Things You Should Know for Your Adult Education Journey

John: You’re listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

John: To change your experience of life and work with every episode.

Tony: So tune in, grab your notebook, and let’s go. Let’s go.

John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today we’re here to talk to you about adult education and how that shows up in the real world. Some real strategies for you if you’re thinking about furthering your education, if you have been on a quest to continue learning, if you’re looking to educate yourself in a way that’s going to impact your career, and have something that you can legitimately use as you move into the rest of your day, your life, this episode is for you. So stick around if anything there resonates with you. And Tony, I’m going to let you kick us off with your education journey because, you know, I know I’ve been inspired by a lot of the things that you’ve done through your education journey. And now that, you know, moving into your doctorate, I just want to hear from you starting off like What got you to where you’re at today in your adult education journey?

Tony: Thanks, man. That’s I appreciate the compliments. It’s definitely been a journey. I’m glad you use that word a couple of times. Yeah, man, it’s it’s been it’s been a long haul, but it’s been good. So my education track started with my bachelor’s and just going to school at Stephen F. Austin. So it’s a small to mid-sized school in rural East Texas. It’s a good school. I had a lot of fun there. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a straight-A student by any means in undergrad. I was definitely having fun, you know, I was a frat boy. I did all those things and just, you know, had a really good social experience and it kind of In high school, I was a pretty much a straight A, straight A and B student. So it was kind of a flip for me. But once I graduated, I went back and I got my master’s and I wasn’t a straight A student then. And that was kind of like my own way to just prove to myself that, hey, you still can make good grades. on a regular basis. So, but it was also to further my career with working with public organizations. So I got a master’s of public administration and it was good. It took two years. And you know, when I turned in my capstone project, which is like your final, it’s almost like a version of a dissertation for your master’s. What would you call them? I guess my advisors, they’re like, you have a shell of a dissertation for a doctor. You should go get a doctorate. And if they never told me that, I would not have had the confidence to go for a doctorate. But they also kind of screwed me up because they gave me no real advice on, hey, you should get a doctorate. That’s not advice you really should just give people. Because you need to be clear. You need to be walking them, holding their hand. can towards getting that so you can be more specific. But anyway, so after that, I kind of I think I took I took about a year break and then I went back for a doctorate at TSU, Texas Southern University. And I did a year and a half, I think I did like three semesters and it just wasn’t for me. And I didn’t think it was the doctorate that wasn’t for me. It was the program. The program was urban planning and environmental policy. So I stopped the program. I never quit anything. So it was really like a very, um, it was a rough time cause I never quit anything. I just finished it. I just do it, whatever it is, you know, mama mentality. Shout out to Kobe Bryant, man. I just couldn’t, it just didn’t make sense after a while. And so I quit and I went back though, um, then this last, uh, this year actually to get. to go for a doctorate at University of Southern California, so it’s a completely different breath of fresh air, whole different program, hybrid, mostly virtual. I get to go to California and it’s a program in organizational change and leadership which matches very specifically with what I do for a living and what I do for fun what I do period so it’s been a great journey so far.

John: Wow and going in for your first so what did going in for your first PhD and learning from that experience help influence moving into this most recent doctoral program?

Tony: Man, I’ll be honest, like the first program was rigorous. It was in person. It was, you know, pre pandemic, pre covid. So I’m taking night classes. So it was very, very rough. I mean, I was I made A’s, you know, for the most part in that program, too. So that was good for my confidence. But what I say, what I biggest thing I took away from that program was my ability to read very fast. reading like really, really fast. Because in that program we had both programs that have a lot of reading. So my doctor currently is a doctor of education. The TSU program was a PhD. And PhDs are different. PhDs are a totally different beast than any other doctor program. I mean, I can’t say what it’s like going for a medical doctor program. But PhDs period are for real. And so the level of reading that I had to do was massive. And so I started reading this book that one of the professors recommended. It was called How to Read a Book. I think I shared it with you. And he brought up a great point. He brought up a great point. He said, the professor, he’s like, You know, people have to learn how to swim. You just can’t jump into the water and just start swimming. You need to learn how to swim. And he’s like, reading is the same thing. People think you just get a book and you just start reading, but you actually have to learn how to read. And so never heard that before. Never thought of that before. I got that book and it made perfect sense and it helped me become not a speed reader, but someone who understands how books are formatted and understands how to get what you need out of books. And I definitely take that into my program now. And when a lot of my cohort and peers kind of are sweating bullets and trying to figure out, you know, how am I going to get all this reading done in my current program? I’m kind of relaxed because, well, I kind of have some tools that you probably don’t because of my failed experience of our first doctoral program. And I don’t call it a failure, I’m just joking, but my first experience. What’d you think about that book? I’m curious.

John: Oh man, I think you said it really well when it comes to it helps you get what you want or what you need out of a book by understanding its structure and also understanding what’s the author’s purpose here. Like any non-fiction book, any self-help book, any, you know, and then when you get to a scholarly text or a scientific text, right, there are areas that you can go that just give you the highlights, that just give you the gist. Like, you know, look at the conclusions first. It’s not a novel. You know, you’re reading research. Like then you can go back like from the notes to find the parts of the research that you specifically want to pull from or from a nonfiction book. These authors have a purpose. Yeah. Any nonfiction book where you’re looking to learn something, the author got into that to really convey probably three key messages. It’s always really concise, the key messages that the author wants to get through, and then he or she tells that story to multiple different formats and audiences while writing the book is how I see it. So if you can, if you can distill what the author wants to communicate, it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for out of the book just from the table of contents. And I’ll tell you what, before that book, I used to just flip through tables of contents and just start reading a book. After that book, I religiously go through and highlight the table of context, like what are going to be the key chapters that I need to up my focus level on and why.

Tony: And even the back of the book, it’s important things on the back. And I’m glad you talked about the table of contents. You got the abstract, you got all these people, the introduction. Sometimes I used to skip that too, because I’m like, okay, let’s get to chapter one. And it’s like, the author is really setting you up the whole time. I even read the recommendations from other people, what they said. But I’ll tell you a key for people that are listening and wondering, how can you apply this? I’m gonna give you one right here. It’s very simple. I got literally a book in front of me. If you read the first sentence of a paragraph and the last sentence of a paragraph, you can find out what that paragraph was about without having to read the entire thing. You can read the entire thing, of course, and you should, but if you’re speed reading or you’re rushing, just getting in that first sentence, like really understanding that first sentence of what the author wrote, and then looking at that last sentence, you can kind of see the beginning and end, like the bottle, the closed top of the bottle of what they’re trying to say. So, just a tip of how important that book is. How to read a book, we’ll put in the show notes for you. You heard two people right here just telling you how amazing it is. So, if you’re struggling with reading, it’s probably just because you really don’t have the tools that you need to really maximize your reading experience. Right.

John: And I ask people this all the time, like, when’s the last time you were taught how to read? And every single person is like, I don’t know, third grade or something like that. Right. And it’s like, the material that so the last time you were educated on reading the material that you were reading was third grade and now you’re and now you’re reading peer-reviewed research and expected to have the same the same level of reading skill no it’s time to up level that education so I think that’s a good way to segue into the essentialness of adult education. It’s about, and when you talk through your path, and my path was a little different, I went in and knocked out two bachelor’s degrees and a minor in four and a half years. So my undergrad was like drinking through a fire hose. 19 to 22 credits a semester, it was a lot. And I got that done and went straight into the workforce and I realized as I was getting older and as I was thinking about do I want to go back to school, do I want to get an MBA, do I want to get a PhD, I don’t really know because I didn’t have that clarity on what I would go back to study because as an adult, after you step into your career for a few years or after you have had several experiences and you’re really starting to get into the way the world works, what people value, what businesses value, what your customers value. It doesn’t come from your degree at all. It just comes from what you can create with the knowledge that you have. Can you create value? Can you create value for an organization through analysis or through Leadership, can you create value for a customer by creating a product, by creating something that they can visually, tangibly, audibly use or hear, right? And you start to experience what the world actually values and how education can support that. And I think that’s why a lot of these specialized program certifications and trainings like small modular for furthering adult education are becoming so popular these days because they can apply specifically to a skill set that you want to learn and apply immediately. And that’s not taking away from secondary education, from higher level education, moving into master’s, Ph.D. level. My view on that is being really intentional about what you want to focus on and what you want to get out of it. And I haven’t been there yet. And I know that if and when I go back to school, I’m going to know exactly what I want to study and why I want to study it. Right. And how I want to apply that knowledge to my career or the impact that I want to make in the world specifically. And that’s actually what I see. That’s what I see in you, Tony. I feel like because I remember When you went into the PhD and we were, you know, we were real excited about everything that we were creating in the community and like urban planning was kind of like a pretty solid part of like where we were at that moment. But now the way you’ve stepped into this organizational change and leadership education, like you’re doing that already. You know what I’m saying? Like you’re doing that work in the world already and now you’re just doubling down on it with this more focused higher level education.

Tony: 100%, 100%. And you know, you said it best. When I hear what you’re saying, I think about me pre-doctorate either way. I had already been super high focus or not even focus. I had already been really sensitive to the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So if you never read rich dad poor dad by the standards of That what you can see on the outside of me going after all these degrees. I look like poor dad but I adopted a lot of like Robert Kiyosaki’s rich dad principles in my like personal life in the crux of like how I Manage my finances are different things. So, you know, I Like you said, John, like going whatever degree program someone’s going into, you need to be hyper focused on why and what it’s going to do for you and how you’re going to maximize that opportunity. And, you know, I say like I’ve had I have I have several mentors. I have one mentor specifically, Mr. Allen, for people who know me from high school, you know, you know, BA, you know, Mr. Allen. And man, he really gave me the push to go back for the doctorate on the second try. And he’s like, look at what you’re doing now and how you can maximize it. It’s a very short conversation. And that led me to finding the program that I’m in now. And like you said, John, like doubling down on that. I didn’t know that this program existed and I didn’t know that it would match even the content and the reading and the classes that I take match what I do for a living. So it’s very, very eerie for it to match so well. I’d say if you’re thinking about going back, you know, make sure that you study the marketplace. Make sure that you know there’s a place for you in the market for when you have your degree. And also don’t have these expectations that because you have a degree, a second or third degree, that people are going to just give you all these things and roll out the red carpet for you because it does not work like that. you need to have yourself marketed already, or you need to have the tools to put yourself out there in a way that your degree is just a cherry on top. You are the cake, you are the icing, and the degree is just the thing that just pushes you over the top. Because if you don’t have the rest, especially even just the confidence to go out and set your own rate, or go out and negotiate a salary, or go out and apply for jobs or whatever it may be start a company whatever it may be then i’m not gonna say you wasting your time but you could be setting yourself up for failure in that fulfillment that you were chasing going after the degree you may not you may still have a void there.

John: Right i love how you’re saying that that the degree isn’t the end in itself. Right. It is to supplement your mission and to build on your current mission. And people might be in the place in their lives where they’re discovering what their mission is. Right. And that’s OK, too. You can do that through school in a way, but make sure you’re utilizing your undergraduate or graduate time to discover what that mission is. Find what you’re curious about, what interests you, what keeps your attention, and keep following that. Go a little bit deeper. Have conversations with people in that field. Ask people randomly to be your mentor. People love talking about their own expertise and their own experience. It is a gift for someone to be a mentor to you. So, ask someone. Someone that you feel that you’re even just curious about. Go ahead and get a mentor there for the heck of it. And that’s how you start to learn if some of these career paths are a fit for you. And we’re talking about moving to the stage of not having a job, but a mission or a career or a cause or something that you stand for that is not just for a paycheck. But letting your adult education, your certifications, higher education contribute to a mission or something that interests you. And then that way, like the right program will find you and you’ll be in the right program to supplement your mission. And for me, my curiosities were leading in so many different directions. I mean, my education after undergrad was 500 hours of yoga teacher training. And I’ll tell you what, the impact that that had on the way that I showed up in the meeting room or the way that I was showing up in my professional life, it was, talk about impact per dollar compared to a, you know, compared to higher education. Wow i mean it was really profound it really changed the way that i show up in front of a room when it comes to public speaking leading meetings. I’m being able to share on early from a place of authenticity i get really changed a lot of that. And then a lot of my education was in reading, was in educating myself, was in joining these training programs, joining the coach program. I mean, moving into my coaching education was the whole next step of becoming ICF certified. Now I have my National Board of Health exam coming up at the end of October, so that’s So now that was like my second step of education, right? And it didn’t look it didn’t look like yours and like they’re both contributing to our missions now. Right. It’s like so for the listeners, you know, it doesn’t have to look like a master’s degree. It can. It doesn’t have to look like a certification and it can. I have a client that has an engineering degree and then went to a coding boot camp, six month boot camp and just switched career completely into into I.T. program. After a four-year engineering degree, I believe it was mechanical engineering, did a six-month boot camp, switched into programming. And I’m not saying that his knowledge or skills developed in undergrad there didn’t have an impact on his intro into coding, but I’m just saying that you can switch your specializations and follow your curiosity easier than ever now.

Tony: And that’s super important because it’s rare when people choose to match their passion with their career or with their education. You know, if it’s not working for you, if a certain program you’re in isn’t working for you, a career field isn’t working for you, switch. And I mean, switch and be drastic with your switch. Don’t be afraid to drop what’s not working to switch to what is working. I know a similar story, I know someone who was a full-on engineer working oil and gas, stopped, went back to school for a medical degree and is a full-on doctor now after four years later from switching from oil and gas to now as a resident. So, you know, anything can happen. You can change your career. I remember when I made the decision to stop the urban planning, I did a big list of looking over my entire year. And I wrote out all the things that were giving me fulfillment and all the things that were taken away. And that particular program was taken away. And I made the decision right at the end of that year to stop. And so, you know, here we are, four or five years later, I’m back again. And I can tell you that this program is definitely giving me life. It’s definitely giving me fulfillment. But I would not have had this opportunity if I did not make a decision to stop. another one. So it can happen with a career, it can happen with a job, it can happen with a degree, but you have to be okay with seeking out what’s working for you and finding a place that works for you, even if it means that you have to take a pay cut even to switch careers just for a little while. And it’s okay to make those changes. And I wanted to also talk about really quickly how to leverage your education when you’re in the workplace. If you’re a student that works full time or has a job or career and you’re getting ready to finish, don’t expect your current job to value you the same just because you have this degree. That is great in theory, but you may want to set yourself up to be sought out from a different company or a different way in the marketplace where someone sees you as more valuable from the time that you spent with that company. and the new degree that you have, because sometimes a company will see you as you, the same you they saw before the degree, and not pay you with your work. So just want to throw that out there too, that whether you’re currently in school, you’re about to graduate, or you’re thinking about going back, or if you already have your second degree, or even your first, if you switch from no degree to having a degree while you’re working with a specific company, Don’t be afraid to switch because someone out there will value you with what you have and certifications included. So don’t forget that.

John: And being able to articulate your value in the language of what? that company is looking for or what they need. It’s an art, right? It’s a skill. There’s a certain way to be able to communicate your value, what you’ve learned, what you’ve experienced. in the context of what another organization needs or even what your own organization needs and you know just to backtrack one little bit to what you said something came up for me around you know you have to say no to some things to say yes to other things And if you’re saying yes to something, you’re also saying no to something else, right? So, you know, if you’re feeling stuck where you’re at, if you’re feeling like there’s, it’s too late to make a shift, it’s too late to do something else, that’s just not true. You can make a shift. You can say no to something to say yes to something else. And you can do that really thoughtfully. You can do that really thoughtfully and leave a current position or a company in a beautiful way. You can not burn bridges, right? Because that’s one thing you definitely don’t want to do, making a shift anywhere. is leave in any bad light there’s just no reason to you know leave all your bridges intact and go explore your curiosities and do that thoughtfully look for mentors look for people that have been there look for examples look for the stats on the program the data but then when it comes into so you’ve made the choice you’ve done the program you’ve You’re in the education program and now you’re looking at, okay, what are my options from there? I would almost say the best thing is to start with your options, to start with where you want to go and the value that you want to market and then get into your education from there and educate it back from the value that you want to create. But then say you’re already in the space where you’re already in a program, you’re looking to extract value from it, then how do I market that? What have I learned that can change the way that I approach my current job? What have I learned that can impact that can impact the bottom line of my current company and how do I articulate that to my management? Specifically, what am I more set up to do now that I wasn’t before? And while you’re being educated, while you’re in your programs, think about these things. When you’re sitting in your classroom, when you’re connecting with your cohort, what am I learning here that applies to my real world job? What am I learning here that applies to what the world needs? And be able to articulate that as you learn and as you develop.

Tony: Super important, super important. And, you know, another thing to that, in my opinion, is more important than the education is the relationships. Right. So if you are in a specific industry. You can get way further ahead if you maximize the relationships within your industry instead of. I’d say having a bunch of degrees. So if you can find the specific group that matches what you are working in, the field you’re in or the industry type you’re in or whatever it may be, just that little sliver, slice of the pie for everybody who does what you do are here. If you can maximize those relationships, you will be way further ahead. than getting degrees and not building those relationships. So just want to encourage you, whether regardless of what industry you’re in, if you are where you want to be from, just so this is my career, this is my industry. Or even if you’re not where you want to be, but you are in a specific place where there is other people that are like you in a job type. If you go to conferences, if you attend virtual things, if you get in the in the chat, if you DM people in those Zoom rooms and make relationships, you can get you can get way further ahead by just people knowing who you are and knowing what you bring. And then if you have degrees and certifications and special specifications, that’ll just that’s just going to add to it. Like I said, that cherry on top.

John: Wow, that’s a beautiful that’s a beautiful place to wrap this up because your network is everything. When we talk about articulating your value, what reflects someone’s value better than a referral, a genuine referral? Like, wow, this person is so-and-so. This person changed my life. This person is so dependable. I would hire them in a minute. The more people that you build that rapport with, and the larger your network and not just larger in service level, but breadth and depth, like looking at deepening some of their relationships as well. So I think that’s some of the beautiful things that can come from a lot of these higher education programs or the cohort that you are placed with and the things that you can get out of that. Whether you’re going to further your education, whether you’re going to specialize, whether you’re going to go for a certification program or something like that, make sure you connect to the people. Connect to the people and they’ll bring you forward and up. So that’s what we’re going to do. And that’s what we’re doing here on this podcast in this community, right? Connecting to present professionals all around the world so we can grow together, learn, grow, together. Right? Onward and upward, my friends. So thank you so much for listening to another episode of the present professional podcast. We’d love to hear your feedback. Please rate us and review us anywhere that you get your podcasts and check us out on the present professional podcast.com. Any other ways do you want to interact with us? We appreciate you as listeners. Take care of my friends.