense. It's a well-worked out program. I understand how it works. But like going to college because I want a job, I think is like you're you're selling yourself short on it. You're missing a lot of opportunities. And you're probably wrong about too many things at that point in your life to really have done it well. Because, like, we talked about, you know, people at that age often don't know because they haven't experienced the world. Some of the most valuable things I learned about I didn't know about until college. And so like I wouldn't, I wouldn't have thought, oh, like like it's a philosophy case. I was like, oh, I've got to get one of these credits in this area. I'll try that. I didn't know I liked it. I I didn't know it was gonna be something that mattered to me that I would like I don't I don't have a job that re that relies directly on that degree in terms of like I'm not a professional philosopher. But I think about things I learned every day. There's things that I carry with me that I use in work and in life, in relationships that I learned through studying that. And I wouldn't have known that was on the table. And let's say I'd been like, oh, I'm gonna go whether I was like, you know, I I you could, you know, you can catch these things on the way. I'm not saying like, don't go to school with a job in mind. I just mean I don't think you should be like, oh, I just do this to get a job.

SPEAKER_04 43:02

I love that. Why so you said yes and no to believing in liberal arts for so what's the no? Because that's really a good point you're making. Don't go to school for the j for, yeah, with this end goal that may not even exist when you graduate based on the way the world is changing.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Yeah. What's the no is just that the educational structure doesn't always lend itself to that. We don't always do a good job of this.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

For a lot of reasons. Um but I I would say it's like you you just you can't just see that there is a liberal arts program and think that necessarily then it's well set up to get you all these things. In part because there's a lot of other ways that we tend to measure and uh think about colleges and universities for the things that matter, like, oh, prestige and funding and all these things, where we then undercut some of the things that tell you, like, oh, you're Setting this to be, you know, to like learn these things and be a better citizen and have the freedom to make choices that are like well informed and not just bound by your own limitations. But we're like, oh, we've got to measure it on these funding criteria. We've got to see like how many people coming out, how fast did they get a job? How fast did they get through school? So like there's a lot of other things going on than pure education in that system and model. Yeah. Students are not. It's not like you can just go and then get this thing.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Yeah. Students are not the consumer, they're the product. That's what I read in a recent book about this. What do you so if you're just recommending if you went and did a speech to high school seniors or a careers class or something, do you still kind of say it's a great go ahead and get those four years? It's a good foundational education, go do it. Or and then bes that's A. And B is do you figure in money when you're advising someone whether or not to go to undergrad just for the education?

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Yeah, absolutely. Um to to be because it's like it it matters. You if you can't eat, you can't study well. I promise you. Like if you're starving, you're not thinking well, right? Like and like there are people who don't have like I managed to get through. I took out some loans, I worked nights, you know, I did things, and like I enjoyed it. I learned a lot, but I was in the the the place of enough privilege to do that where I wasn't starving. Um so just cry to play, yeah, it doesn't don't don't starve yourself. But uh and then I think I would I wouldn't say, yeah, everybody go do this. I would say it depends on a set of questions you need to ask yourself and talk with people who know you about like what you should be doing. Uh I because I think there are plenty of other meaningful ways to engage with the world and other kinds of meaningful work that don't require a degree or that you may not be ready for studying yet, right? You may be in a point where you need to do something else. I think the biggest thing that helped me, like starting at 23, was I knew what I was after. Not completely. I mean still a lot of things I didn't know. But like I was a little more like, oh, I'm here to get an education and get through this. And I think you can come in at 17 or 18 and like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get an education and a job. Oh, but it turns out I really like partying, or it turns out, you know, I really like staying up all night playing board games, or you know, there's there's a lot of things that can happen on the way, and you you might not be as focused, you know, like I don't think it'd be perfectly focused and rigid, but like you it may not be your time, or you may be like, man, I I'm tired of school and I really hate it, but I'm gonna try to force myself through it. And that's probably not the best way to save yourself up for success, right? Like there's totally always some amount of like, oh, I've gotta do it because it requires discipline and an application. But like if you really aren't pretty confident about what you want, at least at some level, have openness there, right? You're not like, I know everything. That's the wrong attitude. But like, I don't know why I'm here. It's like not great for getting the most out of it either.

SPEAKER_04 47:18

Especially if you're going into debt is my big advice is that is just if you can get a free for your education and you are motivated enough to get through it and enjoy it and for what it is, by all means, it's a great probably exploration time in your life. But if you're going into debt with no clue what you want to do and you're not enjoying it and it doesn't, you're not motivated, oof, get out. So I say get out. Get out of the debt.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Is the debt something you can pay off reasonably on the other side or not? Because there are people who come out with debt, but it's like I I came out with that, but it was reasonable.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Because once I had a real job, a career, you know, that paid a a a reasonable wage, I paid it off within a few years. Wow. I knew other people who had six figures of college debt, and like that's it doesn't matter what, you know, well, it doesn't short of a very few jobs. That's a lot to pay off, even if you're working a pretty good, you know, getting a good wage. So it's like, think about the debt relative to what you can afford later. Don't don't think this will like it. It's great to not have to work and do anything now. This will be fine later. Like, you know, if you spend the next 20 years paying off your calorie tuition, that's that's not great either, right?

SPEAKER_04 48:35

Not great. Um, I want I don't I don't want to miss talking about what you do do for a living. We haven't even gotten there, even though there's actually more, there's more like bigger concepts I kind of wanted to hit too. But what do you do for a living in Trinkle the Second?

SPEAKER_00 48:55

My my job title is I'm a senior quality analyst.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Um idea what that is.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Exactly. So this is also a lot like philosophy, where when you say that to somebody and they're, oh, well, you know, you you have to gauge how far into telling them what I do. Are they still interested?

SPEAKER_04 49:12

Okay, let's test our audience. Let's go for it. What is a senior quality analyst?

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Yeah. So the I I've been in since 2013. Some some the title has changed depending on where I was, but I basically worked in software during that time, software QA. So quality assurance is the field that I work in, and that has a lot of applications. Um, as I will certainly tell you looking at different job postings, you're like, oh no, I don't do that one. So one version would be like there's a quality assurance person at the dairy factory who's making sure that you know the bottles come out line and have the caps on them, that they, you know, they're running the plant the right way, that they're getting things clean, that they're not putting out, you know, rotten milk or, you know, so that's like some version of like making sure that the product you're selling is the one you mean to promise. Whether that's we'd sell a discount milk or a fancy milk, that you're hitting those targets, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

And so software quality assurance is a similar thing, it's just we're talking about software. So we're selling a piece of software to a company, to an organization, what have you, and we want it to work. It should do what it's supposed to do, it shouldn't crash all the time, it shouldn't send their data to the internet for everyone to take. You know, that would be nice. It should be reliable. There's all these different aspects of it, but some version of my job in these companies has been to say, are we doing what we're trying to do with some degree of excellence? Now, sometimes that's we can't do everything. So we're limiting our choices here and saying, we have to do these things. It'd be nice to do these things, and we're not doing those because time. And my job is to say, did we do it? If we didn't do it, let's keep working on it.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

If we did do it, great, we can we can send this.

SPEAKER_04 51:13

What you're talking about there is that like I heard once there's quality, speed, and cost or something. Can you hit all three? No. But yeah. Are you uh kind of are you do you manage people?

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Uh I do not currently. I have. So I've been in this um yeah, like 13 years, almost almost 13 years now. It'll be August 2013. Um during that time I've been a manager or a uh the other the team lead um for something like four, I don't know. I'd have to I'd have even met something like four or five of those years I was.

SPEAKER_04 52:00

Okay. You told me you stumbled into this. What is what does that mean? How'd you stumble into it?

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Yeah. Uh so I was like I said before, I was like, oh, we need money. That's the kids are little. We need money.

SPEAKER_04 52:14

That's the one I never saw as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Yeah. We need it was somewhere the stuff has to come from somewhere. And it turns out it's expensive. Yeah, they want a lot of money to live in these houses that we have. Yeah. So um so I was in that state and I was looking for work. I applied to some things that were like, oh, maybe I'll work at Whole Foods in the bakery department, you know, because I was just kind of like looking for something first off. But I knew there was this company called Epic that's based in Verona, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison that like hired a lot of people. And I knew one of the things they did was train people to use the software. I was like, oh, training. I've done teaching, I could apply for this training job. It seems like, you know, a pretty easy fit. Um, I applied for that. And they're like, oh, cool. Yeah, we'd like to talk to you. We'd also like you to consider uh a quality assurance position. I was like, okay, I don't know what that is, but let's, yeah, let's let's try it out. Um, and they this is maybe a maybe a theme in my life, I'm realizing, but I I got there. Um, so there's a whole set of interview processes and things. But one of the things they do is an on-site interview where you come in for the day, they you get a tour of the campus, you like meet people, they talk about the jobs. I gave a short presentation because the training interview requires you to do a presentation. Um, but I also did a scenario-based thing for the quality assurance where you talk about what it means to test something. So they didn't have us testing the software right away, but they had they went through an example of what it would mean to like if you're testing a product to see if it meets the specifications, what does that look like? How do you think about it? How would you try to break it apart? Um so anyway, I went through that interview and I thought that was pretty fun. And they were like, Yeah, we would you be interested. And it's like, yeah, it seems like I knew what teaching was and it was fine. I liked it. But like, this seems like kind of fun because it's a lot of like it involves creativity and troubleshooting and like breaking things apart and thinking about things. And that was very that had a lot of overlap with my experience in graduate school, like thinking about things critically, taking them apart, breaking down the components, thinking about the the uh interrelations of things. Um and it also had like connections, I think, with my sense of curiosity, like taking apart, you know, things at home. You would find like an old tool, and like, oh, what'd this do? And I unscrew it, and like sometimes just break it. But like I I was always kind of interested in how things work and willing to try kind of taking them apart. So Huh. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:50

That's a very as in as the Holland Code would say, I don't know if you know what the Holland Code is, but that's a very realistic interest that you like taking physical things apart. I think of you as a thought guy. Like you like to be in your head. So it's interesting that you also have the Yeah, I took thoughts apart too.

unknown 55:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

Yeah, actually I have um there's something I'm gonna bring up later about that. Um It's really interesting. I what when you said this is a theme in my life, what did you mean? What's a theme?

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Oh, um hey, this is interesting. Maybe I should change my life around it.

SPEAKER_04 55:31

This is interesting. I like to write down um things that could become your title. This is interesting. Maybe I should change my life around it.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yeah. You know, take a philosophy class and switch majors, um, get it go through a job interview. There's an interesting day and change which job I was gonna apply for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:50

Well, it reminds me of when Michael talked about getting into the industry he's in and the very first job he had, he got the job and still was kind of like, I have no idea what y'all do. And then they handed him a big old book, and it's like, we're gonna show you. And it's I don't that's another thing that I don't think kids realize that you might get a job, pretty much having no idea what it's gonna be and what you're gonna do. So you kind of told us things you like about the work. That's cool. Um, would you be able to tell me something about your work that matters?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah. Um, so through a series of circumstances, I I work for a different company. Since I started doing QA, this is the fourth company I've worked for. Um, sometimes by choice changing, sometimes not. But uh the one I work for currently uh produces software for helping people manage their businesses. These are people who have uh landscaping businesses, is the like main focus. Do I care about grass? No, I don't. But the the part that matters to me is is similar to all the other things I've worked on in software, is that you're helping someone do something. And a lot of the people we're helping in these cases are people who have their own businesses. A lot of them are starting out like a a person with an idea and some experience, and they're trying to do this business. And there are parts of that that they're really good at and know how to do, and like that's why they have this expertise and have started the company. But then there are things that are harder and we can help with, like, you know, managing the accounts on things, managing like sending out estimates for for their contracts, managing logging time for the employees and tracking how much they're spending on these different things and making sure the employees are the right location at the right time. All the stuff that's like probably not why they got into the business in the first place, right? They probably weren't really good at like laying out yards and figuring out how it's gonna look good with these bushes here and those trees there. That they probably weren't thinking, oh, I love I love making invoices.

SPEAKER_02 57:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Right. Or I love making sure the schedule lines up and I've got everybody efficiently going from point A to point B. So like if there's something we can do that helps people in that case, that is meaningful to me. It's not the biggest meaning. It's not like, oh, this is the ultimate goal of life or something, but it's you're helping people trying to do something with their life, and you're making if you can make that easier for them or better for them in some way. So that part I care about.

SPEAKER_04 58:24

That's a really good answer. And of course I want to get back to philosophy now when you say it's not the ultimate meaning, but it's a meaning. Are you familiar with this the phrase the scandal of particularity?

SPEAKER_01 58:37

I don't know that I am.

SPEAKER_04 58:39

Well, I was gonna ask you anyway, do you still study or read philosophy for pleasure? I mean, do you still kind of do you like books about it?

SPEAKER_00 58:47

And yeah, I don't um it's not everything I read. It's not even the majority of what I read, but I do still read it. Uh I've been doing uh a book club actually with friends from graduate school recently. Uh and so we've been reading a philosophy book that we we meet up and have phone calls about. And like they're not doing it for their research, and it's not about their jobs per se. So it's just like we're interested in the ideas and we're interested in talking about them and we enjoy talking with each other. We'd I that's the thing I miss most about graduate school is the conversations you had with people like sitting around the student lounge and just like talking through ideas and like sometimes about somebody's life, but sometimes pretty abstract. You know, it could be anywhere. But like having having meaningful conversations was like definitely the best part. And so like having this book called has been a way to get back to some of that.

SPEAKER_04 59:41

Um what is what is the main thing you read? You said it's not the main thing I read, but do you have a do you have a main thing?

SPEAKER_00 59:49

I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction. So I read a lot of models.

SPEAKER_04 59:53

We gotta talk about this offline sometime because this we're getting kind of to time, but um I don't know what's happened to me, Den. I don't I can't get into fiction. I'm struggling and I don't know what it is. I can't suspend my disbelief. I I watch a the cheapest, uh, dumbest B movie, and I'm like, yes, I believe everything I'm watching. I'm so enjoying this. But books, I just I'm like, why did they write it that way? Instead of why did the character behave that way? It's weird. I gotta fix it. I'm reading Theo of Golden, recommended to me by Dr. Dina Berry in a prior episode. I I'm hoping I'm gonna love it. It's looking good. It's it's seeming good in paragraph two.

unknown 1:00:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

Yeah. Anyway. Well, I think uh yeah, let's follow up on that sometime because like maybe it's maybe it's finding the right thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:37

Yeah, I gotta I w I do. I want to talk to you about that. Uh okay, so the scandal of particularity is it's it used to be a it was a theological concept, but it's apparently now a philosophical concept. I get all of this from Dave Evans, a guy who writes about designing your life, um, like you would design thinking where you prototype stuff, do that with your life. And um the scandal of particularity is you can we can never experience anything in its ultimate beauty, love, which you kind of mentioned when you said philosophy is about what is art, what is love, what is I think you said that. Um we can't experience the ultimate of any of those things. We can only experience it in very specific particular moments in time. That's why, you know, a sunset can just sweep us away. So beautiful, so wonderful. But kind of the minute it's a minute it's over, we're going, I should do, you know, I should do this every night. I want to see this again, I want to see it more, I want to see more orange and yellow. And and um, so we have it's all we can really do is begin to notice those moments of particularity and um embrace them and and even maybe manufacture them a bit to where we're trying to open our curiosity to and that concept has really helped me. It's really helped me to be like because sometimes I've had moments in life where I'm like, this is it, this is life. And when it goes away, then what am I supposed to when it comes when Monday shows up again and it's not that I'm not living my full, you know, anyway. It's a really helpful, helpful concept for me. Um you talked about you like to how did you say it? Take apart thoughts. I think that's how you said it. Um what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

Probably a lot of different things. The the thing I was thinking about though is it's it's not it's not completely dissimilar to me to like taking apart a a I would take apart toys or like old tools or some things like I'd be like, I don't know what this box is at grandpa's, but it's got screws. I'm gonna like this sometimes led to problems, I will say. But like not not major disasters, but it's it wasn't the safest always to do these things. People weren't always pleased, and then they came back and like things were taken apart. But um I they have some tendency to do that with things we think about. I have a lot of tendency to do with language. Um I have a hard time just hearing things and like just I like sometimes just going with the way we say things. I'm like, why is it like that? Why do we what does that phrase mean? What if we have a metaphor? What's it about?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

Like I do that too.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

Why do I want to kill two birds with one stone? What are these birds doing? Like am I gonna eat them later? Or what like you know, so it's like I it can get in the way of good communication sometimes because if I get too distracted by the rabbit hole of like also people don't always appreciate being told that the way they said something is kind of weird or that, you know, like they used the wrong word or you told me that once on my blog.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:50

I was very grateful.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

I changed the spelling because I but I even even more than that though, that's just like if not that that's not interesting, but like sometimes that can be just the surface level of it. I think I like taking apart thoughts in the sense of like, why do I think this should I keep thinking it, right? When I encounter the situation. Or why do I react this way? I uh this example would be like uh sometimes I will have like a reaction to seeing someone do something where I'm like, I'm like, oh, why are they doing that? Or like, ugh, they shouldn't, you know. But I'm like, why do I feel that way? Because like I would tell you, like uh, let's say someone wears a some kind of outfit. I'm like, what are they doing? And I would tell you, people should dress however they like, they should be comfortable and free, however they want to express it. I don't like I'm not like I don't think we all have to like wear the right clothes or something. But sometimes I didn't have a reaction, like, oh, what are they wearing? I'm like, okay, so what's that about? Why do I why do I feel this way? Why is this happening? And not just letting that be. Not maybe, oh yeah, they're dressed bad, but like, why am I saying that? Why am I feeling this? It doesn't mean I don't sometimes still have those reactions, but like I don't like to just let them sit there and be like, well, this is the way the world is, and that person is dressing wrong.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:14

Like, I love that you answered this question by you like to take apart your own thoughts. I think I thought that you were that you well, I think you do also like to question why other people believe or think the way they do. But your immediate what you went to was checking yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like I could I do it with other things. I definitely do it with other people, like and other things that things I read, things I hear. I'm like, mm, I don't know about that. Let's take and sometimes like I'm like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. But like I at least like to like take the pause.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

See if I can make sense of it. See if there's a different way of thinking.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:53

I'm gonna quote you in a bit about that. Um, but I first want to say that I one thing I find really interesting is what makes humans. Distinct. And you told me once that humans have the ability to pass down stories. And so we really, the different generations can learn from each other because the stories. I thought that was so beautiful. And then this is remind what you're saying about taking apart thoughts reminds me that I've read in this like kind of therapy book that um humans can think about their thoughts, which is unique to to what to our species.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:28

Metacognition.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:30

What is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

Metacognition is the fancy word.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:33

Metacognition, yes. Yes. Metacog that's so meta. Yes. So what I wanted to quote is a Facebook post you had not long ago that really was beautiful and so timely for our times, I feel. And I'm only going to quote a little bit of it, but um it was really meaningful to me because of how social media can feel and then to see you explain why it feels that way. You said, is it okay if I quote if I named the social media platform, the specific one?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:07

Okay. Facebook and most other social media are built to grab your attention and hold it as long as possible, as often as possible by any means necessary. This means grabbing your emotions in whatever way works. And it turns out fear and hate are pretty strong motivators. And then continuing to pump you for more of that attention. This pretty much kills our ability to focus and think through something before reacting, moving on to something else, reacting, et cetera. Which means it's pretty much the worst way possible to think about and discuss important ideas, especially those with a lot of moral weight where you disagree strongly with other people. And then you had some more stuff, and then you kind of wound up, and I love this sentence too. You're not gonna work it out here on any issue because that's not what this space is designed to do. I flipping love that, Din Trinkle. It's so true. I you see the little fights on social media, and and even before the fight, typically, people put out these really certain emotional certainties, said certain twice, on social media as if of course everyone else believes this. And if you don't, you're so stupid and wrong or even evil. And then the fights begin because they don't even realize the different people and thoughts and worldviews that they're addressing. And then you see the fights and you can it's so clear from the outside, y'all are not gonna solve this. Neither one of you is gonna change the other one's mind. So what are you accomplishing? Um, so I really loved that. I don't, I don't know. What do you go to social media for?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

Well, yeah, that's so that it actually ties in pretty well with the taking apart thoughts because that was a day when so yeah, that was that was a day when I was like both wanting to take apart what people were thinking, but then also my reaction. Why did I want to take that, or why did I want to engage? And like I someone had said a thing, and I was like so kind of infuriated by like what seemed to me like just the complete confidence and the complete lack of information, or well, like no research, no thinking about like just like spewing of this idea of like with with such certainty. And I wanted to respond. I wanted to like engage. I was like, but I know I don't think that works. Uh which is why I backed off a lot of it. Like I I would say, I don't know when it's been. It's been it's been years since I regularly posted or did things on Facebook. I've stayed there in part because I know I have some people I'm connected to that I don't probably have their phone number or something. Uh in part because some local businesses use it and like you can't see their menu at a restaurant if they don't you can't get to their Facebook page, you know. So like I I use it mostly for local things, uh, that platform specifically. But I then see things my friends say or people who are Facebook friends who maybe I haven't talked to in 20 years, you know, which is like questionable whether we're still friends in a meaningful sense. But like I still see it, and sometimes I'm like, go down the rabbit hole by clicking on the comment or clicking to see what someone said, and then like and I try not to do it. But then when I did do it, and I was like, ugh. And then I felt like, okay, you're not gonna comment on this person's post because again, you've had this, you've had this. I've played the game, it doesn't work. But I feel like I wanted to say something and not just be passive in that moment, and hopefully somebody will get something out of it, which I'm glad to hear you did. Um probably not the people I wished who would have.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:48

I know, I know. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

But I yeah, I I know what that was in response to. And like I a lot of times if you tell me you're gonna tell me something I said before, I'm like, uh-oh, who knows if I agree with myself anymore. But that one I I pretty much, yeah, agree with.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:05

And I quoted you in an article once and you wrote to me, I think I recognized myself in that article, but I'm pretty sure you you told you said it more poetically than I did, which is not true, but you thought so.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:14

That's funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:15

Yeah. Um I just thank you for putting something good like that out into the world and helping us. Have you had experiences off social media where you have a discussion with someone where maybe it started, they think so differently. And in the middle, you were able to at least understand each other. I don't think the goal should ever necessarily be to change each other's minds, but yeah, where you felt understood.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

Yeah, I think so. I think I think the main thing that helps if you have something else that like keeps you connected to that person, or is it the reason for the conversation, which is probably also part of why it's bad on social media because you're just like dropping in on words. But like I know I've had conversations with people I love and disagree with about things, but we can have it's it's amazing how we can suddenly have this conversation about a charged topic and probably be okay getting to a lot of it. Not, you know, not always, not perfectly, but like it turns out there's like just in general, in my experience, a less heat when you're talking to the person as the person Absolutely. And not just their point of views that you disagree with. It also like I think the other thing it allows in a conversation in particular is like you can have a back and forth. Like I can say a thing and tell if like if your face is like or you're like you you get mad and you say something like, oh no, no, I didn't I'm sorry, I I misspoke, or you we have a different context for this, and I didn't mean that. And I think we we often come to the words we see on social media as if it's we were having a conversation with the person, but no, it was kind of at a random, and they might have been thinking about something else and not really clarified that. And you're coming into it with your context, and you're like, and maybe you're already emotionally charged, and then like you respond in this way, and it's like if you'd been together in the same room and they'd say, you know, I'm like, oh, that's weird, or tell me more. I don't I don't think I get that. I don't think I agree. And it may not have been like, no, you have to know that you're completely wrong about this, and what you said was evil.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:20

I love that. I think that's what people are missing when they just spew kind of vitriol, um, is that they're forgetting they're they can't possibly be thinking, this is my dear uncle that I love that I might be speaking to. Um, they're just thinking hate that they're speaking to like you described in that Facebook post as it went on, that um we all assume that the other side is coming at us hatefully and with with yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:48

It's in a lot of ways, it's like walking into a room blindfolded and just saying whatever you were thinking about.

unknown 1:13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:56

Because like I I will tell you, I go in like I would go into my grandma's house different than I would go into a friend's house or into my brother's house, or like Oh my gosh. But we have these conversations, like, oh, I wasn't thinking about grandma reading that. I was thinking about my enemies reading it, right? I was thinking about everyone who agrees with me reading it and something that someone didn't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:19

Yes, yes, that's that's the key. Um the other really important thing I want people to take from that post is these companies profit from our ain't from our fights. And so surely at least we can all agree we don't really care to do that for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:36

So I don't. Mark Zuckerberg has enough houses, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:41

I think he does. Yeah. He's yeah. He's got one.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:43

Some might say too many.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:45

Yeah, some what some some would say. But uh I wanna I sort of I mean, I'm like, we're like way over. Are you fine? I won't find it should I jump? Okay. So I'd like to ask, I think about your kids. Um what maybe you talked to them about when it comes to work in school, if you feel you were able to impart like your own lessons that you or if they kind of did their own thing too and got to learn their own lessons.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

Yeah. Uh I was I would say I'm I was heavily shaped in my parenting and especially around things like this by experiences I had. Uh sometimes with people telling me what not to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:25

And like how it like sometimes felt really bad, and I felt like they didn't understand and hadn't really listened to me.

unknown 1:15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

They may have been completely right, but I just that's it, it felt kind of crushing in a way. That experience, and then the experience of like the fact that I learned a lot of things along the way and changed things in my life, and some of the most significant and best parts of my life were because I'd made a different decision than I thought I would have. So I tried to give my kids a lot of space uh to figure out what they wanted to be and do, and just to work me on this, of course, uh, because they're humans. Um So I didn't, I was never like if I if I had an error, it was probably in like not giving quite as much structure as I could have, or pushing them towards some of these things and like leaving them room. I think they appreciate some of the room too. They've told me that, you know, like yeah, thank you for not like just telling us what to do all the time or making us do something. Or um, you know, and like as a parent, you always I think worry that you didn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:30

I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:31

Not enough or too much, depending, right? Um But I I did try to do that and I tried to as best I could help them understand that they have to figure out what worked for them, what are they interested in, what do they care about. And that can change too. But like try to find the thing that works. So the the basic biggest example in my mind with my two kids, like uh my oldest finished college, did it in four years, got you know, got honors, great student. My youngest went to a a college and like after a year it was like it wasn't working. I had tried to switch halfway through and just it wasn't working. I think it wasn't the time. And I also kind of thought that before they went. But with with my youngest, I was like, I've I've learned that you have to learn things for yourself. There, like if you come to me with a question, you'll listen to me. But if I come to you with an answer, you don't hear it. You're someone who has to like go through some things to learn them, because and I've just I've just seen it over and over.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:35

Little practical things or big life things, like that's what for Dominic, that's what Dominic has to do. And so I'm like, okay, well, how can I help you? How can I be supportive and be there? But like also know that you're gonna find your way, and it's not always gonna be the way I would recommend. It wouldn't be choices I necessarily think. Oh, I would do that, or that's the best idea. And, you know, it's working. They they're they're paying bills, they're, you know, they've they've found jobs when they lost jobs, they've they've maintained friendships, they have taken piano lessons because they really wanted to learn piano, and like so they've started doing things uh to make a rich life for themselves. And without going straight to college, without all that successful. That's I tried to impart like work matters, it it does things, it's not always bad, but it's not the most ultimate thing, and you've got to figure out where it fits in your life, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:32

It's like Yeah. I'm so glad I got to that question because I love hearing what you your experience when you were a kid, and then I think we parents have a tendency to react over overreact to what we did or didn't like, and then we become the opposite to where then our kids just gonna have to repeat the cycle. And and I love to hear if we can figure out how to sort of balance doing to our kids what we wish yeah, switching how we treat our kids because we didn't want to be treated that way, and then maybe we missed the thing that yeah, there's so much questions I have about how to parent when um you're sometimes trying to parent differently than you were parented or um or the same. And yeah, I actually remember asking your wife once, um, because I do have a great um I had great parents and there were some things that were I wanted to replicate, but I honestly didn't know how. Like, how can what if I can't replicate that? And and Andrea said you will because you know you are it. Like you what what you admire, what you uh enjoyed and experienced, you will will naturally um replicate. And of course I naturally replicated some things I wish I hadn't, but a lot of really good ones too, I think. But um I yes, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Uh she's really wise.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:01

Your wife? Yeah. Shout out. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think I'll do you think I could get her on the show sometime?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:09

That's gonna be a harder ask, I would guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:11

Yeah, I would guess too. But I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

I think she'd be happy to have a conversation, but having it recorded and having people listen to that might be might be a bigger ask. Um It makes me think about what we were talking about earlier with my dad admiring him, liking things about that. I think something that I didn't realize well in time was that there were ways we were different. That means I can't be him. And not in a bad way, not like, oh, he's wrong, but just oh, we're different. We push things differently, we feel differently about things, we have different things that matter to us or motivate us or keep us going, you know, like so like even if that had been my goal, I couldn't have been him.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

There are parts of him that are very much part of me. Always.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:01

Yeah. But like I I think I just didn't know as a kid, I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna be like just like my dad. And you're never gonna be just like anybody else.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:12

Great point. Okay, let's let's intend on that great point, sort of, but let's go to it worked for me because I love this segment too. Um, I like to ask something that worked for you once, like an aha moment, or it regularly works for you to help you find more meaning in life.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:31

Um I will be specific about work, I guess. Like, because there's a lot of things we could talk about, or a lot of things about life, but like I will say there was an aha moment for me, and then ways I have like tried to try to improve on that or think about it and incorporate it so it's more of a regular habit. Uh and it was in that job I had, the first job I had doing quality assurance, where I'd kind of stumbled into it, and then I like was pretty decent at it, and so I could keep doing it, right? It was good enough that they were gonna keep me around and like want me to be there and let give me opportunities to do things. And I think the aha moment was for me was like, I'd always thought you needed the job to do the thing that you cared about as like kind of really directly, right? Like teaching, because I like interacting with these students. And like I didn't think, oh, I want to help make software. That abstractly was like, I don't, I don't really care about that. Like it wasn't a thing that I was like, I didn't hate it, but I was like, I wasn't it wasn't I never dreamed of helping make software. But what I learned is I really enjoyed interacting with people working on a team, people trying to accomplish something difficult where you needed different perspectives and different contributions at different times, and people talking and communicating, all working really hard in their different contributions to like produce something that none of them could have done by themselves. And like having the context of how why that mattered to the customer, why that mattered to the company, how that would work with the timelines and logistics and the other things that already existed, that process to me of working with people and and collaborating and communicating was super rewarding. And I wouldn't have I wouldn't have been able to tell you that you did that at a software company. But it was, I really loved that. So it wasn't like, oh, I found my dream job in the sense of doing the thing as if the thing we did was like, but the way we did the thing, the processes and the the people and the interactions are like, oh, this is great and super interesting. Like this, you know, doesn't make all the bad days go away. But when I'm like, it was an aha moment for me. It's like, oh, this isn't just paying the bills. That's mainly why I'm here, because otherwise I would do something else. But there are things I can get out of this without necessarily being like, ah, this is the thing I love. I don't I love this task so much as no, I love this process and love these people and how we can do these things together. So that's the aha moment. And then what I try to do is find ways to like and read about work, listen to podcasts about work where I can try to make more of that. Like, how can I help me do more of that? But how can I help other people on my teams do more of that? Are there ways that we can all be intentional and find these things that are the best part of work and minimize the things that everybody kind of hates about work when we can?

SPEAKER_04 1:24:24

That's beautiful. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I need in my life. That's so good. I've been thinking so much about what kind of in, let's say it this way, went wrong with me and work. And I think I really tied meaning so like I needed to feel I belonged to the work. I have this real annoying love and obsession for authenticity. It's gotta feel like me. I used to pack 10 different pajamas for a two-night stay because I didn't know which one I would feel like that night. You know, it's like it has to belong to me. And my day jobs have typically not felt that way. And I think I missed out on that part where, yeah, but what part of it does the the way we're doing it? That's a really great way to say that. Good job. Okay, I'm gonna we'll we'll go ahead and and say goodbye right now, and then I'll stop. And maybe you can fix my fiction problems. Just kidding, because I know you have plants, but I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for being here, and please don't let this be the last time because I love conversations with you, and you have so many great things to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:34

Yeah, great. I I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

Let's not let us up here.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:39

Okay. Thank you, Dan.