It's not just those big things like I went back to school or I had a baby or I dropped out. It's all these little things along our journey that turned us into the person we are the choices we make that are small. In addition to the big ones. It's all the things that you don't do those missed opportunities, or maybe that second date you never went on, or all the stuff that makes us who we are today.
There's a saying that goes the road to success is always under construction. Similarly, the road to success isn't always a straight line. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. Today we're talking with a professor and author who used her own experience in life, both positive and negative, to get where she is today.
My name is Christina Preston beard. I am faculty at Heartland Community College. I teach psychology and sociology. And I also oversee the Honors Program. I have recently released my first book, it's called Finding mercy in the madness and I'm here today to talk about it. I do not want people to be deceived by the title. The title is very specifically picked finding mercy in the madness, of Mercy being compassion and forgiveness, especially for ourselves. It's not about a spiritual revelation or anything. And then with madness, you know, I didn't I didn't go insane by any means. But it's, it's dealing with that chaoticness of our choices or society, etc. So I think the title is deceiving. When you start to read you realize because I explain it, but I don't want people to hear this. Like okay, she she found God and she went nuts.
How hard was it to come up with a title for the book, the title
stemmed from when I actually gave my talk talk last year. And I I really contemplated over the particular words for like a week, because I had different titles in mind like beautiful mass and firmly planted and, and stuff. But then this one, it just really, once I finally homed in on it, it really struck me.
So with your book, what was the genesis of this project? Was there a specific event or motivation to make this a book project? What brought this about?
This has been a few years in the making and COVID struck, so it kind of got derailed. At that time. I've always wanted to be able to help others by sharing my own story. And I felt like it was time to finally put it out there publicly. This book is four decades of life lessons, most of them very hard earned lessons, all the way from childhood, up until the past couple of years. And I just I felt like it was finally time. As hard as that sounds to put it out there.
Well, you say for decades, you didn't necessarily take the straightest path to your current career to working in academia. Let's go back several those decades. What kind of student were you in high school?
In high school, I was a horrible student. If we go back a little before that. I was an excellent student, I was teacher's pet. And I was super smart. But I decided once I hit middle school, high school days that I didn't want to be smart anymore. The book talks a lot about labels and how we apply those to ourselves and our behaviors based on these labels. So I didn't want to be smart anymore. I wanted to be cool. So I started skipping school, and doing drugs and being a complete waste of space. I'm actually ended up being a high school dropout. My students are usually very surprised to hear that their award winning professor is indeed a high school dropout.
So you talked about labels do you felt that you felt pressure to hide your intelligence or not act upon your intelligence, a pressure to ignore learning? What was that?
So it's funny you say pressure because it wasn't pressure by anyone else. It was just pressure I put on myself. Growing up, I had the picture perfect childhood I had two parents I had anything I could ever want. But I had such this desire to be a people pleaser and an overachiever that as soon as I decided that going down the nerd path wasn't what I wanted to do. When I flipped that switch that I wanted to be cool and I wanted to be bad and I wanted to be popular, right? All these these words. When I flipped that switch and true overachieving mode, I would say that I did a really good job at being a really big screw up.
So is there a moment where that turned around where say being a screw up came to a head,
I'd spent quite a bit of time in my local community college, floundering around not knowing what I wanted to do, which is also something that's really important addressed in the book. We put a lot of pressure on, on students or our own kids, you know that you have to know what you want to be when you're 18 and you have to go to school and you have to do it in two years. And the truth is no, you don't like our journeys are all different. And what is a two year degree might take someone three years or four years you might change your mind a couple of times what you want to do so I did go to community college and got my Associates had a couple kids along the way, and honestly did not realize what I wanted to be till I grew up till I was almost 30 years old. I went back and got my Bachelor's as a single parent with two little girls at home, went straight into graduate school. And I was sitting in graduate school one night, and it just, it was like this flashbulb moment that I decided I wanted to teach. I wanted to be a college professor, and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of my students.
Did you have any doubt about returning to school, even when you went forth to finish your bachelor's degree? Did you think this is something that I'll have trouble doing or something that you were worried about doing? Or once you made the decision? Did you have enough confidence to think I can do this?
At first, I was really worried about it. I was older, I was attending Eastern, so I was commuting, I didn't know anything about the school or the community. And then I had two little girls at home. And that was working full time in addition to going to school. So at first, honestly, I was really terrified that I wasn't going to be able to do it. But then once I changed my mindset, right, change your narrative, then it became something like I can do this, right. And I'm going to do this. So as soon as I just set my mind to it, it was it was straight ahead.
Let's talk a little bit about changing that narrative. In addition to the memoir element of your book, there's also interactive parts has a self help element to it, how much do you get into the idea of the importance of this self narrative and how you can disrupt it or change it?
Throughout the book, there's 20 portions where the readers can go along, certain aspects of it are talking about the labels that have been placed upon them throughout their lives by themselves or by others. And we also talk about the big ticket items, like those major life changing events. But one of the things I really want to bring to the reader's attention is, it's not just those big things, like I went back to school, or I had a baby or I dropped out, it's all these little things along our journey that turned us into the person we are the choices we make that are small, in addition to the big ones. Also, along those lines, it's all the things that you don't do, too. And so the book talks about, like those missed opportunities, or maybe that second date, you never went on or, or whatever. So we reflect upon relationships and anxiety and fears, childhood memories, all the stuff that makes us who we are today,
is there any concern with some of that, that by second guessing you say I didn't do this, or I didn't do that, in your own past that that can, again, be kind of a moment that freezes people up for making other decisions that they're too worried on things they didn't do previously,
I do think we have a tendency to fixate on that as humans in general. But I think that if you kind of when I did this project I reflected upon my entire life. And it was it was very grueling through certain parts, things that I have been through, but I was also able to overcome them and kind of let them go by finally addressing them. And I think that readers will be able to do the same thing by saying, Okay, I didn't do this, or I should have done this. But that guilt can be be removed by just the admission or the conversation that those items.
So what about that difficulty of putting yourself out there to put your own life out there for students, or for readers, to see and hear, and to kind of, I guess, show your own mistakes, and has to be a very vulnerable place was that very, very difficult to write about?
It was very easy to write it, it was a little stressful to actually click the button that publishes your words for the world. The reaction has been amazing. People are loving this book, they are emailing me and putting reviews online about it that it is helping them find comfort in knowing that someone who quite frankly, on the front looks like they have it all put together. Right that I don't I'm just a normal person. I've messed up a lot. I mean, a lot. And with regards to being vulnerable, absolutely. But on the other side of that vulnerability, and that fear is growth
within the book, but also within your work with students. Is there any core advice or direction that you give in trying to help students I guess not be afraid to take those extra steps to make that additional choice? And also, do you see them kind of yourself in them a little bit in the things they're doing? That's sort of a long winded way of getting around to say when you're interacting in the real world with some of these issues. What type of information do you try to impart?
I think one of the biggest takeaways is that you don't have to be like everyone else, you know, you don't have to set your standard to be identical to the person sitting next to you. I enjoy the college now student against the traditional students, the non traditional students, all of them, and they bring such a well rounded experience to the classroom, like to have a student that's in her 70s, who's actually lived through the things that we talk about. That's fascinating. One of the other things I would suggest to people is the art of pause. And I talked about that in the book, a lot of times we have these knee jerk reactions where we, we don't respond to someone we react. And if you can catch yourself from doing that, especially if you're a younger reader, you could probably save yourself some some epic, bad places to be.
So when you're talking about that path, how do you talk about setbacks, as you say, it wasn't a straight line for you to get from one place to another. And once the ball got rolling a little bit, I'm sure that you moved along quickly, at least in your academic career. But there were a lot of stops along the way. What do you tell people about dealing with those kinds of setbacks?
First of all, I think you have to take ownership of your truths, right, whatever those truths may be, and the setbacks come. And the disappointment comes. And even now, if I host an event at the school, and only two people come instead of 100, you know, like, you have that moment of, oh, you know, that sucks. But the truth is, it doesn't, you made a difference for the couple of people that came out to see whatever it was you were doing. And it's the same thing with students who are really embarking on their educational journey, or they're not getting that dream job right away. Like everything comes when it's meant to be, sometimes you're just stuck in that rut of it being your time. And that's really, really hard, but it always will work out.
Well. Speaking of events, I know that you have some planned for the book, and
I live over in the Champaign area. So a few of the things I have set up are a little further from Bloomington Normal, but I'm also trying to get some stuff set up there at Heartland. So sometimes I give us feature almost like a TED Talk following the ideas behind the book. And then there's also going to be workshops, where people who even if you don't have the book could come in and kind of work through some of these activities that are in the book with me. So I'm hoping to have one that Heartland in the fall. As of right now. I will be at the Peoria Public Library in December on December 3 for their local author fair. So that's something people can come out and see all kinds of local authors and artists, not just myself.
Christina Preston beards new book is called Finding mercy in the madness. It's available commercially. And you can be on the lookout for events related to the book as well. Christina, thanks so much for being with us today.
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.
Christina Preston beard teaches psychology and sociology at Heartland Community College. Her debut book is titled finding mercy in the madness. If you're interested in other interviews with authors or on subjects of writing art or other topics, check out our other random x knowledge podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio booth for wherever you found this. Thanks for listening
