Hey everyone, its Lee. Sorry about the sound quality. But I am recording this in a hotel room in New Orleans. And I can't get the audio to record in directly in GarageBand on my Mac because reasons I guess so I'm doing this on my phone, which will then import into my Mac, which will then be the intro to this episode.
Yeah, because ADHD I guess Anyways, welcome back. Today is part two of Amy and my conversation about creating spaces and nurturing neuro divergence. And there's difference in general, how do we how do we create spaces where people can flourish instead of
you know, deny who they are, basically, and change who they are? How do we have a how do we help people embrace who they are, and feel confident in who they are,
you know, in to help them to be not just successful, but also happy in that success. So we ended off with last episode with Amy asking that very question. And I am going to pick up the conversation with a response that, unsurprisingly, is sports related and has to do with swimming? Shocker. So enjoy part two of our conversation? Well, I think this for me, and I'm, when I'm thinking about it, this is where coaching swimming for me has really helped me through that. Because, again, it's it's not so much of a team sport that everybody on the team has to you know, like, everybody's has strengths. Everybody has weaknesses in the pool. Right? And I think of myself and my son as like the diametrically opposed people like I was a backstroker. Right, and this is how you get slotted in right. And it's the same thing in track and even team sports, you get slotted into a position because either you really like it, you sort of have that the physicality for it, I don't want to say natural, but it's like, you know, even if somebody isn't a quote unquote, natural, they have to really be passionate about that particular thing to work hard enough to get to the point where I'm the regular third baseman, let's just say for like, young soccer baseball purposes, right, like, Yeah, but
I was just picturing you playing third base in the pool there for a
second. No, don't do that. Weird, but, but like I was a backstroker and a middle to distance freestyler um, you know, I worked on sprinting, but I was never a sprinter. Right. I also can't swim breaststroke to save my life. Oh my God, that's my best stroke. But it's my son's best stroke. It is by far my son's best stroke. It is the one he loves the most in the world. He can swim backstroke save his life, you know, freestyle is touching go because he can't point his toes he there. This is the funny thing. Like he can't literally can't point his toes is getting better. But like you asked, my daughter does ballet, she said he can extend her ankle all the way around, and I'm like, put your toe and like his foot moves like a millimeter. And he's like, I'm pointing it. And yeah, I've seen that too. And then and then I'm like, I'm, I'm trying to like stretch his foot down. I'm like, Man, these are some tight tendons right here. But that makes it hard with less foot flexibility, it's hard to flutter kick button, all my swimmers, right? All of my swimmers have a favorite stroke that they want to invest their time in to, you know, be the fastest at or a distance that they like, and you have to kind of cross train them. You can't do everything at once but, but at a certain point. You also have to say, you know, like my son, he's not gonna be backstroker just like at one board I just say I'm not gonna be a breaststroker and that's okay. Right and and also just like for technique and style, like brushstrokes. A great example of that is if you watch the Olympic breaststroke, no one has the same breaststroke. No. Right? Butterflies all look basically the same backstroke freestyle, but breaststroke, everyone has not completely different, but everybody has a really different breastroke style. Yeah, so it becomes as a coach, you have to figure out like, what is this person's morphology? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? And how can I help them do their stroke in the best way because this tweak for this swimmer won't work on this swimmer and will actually slow them down because of all of these reasons and and again, it's sort of like saying there's nothing there's nothing wrong with it. Right? That's just the kind of thing right and also all of our swimmers have different goals. Um, and and you know you in and again, this is it's a well maybe not all all teams and all sports but our I mean, reason why I'm coaching for this team is because we have this added Dude, is that like, all goals are valid goals? Yeah, right. Um, you know, we
don't have that in the academy? No,
no, that's exactly it. Right. And there's, we have lots of different measures, hopefully getting more different, more measures of success. One of the one of the one of the problems is, of course, is that, like, how do we make sure, particularly in girls and young women, that they don't quit the sport, the moment that they're like, Well, I guess I'm not going to the Olympics, or, you know, and then they're just like, I'm out. Whereas guys will stay on a little bit longer for that, and participate. But, but again, it's, it's this all goals are valid, right? And, and the other nice thing is, is that you're competing against a clock. And so there's always the possibility for kind of improvement. So even if I never improved to the point where I'm going to make the Olympic team, I can still improve and see excellence for my own, that my own standards have. And I can compare it to others, but I can just compare it to myself. And so it isn't that
simple. Yeah, I love this example, so far, because like, you're mentioning how like breastroke has different ways to be successful. I mean, like, the research has been done in running to right like, so they'll say, like, for many years, like this is the optimal gait. And you should like, you know, your your feature turnover, like 180 beats, like per minute, between 170 180 beats per minute, and like, you should lift your knees to this degree in your elbow should move like this. And, you know, for this type of foot, you should wear this type of shoe and like, increasingly, what the research is finding, and it's like, people know, what their optimal gait is that if you let people train at running, they will find for their own bodies, the most economical and least injurious way of moving their bodies to get between point A and point B, like they're like, and the best shoes are the ones actually like to get this this is now the advice, the ones that are the most comfortable, right? You don't need an expert to watch you run around the store. They're like, try on running shoes, find a pair that's comfortable running those until they're not comfortable. And then get a new pair of shoes, right? Move your arms the way you want. Like have your your turnover speed v what like BB on friends? Yes, yes, exactly. Right. Well effective for Phoebe. But like, so breastroke has many different ways like are going to be attached to like what your body is. And then people have different goals for swimming. It's like I want to you know, maintain fitness and in a non weight bearing activity, or I want to get faster or I want to like just be an alternate on the high school team or I want to go to the Olympics. And you can coach for that. And yeah, but also like swimming. Right? You can join a swim club. And but some of you can be back strokers. And some of you can be lifeguards, right? Like there are different ways, completely different ways of accomplishing a goal called swimming. Where places are like that, too, or could be what we were talking about. Why does everybody have to be on the highway at eight in the morning? Yes, why? Right? That's like, there's like saying everybody who swims like you can only do freestyle, and you only like breathe on every fourth, like like this. And you can only
do hundreds, there are only 200 It's only 200 free. That's
all for free. That's the only event that there is. And if you can't do that we can't swim. Like we know from swimming. That's ridiculous, right? But we arrange work like that. And we arrange like scholarly writing like that, which is about people's voice, right? It's about being who you are, right? And writing either like from your experience, because we're supposed to evacuate everything of the personal we're supposed to become the sort of universal abstraction of a brain on a stick. Right? That's just pure reason. Doing thought experiments, right thinking the thank you thoughts, thinking that thankee thoughts, you know, uprooted from any sort of context, which is like, great when your own sort of intellectual and cognitive position is so profoundly normative, that you experience it as universal and abstract, right? Yeah, but not so great, when you're already quite attuned to the differences between you and everybody else. And they're like, Well, you don't get to write from your own position. You write from this neutral position, would you like I feel like the neutral position, right, is the position that's most natural to the people who are dominant in society? Yeah, right. And they're like, that's great. But you entered our institution, so you must become this person. Right? You are now only going to swim 200 free. And if you can't swim 200 Free you are not a swimmer. And you're like, but I'm, I'm fine. In open ocean swimming, right? Yeah. Or I can try
50 I can pop off at 50 Come on.
Yeah, I'll drain half the pool doing like a 50 meter butterfly. But get there like before I started kind of thing but like, No, it's not 200 free, it doesn't count and, and you can imagine being really, really good at something that's not 200 free. And then if you're told over and over by everyone who can give you a gold star, or annoying to a swimmer or give you a badge like the last Red Cross badges that I have all my badges. But then you would start to say to yourself, I guess I don't know how to swim. Yeah, even if you do and like is life not hard enough without setting our quality of success being I have transformed myself from my natural inclinations and talents. You know, in a bid to get better. I have lost everything that I enjoyed. all of the skills that I knew how to have all the ways that I was able to express myself and move through the world to only partially succeed, therefore, I'm no good at any of this. Right?
That doesn't that fit into I mean, is you say, Isn't it sad? And then I'm like, yeah, it is. But at the same time, that's, that's our narrative, right? The overcoming narrative. Yeah, right. We want those stories. Like they overcame poverty, they overcame, you know, the, their immigrant status, they overcame, you know, whatever it is, and in the name of success, right, and they are successful. And those are the examples that we hold up. Right, as, as aspirational as reasons why we don't have to change anything, because if they did it, then why can't everybody else do it? But but you know, these are, these are the things we celebrate as a society. Again, which makes it you know, really, and I can even think of, you know, but even in sports, where there are different ways to excel, even then, you know, we love the story of like, well, I couldn't, I couldn't swim breaststroke, but I really wanted to do and I actually, this is actually sort of I, I internalize that, and I, you know, my senior year of high school, or one of my last year swimming Anyways, before I went to university, and I really good backstroke, good closing speed, because I was just I trained distance swimming, and my butterfly was halfway decent. And I was like, You know what, I could do a really good 200 I am if I could just get my breaststroke. And I'm like, I know what, I've avoided it because I don't like it. And I'm not good at it, but I'm not going to avoid it anymore. I'm going to try like, I'm never going to be a little Olympic breaststroke or anything, but like, I want to put the good effort in to at least try to improve my breaststroke enough so that I have a really good 200 I am time. Right. That's a great goal now. Yeah. And then I and was like I was and ended up wrecking both my knees. Right? Because Because I would I just I ignored my body saying my knees screaming at me going like this. We appreciate this. But like, No, this is not, you know, and so ended up like doing a flip turn one day and warm up and both my knees locked, and then ended up having a physio and all that kind of stuff. And so it was, you know, and so it's that balancing, right? There's a good goal, and I'm going to change myself into a breaststroker. And then sometimes it's just like, No, but ignoring the sort of signs leading up to that, like, Oh, my knees are usually sore after I swim breaststroke. That's probably because I'm not trying hard enough, right? And that same sort of ways, like I'm not quite fitting in, or I feel like shit when I do fit in. Maybe it's because I'm just not trying hard enough.
Yeah. And that's the difference. And that's, that's exactly like the right example, I think we that's really the difference between learning and growing, right? On the one hand, and on the other hand, trying to be something that you're not, yeah, right, or trying to transform yourself, because like your knees are saying to you, Lee, this is a joint that moves in one plane, only, right, forward and back. And I know you only want us to move forward and back. But we are a weak joints in your body for some reason. So that when you are eggbeater, right, your legs in this kick that you need to do for this stroke. We're going sideways. Yeah. And you're like, Yeah, but other people's knees. Don't do that. Yeah, exactly. But other people's knees. Don't do that. Don't do that, right. But if you if you like, if you're like me, and you go to piano and you're like, and your teachers like make that troll faster. I'm like, Do you think I'm not trying? And he's like, Oh, well, why don't you try it with these fingers? I think your technique is wrong. And then I tried the other way. I'm like, oh, yeah, actually, I can it doesn't hurt. It achieved the goal I want and I just learned something. So I didn't like override something fundamental. To my body. I'm not saying like, come on, knees. Try harder, because joints can't try joints just are. Yeah, like the dude Exactly. Joints abide like, that's it. And I was like, Oh, this is something simple that I can change that doesn't tax me unduly right? So that the difference between growing and growing would be like, you know, I want to swim this particular distance quite fast. And I know I have to train out farther than that distance, right? You have to get build my endurance that eventually I'll get my speed that's learning and growing, right? Trying to transform yourself into a sprint swimmer. Right? When you're really good at endurance, you're like, if I can go far at a pretty good speed. Surely I can do a shorter distance shorter, just faster than everybody. Right? And you could try and try and try and like you find that you're getting tired or and tired or because you're overtraining and like now your distance times are getting slower. That's that's trying to change yourself. Right. And I think we've never had the experience of anybody teaching us how to know that difference. Between what type of effort is a growth effort and one type of effort is a self denying effort. Right?
Yeah, well in so much of so much of K through 12 are self denying efforts. Absolutely right, like so much to K through 12. I mean, even just sit still, you know, sit still don't talk, even for not neurodivergent kids, right? Like, yeah, there's there's always that space. I'm going to go on a side quest because I just I have to laugh because I brought up the knees and you talked about what the best fit is. So like that my knees like you're saying the joints abide. So I went to physio and for my knees, and I have the type of feet and knees that when I go to get fitted for running shoes or go to physio, they ask everyone to gather around. Oh, I love that. So mighty. This textbook
weirdo. Yeah, and they're crazy joints. Yes. Yeah.
So so I'm flat footed and knock kneed, like severely flat footed and knock made and turn. Yes. And so my legs don't aren't actually straight. They go in an ankle of a note. And like, he draws the angle for my knee, like, and he's like, I don't like this angle. They know, they just No, but that's what I believe you're at. And he's just like, and then I'll go and I'm like, and again, changing trying to change myself into something or not. You know what, I think I should run everybody else's running. And everybody says how good running is for you. But I have like that. So maybe if I just get a good pair of shoes, so I go to like different weight room Canada are like, you know, the place
to go. And when they Kuva
Yeah, yeah, well back down here. What is it? There's like, there's running stores. The running store, I think is down here or something like that. Anyways, and and you go, and they're like, Okay, walk across the room, and I walk across the room and I hear Can you Can I get some help here? Like,
and there are in the background and alarm is blaring, someone's got a panic button. They're like, Oh, God.
Yeah, Bob. Yeah, and, and I love how you said it, though. Because like, I have spent a lot of money on those shoes and inserts for the shoes because shoes aren't enough. I need the insert through. Yeah, and they fucking eart Sure. I'm like, so much money. And I always think like, Well, it's because I'm out of shape. It's because I'm just not used to the shoes. But like, I'm but then I'm like, No, I really, like I'm starting to think and you say and like just get the comfortable ones. I'm like, Yeah, that's probably the best idea. Because like, yeah, the ones that I bought and were like, all all run or even just row in them. I'm like,
It's not supposed to hurt. But that's like, again, this is such a classic neurological disability problem is that no one ever listens to us. In childhood, we say like, this shirt is too itchy, right? And then you have a bleeding rash by the end of the day and like your parents are like, nobody else has a bleeding rash from this like, yeah, or I can't stop scratching this thing. Like we'll just stop other people do it like, yeah, you know, the way we've been to like your body is the wrong shape. Or like I have. I have joint hypermobility and I always have. So it's like sometimes I get out of a chair and my hip dislocate. Or, you know, sometimes I twist my hand to grab something in my wrist you look at when I pick up a pan full of eggs off my stove. I have to do with two hands because my wrist dislocates otherwise, and many people have told me that it shouldn't. And I agree with them. Yes, right. Oh, you're right. Yeah, there's change your grip on the pan. I'm like, Bitch, please. Like, do you think I have not? Like
joy, almost dropping the eggs every time
every time and then yelping in pain and then like having to shake my hand to the dogs eating it. Right? Exactly. Try to knock my joints back into place. Like Why won't anybody just listen to me when I can't do this? You know, or leg lifts. Like, you know, like that ab exercise. My kid can do it either and actually wrote them a note for gym because the teacher was trying to make them do it. I'm like we have an Elio. We know we have a so as that snaps over a bump on the greater trochanter. Like it's a good thing. I'm a trained yoga teacher, because I know the anatomy here now, like you have snapping hip syndrome, right, and it's a tendon that is literally snapping over the little piece of bone that's meant to anchor it in place like a hook holds a string, right? It snaps over that every time you lift your legs in this position, and it is an injury that will cause inflammation and pain, the more it snaps. So no amount of technique on your leg lifts is going to make it possible for you to do this without your hips snapping. This is just textbook and teachers made me do it for 100 years. And now when I stand up, my hips dislocate, because of nobody listening to me like you're just complaining, you don't do this exercise. Like once your abs gets stronger. I'm like, No problem I can do if I have my knee. Like there's other ways I could do that exercise to target those muscles. But they're like, No, it shouldn't snap. And so therefore it won't, right. And so that's another case of me trying to transform myself right to be like everybody else. And it just led to injury. And now whenever something snaps in my body, I'm like what's not supposed to do that? So I'm going to pretend that it's not doing that because that's the strategy that Yep, right? Yep. And that's the strategy that we've learned for all situations and what it results in is injury, self loathing and like a remarkable amount of non success, right people? Well, if we could just do it this way, then we would succeed. But we have other ways that we could do it. But we're not allowed to. And then we forget that we have other ways we could do it because we atrophy that muscle, that muscle that tells us this is not the right way. For me, I'm going to try it a way that feels better. We just forget how to do that. And that is something that I see in my students. Now. I see it in junior colleagues, like this is classic of like people who enter the profession on the tenure stream. They're like, I have to do whatever I need to do to get tenure, and then I'll be able to be myself again, that's never what happens, right? So the whole world is always in one venue or another. Whether you are neurodivergent, or neurotypical is always trying to tell you there's one right way to do it in order to achieve success. And then once you achieve success, you can be yourself. But by the time you get there, you have forgotten how to be yourself. And often you don't get there because you cannot succeed. Doing the breaststroke when you should be doing the backstroke.
Yeah, yep, I would have quit. If anybody had forced me to try to be a breaststroke, I would have quit swimming long ago, I would have been like, I'm out peace out. Look. I love swimming. And if you would make me try to be breaststroker, I would have been like, like, and again, all the girls my age were breast brokers. And so for training purposes, it would have made a lot of sense to try and make me into a breast broker. So I could train with all the girls my own age in one training group. Thankfully, that's not what happened. But like there are you can see how a situation like that would like arise. Where it's like, well, they're, you know, everyone's everyone's a butterfly are here. So I guess you're a flyer to now it's like, what so But whoa, well,
I mean, I hit the nail on the head again, when you said like, if they had tried to make me become a breaststroker, I would have quit swimming. Like what do you think the pipeline problem is in the academy? Yeah, yeah, right. The pipeline grab is like, we admitted them, they had the grades, but somehow they all drop out you it's because you're trying to change them into somebody different. And they could no longer find the will to do the work. Or it was too exhausting to try to transform themselves, or they transform themselves. And as it turns out, they hate the person they became. Yeah, right. They and they quit, right. So like, you have to say like, is it that that person couldn't hack it? Right? Were you not a good swimmer? No, like, this was not your preferred way of getting from one end of the pool to the other. But there are many ways of getting from one end of the pool to the other well being timed for metals, right? Lots of ways. And I think like we would do well to think like that applies to swimming, that applies to like, cooking, like maybe you want the HelloFresh they don't have to do the menu planning. But you all will always get out all the ingredients and do your music class, because otherwise you forget stuff. Or maybe you listen to podcasts when you're cooking so that you don't forget that you're boiling an egg in a pot and then melt the pot. lI right. Like there are many like
you're talking about it was honey, right?
Why don't we let ourselves do that? And and even in in contexts where you might say like, it's just writing a memo, everybody has to write it the same way. But do they? Yeah. Like, do they really? Like how far can we take this? making allowances for people's differences? Like if I understand what you're trying to tell me? And it's not rude? Right? Where is the problem?
Yeah. But I think coming back to that to around like, even professional workplace and not just the academy is that, you know, there's this idea of difference, but there's also this idea of people who can't change won't change, particularly around race. You know, and, and that, and that, in a lot of ways is just as punished. Right? Why aren't you changing? Yeah, you know, why? Or why aren't you trying better to be like the rest of us, like, and, and that can be that can also be really, of course, wounding. Right and traumatic.
That's the rock and a hard place, like, Yes, that's right. So I can be really, really unhappy. But eat that unhappiness, personally, by trying to do things the same as everybody else. And the only person who's comfort is disrupted is mine. Right? Or I can choose to assert my point of view that may derive from my experience, and I'm doing it in the professional context, in a professional way. But I'm not being just like everybody else. And I feel much better about my integrity, right? And the naturalness of my way of interacting like that. But now other people are uncomfortable. And that can be dangerous for me to write when I am uncomfortable, because I'm trying really hard to be somebody else that can come out and self harm that can come out in like, you know, compensatory drinking, or eating or like other forms of self harm, you know, we're just not going to talk about but like, I think people know, you turn it on yourself, right? Yeah. And it's the type of violence that happens to you. But when you assert yourself and your way of doing things are the things that you want to research like that one candidate we had for an interview once who asked me what I do And I was like, Oh, I'm researching mommy blogs right now because I was and he looked at me, he's like, who would even want to read those, let alone study them. Right? And I thought, Oh, I would have gained like, points with him if I'd said, like, I don't know, like George Eliot. I'm studying George Eliot, or whatever it is, right? But I was like, I'm not interested in doing that. Yeah. And it really hurt my feelings that he thinks I'm a nobody. But then yeah, you know, but I'm doing the thing that I want to do. Right. So when we assert our own ways of doing things, the world becomes uncomfortable and makes things uncomfortable for us. And sometimes consequences come from that your stuff doesn't get published. Right? Or you don't get the job, or your colleagues find you difficult, right? If you're black woman, they find you angry, a lot, right? Just because you're being different and like, and unfortunately, in this has been true since forever, is that people who are different get to choose between two types of bad things, other people being uncomfortable and asserting consequences on you as a result of their discomfort, or you being uncomfortable with the compromises you're making about who you are, and punishing yourself. Right. Yeah. So I for me, I would rather have the outside world say like, we're mad at you because of the things that you study, or like, we don't want you to publish have like, this one sentence and that forever autism piece that I wrote, you know, the one with the 10 million pages 100 million? Yes, it has in it. That one, which was like super super over research, but also had a sentence in it that consisted entirely of two words. And the two words work because reasons. Right? So that's published in an academic journal was like this big long sentence, it had like, probably took up six and a half lines of print. Yeah, that was like, like, thoroughly academic. And was like, the turn I was trying to make was like, this is the bureaucracies justification for this unusual practice, period. Because reasons. It and I don't fight to get that. But I tell you, every time I see that, I am so happy, because that's the way that I talk and the way that I think and the way that I write and it makes me so proud of myself, that I got to write something in my own voice that people like that, you know, Amy Morrison, like, I don't know, like, she's supposed to be this, but like, she's just really silly, and talks and stupid slang. And like, I don't think she's that serious. Like, ultimately, I had to decide, like, I would rather have that. than hate myself. Yeah.
Right. Yep. And I think and, and that's, that's why I think it's so great that you're creating this space for your grad students. Because, you know, again, we don't know what we don't know. And you're coming to school, and you're basically like, tell me what I need to know, right? That's why we go to school, right? Tell me what I need to know, tell me how to get there. Tell me how to develop these skills. Even tell me what skills you think I'm going to need to be successful, right like that is that you know, you graduate high school, which you had to go to, and then you choose to go to university? Yeah. Even if you feel external pressure that you need to go to university for whatever reasons, like, you know, it's like you, in a way you put in your trust. And very often, again, that trust is abused. And so you know, to be somebody like you a teacher, like you, who's trying to create the space where they can find their own voices, I think is so important. Um, because, again, it's, we're expected again, it's a kind of bootstrap mentality, right? Like, we'll do we just were expected to just figure it out. And in a way you and I have just figured it out. Right, like, we just figured it out. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, exactly. It's like that. Well, you turned out fine. Write that statement. You turned out fine. It's like, but did I though, but yeah, I'm like, Yes, I okay. But, but again, it's like, yeah, but you didn't have to be so hard to get here. And maybe I'm tired of just being fine. Maybe like I want to thrive. Like how would what would thriving look like rather than just like getting through it? And you know, so that's a again, it's probably one of the reasons why we do the podcast as well to help other people kind of help them figure it out. They feel less alone about it, and they're not going through it alone, but to create you know, spaces I tried to create them in the pool. Right? And I'm not in the classroom anymore, but I tried to create them in the in the pool where it's like, you can be yourself here and and at least there's one space and I think that that was one of the big things for me for swimming is not just with my like I was a backstroke and they let me be backstroker but it was also it was one of the few spaces in my life where I could be more of myself. I mean, you're still 15 and awkward and have no idea what you're doing and like trying to get through it. But like it was the space where we're again I could be the most myself and thank God but you All right, again, it's why I keep coaching. Everybody's like, why do you do is so much work? And I'm like, because it literally saved my life. And if I can create that, that same space for just one kid, then, you know, I don't care if I ever have an Olympian like, I don't I just, yeah, but if one kid, you know, is is stays stays alive stays relatively sane. You know, because they had a space that I had helped created a swimming pool, then like, good, right? If I can be a model and be my weirdo self on deck. Yeah, being like, if she can be a weirdo. continues to Yeah, you know, I could I have I wear my weird t shirt to coach about every week and like, why do you wear it? I'm like, truth in advertising. That's right. Yeah. And sometimes their eyes and other kids are like, okay, right, like, other kids are like, they need that. Yeah, exactly. And, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna and so again, I think that if anybody out there listening is how do we do this, um, you know, it's it's community in those spaces, but it's also creating the spaces to help that kind of next generation or even, you know, your own generation. You know, I mean, how much growth if we done just doing the podcast, no cheese,
I've lived a lifetime of therapy, in these recording sessions. Like, like what I'm struggling with, right now. Like, I think it's amazing what you get to do at the pool. And like, for, like, as you say, you don't care if you're going to get Olympic swimmer. And like, that's kind of not the aspirations of everybody there. And the stakes are like, pretty low. And I worry. I worry, especially as I become more senior in my role, and therefore more insulated from negative consequences of my decisions, like, like, not my bad decisions, but like, my decisions around self presentation, or whatever, yeah, my energy and boundaries and boundaries, like I because I can enforce my own boundaries a little bit more effectively now, just simply from the fact that I'm, like a senior associate now, and like, I won an award and like, these, like things that attached to me now, that make me look more powerful. And so I do have more freedom. And, and so I want, I can see very clearly,
that for all the students, I teach, like, in all the classes that I teach, if they're always trying to put on somebody else's shoes and become somebody different, that that's not going to work, and it's going to make them unhappy. I do see that in the short term. It may benefit them. Yeah. Right. And so I find myself in this conundrum always have like, students right to their own language, but also standard English, like, you know, I'm like, thinking of Audrey Lorde, like, I'm gonna, I'll tell them like, you can't tear down the Masters House with the Masters tools. But also like, you can't get a job at the Masters House without the Masters tools, right? So, so in what ways do I teach you how to blend in? Right? How to play that game of pretending to be somebody else? And in what ways do I push you to like, shine your own light, right, and keep your own flame burning a little bit for yourself, because I know that they are much Junior, to me that their positions in the world are much more tenuous than mine. And that, you know, the academy that I came up into my life circumstances are different my generation is, is different. And, and all I can hope for actually is that I am going to teach them the ways that I want to teach them and I'm going to model for them the type of academic that I want them to feel empowered to be. But what I'm really depending on is that my colleagues are different from me. Yeah. Right. Like, this is like, why we can't like why universal design doesn't mean there's one right way for everybody. Universal Design usually means a bunch of different things, right, more of a smorgasbord. And so like maybe I'm going to be the teacher that says why don't you make this auto ethnographic, right? Why don't you put your personal story in here. And then they'll have another teacher that is like, we do not use the personal pronoun, right? We only cite people who've been dead for 200 years, like we do not cite tweets, and then somebody else who's like, let's be creative, like, I want to have like, let's dance your dissertation. Yeah, dance your dissertation, right? Like, like at, I think I can't bear that entire responsibility. Like, I'm gonna work with these students. And I'm their only role model. And I'm the one telling them the right way to be an academic like, because what I'm telling them is no one can tell you the right way to be an academic. I'm the only right one, right? Yeah, and I don't mean that right. When I say like, I think that this particular way of doing things is gonna crush your soul. Right, which I've said to almost every grad student I have ever worked with, right? I'm like, why don't you try to do what what would you like? And they're like, yeah, here's what I like, I'm like, I care. Right? But then they have somebody else saying, like, you know, the market and this field is opening up and it might be strategic for you and then they get to think about do I want to like live my truth, or do I want to be strategic or can I blend that somehow right? So I want them to like they take what they like our graduate students take six English courses, or eight over a degree. And our undergraduates take 16 English courses over a degree, I want all their professors to be so different, that they have, like, any number of models that they can cobble together to be the version but that they feel like it's a choice. Like they feel that not everybody is pushing exactly the same thing. And I guess that's what I want, is I don't want to feel responsible for like writing the one true path for everybody. I can only talk about my path and make some suggestions. But that's what like diversity inclusion actually means is not that we all are going to teach like English one on one from the same syllabus with the same assignments, like it should not mean that right, it should mean that the person who teaches you third year English about media studies is giving you a completely different way of thinking and writing and organizing and, and speaking than the person who's teaching you, the third year Chaucer, it should be different, we should let students know like you get to pick and choose the best way that works for you, instead of pretending that everybody has to come out this like standard English speaking. Like Jordan Peterson type, I mean, that's why he's so popular, honestly, is because he absolutely manifests like the apotheosis of the stereotype of what university is like, it produces like a white dude, who's very elite, and who has all the answers to everything. And it's going to tell you like that, unfortunately, the world is going to help like if that's your line, if you can manifest that you can speak in big words, you can quote books that nobody's ever read, even if you don't understand them yourself. You dress like an old fart, and you tell everyone the world is going to hell and you feel really bad about it, then you have become that standard academic that the world is ready to accept it. Anything else? It's like, not quite that right. And I don't want that for everybody. I don't want anybody. Okay.
Well, you know, it's interesting, again, to think about it. And it's, it's so funny when because we talk about language and language debates. For me, I grew up in Quebec, I know you grew up French immersion, as well in a francophone you know, Franco area and family. But like, the debates around language doesn't always make me you know. Now, because I'm away from it, kind of laugh because of course, I all I grew up with was debates around language. Sure, right. I grew up in it, you know, I grew up and there was only one right way to speak French.
Sure, there was, you know, it was never your way.
No, no, no, I was, I was Anglophone, like I was written all over, but like, but I mean, you remember the drills and the grammar and like, there is, you know, there was such a precision to it, and everything had to be a cracker, they and all of that kind of stuff, you know, but then you also learn about the debates between Parisian and Joie Hall and all of that kind of stuff, where you're just like, we're gonna, we're gonna make sure everybody speaks French and only French, but also, by the way, the slang French is okay. We don't want that like. And again, just sort of be in that for so much. And then and then going to a French university, where there was such a diversity of dialects, right? Again, I grew up in Montreal, it's very, you know, and you watch the news. It's almost like the BBC, right? Yeah, there's a kind of Montreal standard French, which is a pretty flat Quebec walk. So let's say just like the BBC is
and the news French, like the CBC come like a federal Canada French is a little bit different from the like, variety show. Yeah, BC French, which is a little bit more earthy, if you will.
But then if you go though, to those local guides to Canada, or tibias, radios, TV doesn't even excuse no TV exists, take your S doesn't anyways, whatever. Then you get the local dialect, right, you get the local news that the local, um, and but of course, if you live in Montreal, you've never experienced that. Right? Because, you know, you get the kind of okay, you're, you're of Italian descent that French, I could pick out of a lineup like that. I'm like, great Italian. Same with Greek. You know, not that those were the big ones. You also
bones. The Anglo French is like a very consistent accent. Yeah,
yeah, as well. But you never get the the kind of diversity of the Quebec walks. Right, that it's not, you know, that the, you know, any visual image wall is a very working class Montreal thing. It's not a pen Quebec wha X? Oh, it's not? No. Um, so again, so it's always it's always, you know, and then to kind of leave that to come to the States or these debates and even going to, you know, work in rural Appalachia with these kinds of things. It's just really, you know, it's it. I grew up with that tension, I guess is like the the interesting thing is I grew up with that tension with between there's only one right way to speak French. Oh, but by the way, we need to also make sure that we include everybody else swift history, like what is
hilarious. It's like if you speak French for an American and Like, of course many Americans are multilingual, but many other Americans pride themselves on like English as our natural national language, which is, oh yeah, actually have a natural language. But you can speak like the crunchiest, slurries just as well and there'll be like, what beautiful French who speak because they can't tell the difference between any of your French's which is hilarious because it's all just not English, but like French or French. It's an interesting case, right about what happens when you try to control things, right. So, in France, right, there's that kind of neat concept, which like, like, can be constant which tries to, like maintain. Yeah, best practices and rules. Like, wait, you know, email is a new thing. So we've developed a word and the word is going to be this it's not one of these like, bubble up like English is very much like a bubble big steel.
It's just gonna suck it up meme is the Oxford English Dictionary.
Yeah, it's like we stole we stole this word from Hindu now it's our Word, and more people used it than the word that existed. So now this and now it's a coach and out of Chesterfield, or, like, whatever happens to be right. But in French is like, no, there is a word, this is the word right. And at school, you will be penalized if you use a synonym, right? Everybody understands, like, no, that's not the correct usage. For now we're doing away with these accents. Right? It was this accent, like forever. But now we've decided like, it's like when you decide that your country is going to change the sides of the road they drive on, it's like, all of a sudden, it's not natural, right? It's controlled, because there's a scarcity mentality around the maintenance of what French should be. And it's like, supposed to be like, the most beautiful language of your romance language. There's like a lot of culture attached to what French sounds like. And so there's a certain proportion of French inside, it's attempting to control what French can be. And what you find in in Canada, which is has native French speaking populations, is that because they are a minority language, within a larger culture, and in some ways, a majority language within smaller chunks of culture is that a lot of the French and Quebec French is archaic? Yeah. Right. It is words that French people in France have not used for 200 years or since people started coming to Canada because those people came together. We're trying to hold on Yeah, their native language and so they did not allow it to grow in many ways, right? And there was no Academie Francaise, like sending emails,
or no, no, you have a fistula long font size. Yeah, well, that's newer, right.
Yeah. But then, like you have pockets in Quebec, where it is a majority French language. And there's entirely new French vocabularies that are based on this, like super archaic French that people in France don't speak anymore. It's like a heritage language, with heritage vocabulary mixed in with like, very slightly contemporary terms for things that have been created since the 1700s. Yeah, right. And all of that is about trying to control an entire culture, or the meaning of a culture, or the the continuation of a culture through top down or bottom up measures to say, this is the one right way to do things. Yeah, right. Just like everything else. When you try to make the one right way to do things. There's going to be pockets where it doesn't fit. Like sometimes you can't wait around for the, you know, a fiscal enforcer to like get your French version of Microsoft Word because people have Word Processing they need to do right now. Right. So you're pirating the English version, because Microsoft cancel word in Quebec until he gets a French version. That's Quebec French, not nice, French and French. Yeah, oh, people will work around it. Right? They will feel bad while they're working around it. And that's just the same I think is all but it's like trying to become a breaststroker when you're a backstroker. Or there's one right way to do things and you feel like every way that you do it is wrong. So people, you know, I've been in, in French classes in universities where people who are native speakers of Quebec, French, are told that they can't speak French by their Anglophone professors who are trained in European French were teaching. Yep, French classes at the university are telling native speakers of French, they don't know how to speak French, which is just like an English professor trained in Standard English telling a speaker of a local dialect of English that they don't know how to speak English. It's absurd. It's offensive. And it makes people feel unworthy. And it prevents us all from being excellent. The end?
Yeah, no. And I think that that, and again, it was I've always, it's funny, because it made me think of it as always saying, like, I reflected back on my education. And starting with university, I've seemed to have always put myself in situations where I was so different and outside of the norm, that it was like, I was just going to lean it all the way into it. Right. Like, I was going to be the Anglophone who goes to a French university. I'm going to be the comeback kid who moves west to go to the University of Alberta, right? I'm going to be the weirdo Canadian who is at a Hispanic speaking institution, and then an HBCU. Right, like, it was just so I was so different as to be like, there was no way for me to kind of even try to be not myself. Right, like, lean into all of this. Yeah, just lean into all of this. Um, and it's a pattern that I don't think I did explicitly or on purpose. Maybe the Sherbrooke one but Like after that it just kept happening. Mill. So but I did work really hard while I was at Sherbrooke from on my accent, right? Not in terms of changing who I am, but you speak you speak with and, and, and Kevin, you speak with Quebec, WA speaking Quebec Wah for and read Quebec law and watch all of the news and everything for five years, you're going to pick up the accent. Right? You're getting better, right? It wasn't, wasn't great. People didn't automatically identify me as Anglophone anymore. They were just like you from like, I can't pinpoint that. But then, so my PhD dissertation research, I was looking at archives have translators who translated chemical as poet, and I happen to meet one of them. He's still alive, his archives were in Indiana, and he was there and he agreed to meet with me, and it was great. We had this wonderful conversation. And, you know, again, meant well, but he told me, he told me if you want to get a job teaching French or you had to get a job at French here, like you've got to do something about that horrendous accent, you have
to sound like you're from France, you have to sound ready. This is my mic drop. You have to sound as if you learned French, because you're an educated person. You can sound like you grew up among French people. Yeah, right. Because French speaking French is an affectation, right? of educated white people. We don't like French people. We like French language as an acquisition of someone that demonstrates their class. Yeah, that's what it is. Right? Which is why we police people's perfectly fluent English, because it betrays their class status. Right? We want you to sound like a newscaster, right? Which is an untraceable unreplaceable. Right? Not a regional not a located not as situated, if you will. identity or accent you need to become a universal person. Right? A universal person. By virtue of class status can be anyone in anywhere, right? And so if you speak a perfectly fluent French, that is the French native to the areas you grew up in, like where you say, Sure instead of three or you don't always use the double negative because it's not idiomatic, like Shimpo like I don't like it not you shouldn't know. Lem, Pa like where I live? It's all one word. Yeah, just Lem? Lem, Pa not sure. No, lemme pa part. Like, and I understand both. But like, if I was gonna say like, JR limpa. Like, you know, did you like this copy shouldn't and like, it would be like, What the fuck are you right where I'm from, but if I say like, jump or, like, jump up past edgy, maybe scary. I don't like sharing. Like what I just said is like, I like not, like, you know, it's but it's idiomatic where I'm from. And it's perfectly grammatically correct. Yeah. Where I am from, but I have learned to not speak like that in other places, because it marks me not as an educated person who speaks French but as somebody from backwater Ontario. Yeah, right. And this is this is what it means even for students to try to write in Standard English, it says who you are, is something you need to get over right before you can join us here at the top of the mountain. Right? And our neurodivergent friends listening to this podcast will very much recognize that narrative is one of violence against one's own identity, right? It promises you a gift, right? You will jump class status, right but only if you become somebody different and only if you lose your native way of speaking, your native way of thinking your sense of belonging and rootedness and where you're from, like my husband's an ocean person and I'm a lakes and trees and rocks person and that has to do with where we grew up. Right I love my Northern Ontario landscapes. I love a cold winter that gets dark early but has sunshine all day and ocean scare me because they're too big. I like a lake I can see the other side of right I you know, I know. That feels safe to me. But like do I have to pretend I'm not from there to fit into some group of rarefied individuals. And yes, and I think that's like, what we're always asking people to do in order to quote unquote, better themselves and I think it's terrible. I think it's terrible and like the boundary part of this would be like when you get to say, no, that's not a part of me. I'm going to change do I don't know, convey to convict you shipper. I am not missing the Dungeness Ripa to convey que pasa Kamata? Me jumper skirt OG? I do. There we go. Sorry, everyone.
Let's do that sounds like what's the jump
to jump onto it jump upon to it's very good. Oh. What are those words even onto it's like, that's like, I think it's pudgy too, right. Like, yeah, you have a good time at that party path to it.
No. Right. No, papa.
left in the bag pile to it's like, nothing like it could be a bunch of different things. But that's all like nope, like some
different. Yeah, it's one of those contextual ones too, depending on the tone that you say it in. Yeah. I'm Canadian French lesson there. Ladies,
look at how much we're laughing like you and I have like big smiles on our faces. And we're chuckling because we recognize each other. Yes. Oh, yeah, you're right. You are someone I can joke about this type of French with. And I can use the words from my childhood from my native way of speaking and I can speak them to you, and you recognize them. And it's not just that you understand the intent of my communication, but it makes a delight in you to recognize a part of yourself. There, right? And it delights me that you can see who I am. When I use the stupid slang word that is like a unclassy, crunchy word that you wouldn't want to write that would be like the dialect you put in your like Faulkner novel, right? Like, it's like, look at who these people are, like they say, but like, but what do we lose? Like? What do we lose when we don't have that opportunity to say our special words to people or to wear our special hairdos? Or our like fancy sneakers like, Dude, I mean, like our ways of dressing that Marcus says other. But that Marcus is someone who has a community right our ways of thinking, our ways of playing Candy Crush at meetings of like, I always play my videos at two times speed on my podcast at two times speed because the world is too slow for me like we we miss that chance not only to to revel in ourselves, but to make connections with others who might be similar to us when the world keeps asking us all the time in every possible that need to conform to a standard that is equally annoying to 90% of the people who are not the elite that devise the standard. Yep. That's really true. Yeah. Sorry. No, it's
okay. I think on that note, though, we should probably wrap things up this end of part two of this conversation. You don't need to have listened to a full hour and a half of this. It'll be 245 minutes, I'm sure. I've found I've successfully found the place in the episode where I become incoherent. And that's my cut point.
Because when sputtering in French, that'll be Yeah,
no, that was only like, 15 minutes ago, that's not really balanced.
You actually marking time in an effective and realism based manner?
That Well, I mean, I also have to pick up
on I got two reference letters to write in the next half hour, I can do it. I've been thinking about the question
as you talk about it. But this is what people don't understand. And I know, this is what people don't understand about ADHD. It's like, we're having this conversation. And it's not that you're not in the conversation you are, you're clearly in the conversation, and that's fine. But as soon as you said I was like, thinking about them in my head at the same time, I'm like, yep, that's exactly it. Just like I'm sitting here going, like, what time is it? I don't have to do they're like, What are the seven things I'm gonna have to do once I pick my daughter up and all? Like, it's never not seven different narratives?
Well, you know, we the scholarship says that you should probably just turn off all those voices in your head and do one thing at a time because I know
I should probably have also, like closed all of the other windows on my computer not even had the clock open, you should probably be a focus and on the podcast,
we should have had just some show notes that we prepared in advance because obviously we're never going to produce a good product unless we do it according to like the 10 rules of podcasting. We will follow Joe Rogan he seems to be really good at this.
His episodes are like five hours long.
I know dudes love the sound of their own fucking voices, man.
He doesn't like I guess. I guess we shouldn't talk we our first episode was three hours long we caught
it. Oh my god, we should just say COVID COVID COVID right now to see if Spotify is going to put a label on us linking to accurate Vaccine Information. Okay, I'm not going to drop that bomb right now. Because you got to go get your kid. Yeah. I got to get some reference letters.
And, but as always, you can email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com You can always reach out to us on Twitter as well. or Instagram. I am ready writing on both Twitter and Instagram.
And I am Did you want on both Twitter and Instagram? And Lee will DM me your emails and I will read them out loud to my family and it will make my whole day and give me enough brain juice to write hundreds of reference letters. Hundreds, hundreds,
hundreds or two.
It just really depends. I don't know.
Yeah. Well, so we'll see you all next week. Have a great week. Stay warm if you're in a place that's really cold. If your place is really warm, stay cool. And we'll see you next time.
