Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Make ALL The Mistakes

00:00:00.000 classes in session. Hey, everybody. Welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session today. You just

00:00:08.520 get me, just me, myself, and I, and you know what? Sometimes I sit here and I'm like, as I'm coming

00:00:15.060 up to make a podcast, I think, uh, what am I going to talk about? It's not always top of mind,

00:00:22.440 but I do have something. I think I'm going to go down memory memory. I think I'm going to try to

00:00:27.740 speak today. I think I'm going to go down memory lane today, and I'm going to do it, and I'm going

00:00:33.020 to talk about my mistakes. We spend a lot of time rationalizing our mistakes. We spend a lot of time

00:00:41.500 saying, but I couldn't have learned what I learned if I didn't. That might all be true,

00:00:48.440 But we can still acknowledge the mistake that we made and understand that even if, this is going to be a hard one to swallow, even if I learned nothing, the learning process, I still have to go back and I still have to recognize the mistake I made.

00:01:12.840 the error in judgment, the error in character, the error in, you know, trusting in somebody else

00:01:21.740 necessarily, you know, and I get it. I get it. We're all going to be like, well, but you wouldn't

00:01:28.160 be where you are today. Okay. You're right. I'm not saying regret because regret does denote a

00:01:34.740 different life path, but I am saying mistake. I am saying these are the moments I screwed up.

00:01:42.840 And just to see them in and of themselves, I think is important. Guys, I'm going all the way back to

00:01:47.340 grade three, grade three, grade two. Are you guys ready? That's how far back I'm going.

00:01:55.620 I cheated on my time test. That's right. Now you guys know. I was sitting in that class,

00:02:03.500 maybe grade two. I don't know. Now you're all going to judge me about when I didn't learn to

00:02:06.860 learn, when I didn't learn how to tell time. And our job was to look at these little clocks,

00:02:14.460 not digital, little clocks with hands. And you're supposed to write down what time it was.

00:02:20.940 And I looked at my neighbor's sheet. They were very smart and obviously a lot more competent than I.

00:02:31.020 and I wrote down the answers and when I got home I showed my mom the test she looked at it as I got

00:02:40.580 a hundred and said Joanna how did you do this and I said what do you mean I just took the test I was

00:02:46.480 that good and she goes she goes okay and she wrote down a clock and asked me to tell I couldn't do it

00:02:51.420 because obviously she's like no no no no no how did you get these right answers and I said well

00:02:57.780 so-and-so sitting next to me, wrote them down, and I copied them. And my mom looked at me

00:03:05.720 disapprovingly, obviously, and said, Joanna, that's cheating. And I was young enough to know

00:03:15.400 that I didn't want to cheat, but to know that I had. I was young enough,

00:03:22.320 i i guess i was old enough rather to know that i needed to cheat to somehow do well on a test

00:03:32.280 in what grade two and i said mom i i shared my neighbor shared with me gotta like that

00:03:42.780 use of those words right kids are freaking brilliant i shared my mom said that you know

00:03:49.340 that's not sharing. That's cheating. And I look at that moment as innocuous as it sounds to

00:03:56.980 everybody else, obviously. But there's been moments, there's always moments in which you

00:04:03.160 make a choice to do something to better yourself, even though you know it's the wrong thing.

00:04:10.680 You guys all, everybody has those moments. And don't worry, I'm going to get to worse ones later

00:04:14.760 in the episode. We all have those moments where we choose an easy road. And what astounds me

00:04:20.960 isn't so much that I did it. It isn't so much that people do it. I get that. I understand that

00:04:27.400 human nature being what it is. What I find fascinating is that at that very young age,

00:04:36.940 I felt that I needed to cheat. Now, forget my mistake, forget my cheating for a second,

00:04:46.960 put my, you know, dodgy morality on the side for a minute. What are we doing to kids?

00:04:53.940 What are we doing to little kids? Because this hasn't changed.

00:04:57.840 where we push and fixate so much on a mark on a grade on a whatever that we make them

00:05:12.700 and that's a weird choice of words I guess but we kind of put them in the position and we teach them

00:05:19.320 that they need to cheat because we've done that we've done that there there's no other way around

00:05:26.600 that, right? Because kids don't care about being wrong or being right until they're rewarded or

00:05:33.500 punished as a result. Kids don't care about getting 100 until there's a huge parade after

00:05:41.460 they get 100. Now, I know some of you are going to be like, well, Joanna, we have to have standards.

00:05:47.500 Yes, we do. I get it. Absolutely. I'm not saying we don't. I'm simply saying at what point

00:05:54.560 are we putting this on kids to make sure that the standard is the parade, that the 80, that the 90,

00:06:05.080 that the 100 denotes a parade, not the kid. And by the way, I wasn't this kid either. So don't

00:06:11.980 think I'm making an evidence-based remark on this. What about the kid that works incredibly hard

00:06:21.020 in those younger years, tries to understand it by all different angles, gets the 70, where's their

00:06:26.880 parade? You know, because I think a lot of things come easy to some and difficult to others in

00:06:34.920 different capacities down different avenues. And when we don't recognize the effort and guys

00:06:43.840 understand, I don't just mean, oh, I tried for an hour. No, no, no, no, no.

00:06:51.020 You guys know the difference between these kids.

00:06:54.540 Hell, you guys know the difference between these adults.

00:06:58.480 Who grinds?

00:07:00.080 Who puts in all the effort? 0.80

00:07:01.960 Who goes the extra mile?

00:07:03.880 Who does it again and again and again until they get it right?

00:07:07.460 I want that guy on my team, that guy at my job, that guy working for my company, right?

00:07:15.700 We want smart.

00:07:17.880 I get it.

00:07:18.500 I get it.

00:07:19.000 We want our kids to be smart and accomplished, but don't we want our kids more than any of

00:07:25.040 those things to know what it is to face adversity, not being able to tell the time on a watch.

00:07:31.980 By the way, I have lots of watches now.

00:07:34.020 I can tell the time.

00:07:36.140 None of them have battery in it.

00:07:37.100 I just look at my phone.

00:07:38.380 But don't we want to teach kids the work?

00:07:42.060 don't we want to have the grind as the friggin parade the kid that's out trying to catch fly 0.99

00:07:52.080 balls until the sun goes down but misses it in the big game who gives a shit 0.99

00:07:58.380 isn't isn't that what we want so I think about that mistake I mean and I'm still recognizing 0.99

00:08:06.920 how silly it is because I was so young. But guys, if that was already embedded in my head

00:08:13.380 in grade two or three or whatever it was, think about the garbage that is embedded 0.99

00:08:19.880 in your 10-year-old's head, your 16-year-old's head, a 32-year-old's head. You think it gets 0.99

00:08:27.220 better? You think it gets more clear? I think for a lot of people, it gets worse.

00:08:34.540 for a lot of people it's only about the end result because with the end result becomes winning

00:08:41.980 becomes promotions becomes money and you know what we're all missing as we do that

00:08:47.580 any degree of self-aware happiness and i'm not saying chuck it all and live in a camper

00:08:55.780 you know i'm not saying that i am saying maybe that mistake i made

00:09:01.540 wasn't a mistake. It was what I was taught to do. Not clearly, not objectively, but like implicitly,

00:09:13.480 subtly. That was the subtext of everything I had done. And then that's the choice I made.

00:09:22.960 Now, you have to take ownership for it. Trust me. I've written my fair share of clocks since then

00:09:29.480 And for my mom, you take ownership for it, you figure it out, you learn from it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:09:34.760 But I want to talk about the idea of where kids start.

00:09:45.080 Because I think it's incredibly important.

00:09:47.360 And I think it's incredibly important for this big reason.

00:09:52.040 We set up a dichotomy for everything with kids. 0.97

00:09:56.520 You're a champion or you're a loser. 0.83

00:09:59.480 you're a 90s student, or you're a failure. This middle ground, which, by the way, is where most 0.97

00:10:06.880 people live, we don't make a lot of space for that. We don't have a lot of fanfare for that.

00:10:14.080 And yet, that's where the majority of people live, right? The majority of people aren't failures.

00:10:18.820 The majority of people aren't the 1%. The majority of us are living somewhere in the middle.

00:10:23.300 Somewhere in the middle of what?

00:10:28.340 And I think our culture really does a disservice for that.

00:10:32.160 And I think we don't get the best we could get out of people as a result.

00:10:39.700 That was an early mistake.

00:10:41.720 That was an early mistake.

00:10:43.980 So what was that?

00:10:44.620 Grade three?

00:10:45.780 All right.

00:10:46.620 All right.

00:10:48.280 Let's skip.

00:10:49.180 Let's skip to grade eight.

00:10:50.440 grade eight I tried out for a baseball team um like a rep guys baseball team and I was the only 0.99

00:10:58.880 girl that tried out and I busted my ass and busted my ass and and I was on the team I was on the team 0.97

00:11:06.040 and the coach at one point looked at my mom and said we would take her but we can't we can't take 0.99

00:11:12.800 her because she's a girl and because we only have guy coaches and we only have other guys on the

00:11:18.640 team and nobody can room with her and, and where is she going to get changed? And we're on the bus

00:11:23.620 and we, there's all this traveling. And my mom in 19, you know, 90 or 89 or whatever it was said,

00:11:30.960 okay, I understand. I understand. She explained it to me. Here's a big goddamn mistake. And I

00:11:37.620 accepted it. At what point, and I, I, my mom and I have since talked about it. And she says,

00:11:45.480 Joanna why do you think I didn't fight for you to do that I said I don't know I don't think

00:11:51.280 anything bad about it then I don't look back on it but but when I when I look back what I what I

00:11:56.540 feel like especially for our young girls is when do we accept no because it's inconvenient at what

00:12:07.160 age? I'm not going to go on a big feminist tirade here. I'm just wondering at what age 0.77

00:12:14.480 do kids excel at something and due to limitations, either social or economic,

00:12:25.020 and we give, we say, okay, we say, okay. And then I just go about my day.

00:12:30.380 when does that happen

00:12:33.580 grade nine rolls around and in grade nine i did horribly at school for all those kids

00:12:40.260 listening right now listen school doesn't always come easy and it comes in waves and it comes in

00:12:49.720 levels of you get it or you have to really work for it or oh my god i'm never going to get it

00:12:58.900 again and I have to drop out and like join a commune. It comes in waves. And anybody who says

00:13:05.040 differently is not being honest, isn't being truthful about that process. Okay. There's

00:13:12.180 geniuses over here, but geniuses over here have their own set of issues. So grade nine rolls

00:13:17.220 around and I didn't do horribly guys, but I got straight B's that I don't think I've, honest to

00:13:27.120 God, I have such shame about straight Bs.

00:13:29.280 And I know some of you are like, oh, Joanna, that's not even a bad one.

00:13:31.840 Look, it was everything had always come easy.

00:13:34.460 And then I got straight Bs in high school and I and I cried and I talked to my mom and I said I got straight Bs.

00:13:40.860 My mom never really cared about grades, which was interesting.

00:13:44.120 All of the pressure that I ever put on myself for grades or for athletics because my mom didn't play any sports really came for me,

00:13:51.000 maybe from my uncle who was very, very smart and very accomplished when it came to his schoolwork

00:13:57.540 and stuff like that. But I got straight Bs and I thought, that's it. I suck. This is it. I'm not

00:14:06.640 good. Whatever I thought I was good at before, I'm not good at anymore. Whatever came easy has ceased

00:14:11.440 to come easy because grade 10 is going to get harder. And then grade 11 and 12 and 13. And yes,

00:14:16.220 I was in grade 13, because that's how old I am. 0.99

00:14:20.340 Everything's going to get harder, and I'm going to suck. 0.93

00:14:22.120 And my mom looked at me, and I'll never forget it. 0.97

00:14:24.060 We were sitting in the McDonald's parking lot.

00:14:26.020 That's right.

00:14:26.620 I have a lot of memories of McDonald's, guys.

00:14:28.360 So when, you know, you talk about how much I go there.

00:14:30.440 We're sitting in the McDonald's parking lot.

00:14:31.900 She looks at me, and she said, did you work for those bees?

00:14:35.600 And I said, what do you mean?

00:14:37.140 She goes, well, did you put in work?

00:14:42.800 Were those hard-fought bees?

00:14:46.220 And I kind of put my head down.

00:14:48.280 And at this point, I know I'm caught.

00:14:50.480 Because at this point, every kid knows if they put in the work or if they didn't.

00:14:57.280 And I hadn't.

00:14:59.080 And I said, no.

00:15:01.200 She goes, well, then you should feel upset.

00:15:04.060 And you should feel a little bit of guilt and a little bit of sadness and a little bit of defeat.

00:15:11.660 She said, because you did that. 0.75

00:15:16.220 She said, if you told me you busted your butt for that B and you worked and I saw you working and I saw you putting in the time, you know what?

00:15:23.860 Never, you would never hear a word out of me. 0.86

00:15:27.160 She goes, but I know you didn't.

00:15:29.220 You went into a new school, you got new friends, you joined sports teams, you, you know, you do all these other things, but I didn't see you working.

00:15:38.460 And she said, I think grade nine got a little hard.

00:15:41.820 And as grade nine got a little hard, you decided rather than ratchet it up, you decided to try to coast because that's how it should feel.

00:15:52.500 And she said, and again, I try to teach this way all the time.

00:15:57.620 She said, you have to learn that not everything's going to come easy, but it's not that it's not going to come.

00:16:04.860 If it doesn't come easy, it doesn't mean you can't get it.

00:16:09.060 It doesn't mean you can't push through it.

00:16:10.900 It doesn't mean you won't overcome. It means two things. You need to work harder and you need to

00:16:16.500 work smarter. And, you know, she said it to me with love and empathy and all of those things,

00:16:26.500 but with a firmness, with a strictness to it, where she had never talked to me about marks

00:16:34.220 before. She didn't even care about the bees. She really didn't. She saw the bees and she's like,

00:16:38.900 oh, okay. She didn't even care about, I cared. I cared. But I cared about the same damn thing I

00:16:45.180 cared about in grade two. What was the mark? Where was my parade? Where was my sticker and 0.89

00:16:55.140 my accolade for achieving a certain level of what? And I look back and I'm like, I'm pretty thankful

00:17:04.100 that in grade nine, I got my ass handed to me a little bit. But don't worry, that's not the last 0.96

00:17:08.540 time. It was not the last time. Volleyball, grade 10. I fought with my volleyball coach

00:17:20.740 all the time. I had a big, big mouth. She and I just didn't see eye to eye. We fought constantly.

00:17:31.100 I had a big attitude. I thought I was better than she gave me credit for. Was I? No.

00:17:38.540 I wasn't. So come playoffs, I was sitting on the bench. And as I was sitting on the bench and

00:17:43.940 the senior volleyball coaches, which is like the mecca at my school, senior girls volleyball team

00:17:50.660 was the best sports team at Anderson. Hands down, hands down, hands down for years and years and

00:17:55.180 years. And all I wanted to do was play on that team because accolades, right? I wasn't even that

00:18:02.460 good at volleyball. I don't even know if I liked volleyball. I like sports, but I didn't work.

00:18:09.240 I sure as hell didn't listen to my coach. So I was too busy fighting with her. So I'm sitting 0.61

00:18:12.420 on the bench and Gord Williamson walks by and he sees me sitting on the bench and he watches the

00:18:18.020 girls play. And in that moment, I know he's deciding who he's going to choose to try out

00:18:22.840 in grade 11. And I'm like, you've got to be joking me. I'm not going to get to be on this

00:18:30.580 team because I'm sitting on the bench. And I remember feeling some kind of way about it, like

00:18:33.840 if she would have had me out there. Right? So what did I do? Well, fine. I'm going to play rugby.

00:18:42.760 I broke my collarbone playing rugby. That's not my mistake. That girl tackled way too high.

00:18:48.320 But what happened with rugby is sometimes you get lessons you don't even know you needed.

00:18:54.480 um because i sure as hell didn't know i needed it and rugby has a way of

00:19:02.920 visually of physically you either put it all on the field or you go home on a stretcher

00:19:12.820 and i don't mean to be so ridiculous but it's kind of the way it is you got to put it and if

00:19:19.520 you put it all in the field there's this amazing thing in rugby especially when you're brand new

00:19:23.560 at it and we were all brand new you muscle your way through you give it your heart

00:19:31.080 and i started realizing what that felt like and i also started realizing something even

00:19:35.800 more important which what what it really felt like to be on a team because on rugby

00:19:41.720 you're the people next to you are like they're not just your team they're and i don't want to

00:19:47.480 minimize war but it's like going to war you're at the bottom of a rock they have to be on you they

00:19:52.440 And so when you can do that with a group of people, you decide what a team is, you decide what hard work looks like.

00:20:00.100 And by the way, I wasn't good.

00:20:01.960 I wasn't good.

00:20:02.600 I didn't understand the game.

00:20:04.840 But what I understood in that single season was what it meant to work harder, stronger, better, whatever it was going to take.

00:20:15.800 But I still, at the end of that year, I thought, well, I'm not playing senior girls volleyball.

00:20:20.160 I'm not going to get asked to try out.

00:20:23.500 It's going to be a disaster, blah, blah, blah.

00:20:26.700 And come next season, I get pulled aside and says,

00:20:32.520 come try out for girls' volleyball.

00:20:34.700 I was blown away.

00:20:36.020 I was like, what the hell is this?

00:20:37.980 How did this even happen?

00:20:39.380 He's never even seen me play.

00:20:42.340 And the assistant rugby coach pulled me aside and said,

00:20:47.160 said, just so you know, you're going to try out for girls volleyball. I said, yeah, I got the

00:20:54.600 thing, but I don't get it. And he goes, well, that's because I saw your heart playing rugby

00:20:59.680 and I know who Gord wants and Gord doesn't want the best players that have ever walked this earth

00:21:07.620 because sometimes that comes with, he doesn't want, he'll take, don't get me wrong, he'll take

00:21:13.320 great players. But what he really wants is heart. And if he couldn't see you struggle,

00:21:21.660 if I couldn't see you struggle and push through the struggle, I never would have known you had it.

00:21:28.820 I don't know if you're going to make the team, he says. His name is Mr. Hussey. I don't know

00:21:31.780 if you're going to make the team. He goes, but you playing on that rugby pitch, you definitely

00:21:36.260 deserve a tryout your heart deserves the tryout guys i can't tell you how that changed my life

00:21:45.620 how those mistakes i made changed my life and again i need i don't know if i needed the mistake

00:21:57.300 but i needed somebody i needed at some point for somebody to show me or something to show me

00:22:04.660 my failures, the things that I was weak in, the things that I was, that I didn't have as a part

00:22:13.820 of my character yet, you know, the things I was missing. Not to make a long story short,

00:22:23.540 because I digress, but I made that volleyball team. I made it and

00:22:33.260 as I made it, I got this note. I was, I was doing a co-op placement, whatever. I didn't know I made

00:22:41.640 it, but as I tried out, I mean, I tried out because I realized it's about my heart. So if

00:22:49.560 it's about my heart, then I just, I just need to put it all on the court. I don't need to be the

00:22:53.900 best necessarily, but I, everybody needs to know that I will die trying, getting better, getting

00:23:00.880 smarter, getting all of those things. So there I go. And I get a piece of paper that was sent to

00:23:09.420 me that I still have, by the way. And all it said was, because I didn't know if I was going to make

00:23:14.580 the team and I was at a co-op placement, it said, senior girls practice, 7am. And that was it.

00:23:21.920 And that team changed my life, not because I was great.

00:23:25.900 not because i i stepped on the court and i was a superstar it changed my life because i stepped on

00:23:32.460 the court and i wasn't i stepped on the court and i wasn't a superstar and somebody knew that i had

00:23:39.300 the heart to be something impressive i was never gonna jump super high guys i was never gonna i

00:23:47.540 don't think that you know you you're naturally born with certain skills i'm a good athlete i am

00:23:52.780 not great. But, and I've talked many years about this, everything else I developed, the blood,

00:24:01.600 the sweat, the tears, the dives, that I would do anything for the team, all of that is the heart.

00:24:08.560 Isn't that what we want to teach more than anything else? Isn't the heart what we want

00:24:15.460 to teach? Isn't the grind, whether it's in school, whether it's in sport, isn't that the thing?

00:24:22.780 And we're so busy. We're so busy with the final marks and the scorecards and the whatever it is, giving out accolades and patting people on the back who lost.

00:24:36.940 But nobody is doing the hard job of saying, was it the hard B? Was it the hard B or did you slack off and watch TV and go out with your friends?

00:24:47.840 nobody's asking that question that's the lesson

00:24:52.080 those are the mistakes we make when we don't listen to those things right

00:24:58.420 and then i go off to university guys don't think i've learned from my mistake because i do it all

00:25:04.680 over again first year university i decide in grade 13 i saw free willy and i want to be a marine

00:25:13.240 biologist. I kid you not, that's exactly what happened. And I changed my entire university

00:25:18.980 programming. And I decided I was going to go to Simon Fraser, which is in BC, 4,500 kilometers

00:25:24.780 away from where I lived in Ontario. And I was going to go be a marine biologist and swim with

00:25:29.020 the whales. Nobody told me that I could have been like, I could have had no degree and gone and swam

00:25:35.920 with the whales at SeaWorld before we knew how bad SeaWorld was. All I wanted to do, swim with

00:25:42.020 Wales. And I got into my first year university and you know what happened? I wasn't going to

00:25:47.880 play volleyball and the volleyball coach, somehow I bumped into somebody on the team who said they

00:25:53.320 were looking for a setter. And I went, and all of a sudden she goes, well, come try out. And I tried

00:25:58.220 out and they thought I was pretty good. I made the team instantaneously. And then that's all I did

00:26:03.060 for my first year. Chemistry class, biology class, calculus. I barely psychology, I barely win.

00:26:12.020 I barely went.

00:26:15.780 And that year, I didn't even know where the bio lab was.

00:26:20.960 That's like bad nightmares I have.

00:26:23.600 I wrote the biology lab final without ever having gone to the biology lab itself

00:26:31.280 because it was all written and you had documents and everything.

00:26:34.440 I never went.

00:26:38.520 And then I got a straight seat.

00:26:42.020 And then I came home to mom. You know what I said? I'm not cut out for it.

00:26:49.020 I dropped out. I'm not, I did the semester and I'm done. I came home. I said, I'm not going to

00:26:53.680 university. I'm not good enough. My mom looked at me, panicked, thinking, oh my God, she's not

00:27:00.860 going to university. Now what is she going to do? And I said, I'm going to, my uncle's, I'm going

00:27:04.460 to become a cop. It's good pay. He says, I'll get in right away. Who cares? I'm going to become a

00:27:09.580 caught my mom, pure panic because she just, you know, the idea of not having a post-secondary 1.00

00:27:17.060 education freaked her out. And I remember she looked at me when I dropped out

00:27:24.480 and she never once criticized. And she said, was it a hard C?

00:27:31.780 and I said what same lesson as grade nine right you think I would have learned something was it

00:27:40.060 a hard C and I had to be real honest and say no I guessed I even had a tutor I didn't do the work

00:27:52.140 I played volleyball I skipped class it was technically it was a miracle C

00:27:57.760 and and she said or you know are you are you scared you're not gonna you're not gonna get in

00:28:08.700 are you scared that you're not if you apply to university now with those grades that it's you

00:28:16.040 you're not going to be successful you're not going to get in and in my head of course that's what it

00:28:20.520 was biggest mistake i ever made was this notion that i'm i wasn't even going to bother applying

00:28:27.220 because I was terrified. I wasn't going to get in. All my friends had gone off to university

00:28:31.640 and I'm sitting here terrified. I have straight C's in chemistry and the book still had the

00:28:37.300 cellophane on it because I multiple guests through the entire multiple choice exam.

00:28:42.080 And now what? Now I can't even apply to Western university and go there because my marks are so

00:28:46.860 crappy. And my mom said, well, you have a choice. Are you going to, are you going to succumb to that

00:28:55.380 or are we going to figure out what to do to get you back into university or at least at the very

00:29:01.500 least try? She said, you're going to have to make that decision. So I sat down and I don't

00:29:11.480 remember the sequence, but decided, okay, I was going to apply to Western. I was going to figure

00:29:16.360 out how to apply. From what I understood, I could apply with my old marks from high school that this

00:29:21.160 didn't even have to matter. And it was a one-off and people started talking. And then I did one of

00:29:26.860 the first things again, that leads you to, you got to show your heart, which is back in the day when

00:29:34.100 it wasn't all computerized, you could actually pick up the phone and call admissions. I know it's

00:29:39.000 like a brave new world, pick up the phone and call admissions. And there was a woman at Western

00:29:44.240 admissions office, and her name was Kathy. Kathy picks up the phone. I explain my situation.

00:29:52.420 I'm kind of panicked. I said, I'm going to send this in, but I didn't do well. And here's what

00:29:56.120 happened. She goes, Joanna, Joanna, Joanna. Calm down. It's okay. This happens. Happens.

00:30:02.220 Something's going to happen. Your old marks are probably what they're going to use. I need you.

00:30:07.040 We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. She goes, if you have any worries, just call me.

00:30:11.080 Oh, I called Kathy again and again and again and again because I wanted her to see my heart.

00:30:18.580 I wanted her to see that the heart, that the easy C I barely even looked at.

00:30:22.800 I wasn't going to make that same mistake this time.

00:30:25.540 And I put it all on the table.

00:30:27.760 And I remember I didn't even wait.

00:30:30.080 I didn't even get that package in the mail.

00:30:31.900 Kathy called me and said, Joanna, I just got it.

00:30:36.060 I sent it out.

00:30:37.400 You're in.

00:30:38.300 You're going to be this.

00:30:39.060 You're going to be that, right?

00:30:40.500 And then my whole perspective on education shifted at Western.

00:30:44.980 I didn't take anything for the end result.

00:30:48.500 I didn't have a job in my mind.

00:30:49.900 I had absolutely no idea.

00:30:52.060 I didn't have any sort of goal whatsoever other than I wanted to take things that interested me.

00:30:58.800 I wanted to take things that I found fascinating and intellectually driving, and I was just going to take that.

00:31:04.760 And I took random politics.

00:31:07.100 I took English.

00:31:08.520 I took philosophy.

00:31:09.460 I took world religion. I was all over the place. And then I discovered my sort of aptitude and

00:31:16.580 passion for politics and arguing and history. And it all happened very, very naturally.

00:31:24.100 And when you let go of what's supposed to be, which is, I think, one of our biggest mistakes,

00:31:30.300 what we think ought to happen, what we think the end game should be, when we let go of it for two

00:31:35.340 seconds and finally just go with what we are then great things happen my academics rolled into

00:31:45.740 exactly what my academics should have been and i loved all of it absolutely all of it

00:31:53.740 right down to the point where i chose york to do my master's thesis and i stepped foot on campus

00:31:59.420 and within two months, the whole thing was on strike.

00:32:04.100 Well, that should have been a mistake.

00:32:05.520 I could have had a full ride at Western University.

00:32:07.640 They wanted me to stay there.

00:32:08.760 I would have had a great ride.

00:32:10.040 I would have been in international relations.

00:32:12.080 I would have been doing really cool foreign relation work

00:32:15.480 and blah, blah, blah with these great professors

00:32:17.500 that already love me.

00:32:18.600 And I decided to go to this other school

00:32:19.700 and they all go on strike.

00:32:21.760 But when they go on strike,

00:32:24.240 one of the most magical things happened.

00:32:26.620 So, not only did I meet people that changed my philosophy, that opened my eyes, that allowed me to see the world in a different capacity, and to be honest, opened up the possibility of me being gay, which is insane to me.

00:32:47.620 that if I didn't go there and I didn't do what I did in order to get there, that I could have been

00:32:53.400 a whole different person for a much longer period of time, not being aware, not being awakened to

00:32:57.380 that. But what else this strike did is it really politicized me. So it took me from somebody who

00:33:05.980 thought I just needed to do well, put in the paper, put in the work. People liked me, people

00:33:11.440 understood me. And now I got what it felt like to fight for something. I felt what it was to be in

00:33:18.240 the middle of what I perceived as being an injustice, as being very empowering. And even

00:33:24.740 though it was the longest strike, I think in Ontario, when we won, what happened was there

00:33:30.680 was this trigger effect of a bunch of universities not having to go on strike because we set a

00:33:35.060 precedent. So I got through all that. Another mistake. When you apply for jobs after high

00:33:47.700 school, sorry, after university for a teacher, you're supposed to get your OCT. And I was lazy.

00:33:53.900 I can be lazy. And I didn't do all the things you were supposed to do to get my OCT. And I was

00:33:59.760 annoyed by it. And I, and then I couldn't apply for jobs that I wanted to apply for yet.

00:34:05.300 And all of a sudden, I'm one of my friend of a friend said, Oh, this private school's hiring.

00:34:10.700 And, and I thought, okay, well, I'll just go apply there.

00:34:15.980 It was a mistake. It was laziness. It was, and, and I ended up rolling into

00:34:22.960 Metro for the last 20 years. Not only did I roll into Metro, but I rolled into a culture,

00:34:32.560 a very, very alternative, crazy, amazing, fantastic culture. One in which when I sat

00:34:40.560 down and did the interview, I fought with the owner of the school for 40 minutes.

00:34:44.900 That is not a lie. That is exactly what happened. Talk about a mistake.

00:34:48.500 what is wrong with me I sat down we had a normal 20 minute conversation he said what did you do

00:34:54.480 your teachers uh your masters on I said politicization of teachers unions and then

00:34:59.280 he hates unions and I support unions and we fought for 40 minutes and I mean fought I mean there was a

00:35:05.880 bulging you know vein at the side of my neck fought for 40 minutes I come off there I call

00:35:11.880 my mom I already got an apartment that's how I'm like I'll get this job no problem I get all the

00:35:16.780 jobs that I apply for. I call my mom, I'm not getting that job. She's like, why? What happened?

00:35:20.740 I said, mom, I fought with him. She said, what? That's a mistake. That wasn't the right course

00:35:30.960 of action. And here I am 20 years later, we still fight often. Yeah, we just, we just threw down

00:35:40.100 today a little bit. It's part of our nature. But I'm about at the exact school that I should

00:35:46.400 always have been at I wouldn't be doing social media I wouldn't be doing any of the things that

00:35:51.520 I'm about to be doing and I'm in the middle of doing right now because I couldn't have done it

00:35:54.820 I would have been I don't just think physically restrained by the job and the union and the

00:35:59.500 government like the public school system I would have been restrained by the fact that that job

00:36:06.040 didn't give me freedom to grow the way that I've grown politically as a teacher as a person over

00:36:11.740 the last 20 years. I wouldn't have. And then about, well, when I was, I turned 33, this

00:36:20.960 is the last mistake we'll do for today. Not to say it's my last mistake. It's just, it's

00:36:27.960 a good one. 33, I met who would be the person who would be my wife for the next 10 years

00:36:40.260 after that. Well, 11 years. And when I say mistake, I don't mean it to devalue a relationship.

00:36:50.620 I don't mean it to throw away a relationship. I don't, none of those things. I need you to

00:36:57.160 understand what I'm talking about here. What I mean by it is when we don't know ourselves,

00:37:04.680 when we're not self-aware, when we haven't done all of that hard work to get to know ourselves,

00:37:12.680 understand what a boundary is, understand what self-love looks like, understand all of those

00:37:17.960 different things, everything is going to be a mistake. I mean, there was a whole list of

00:37:25.200 relationships. I didn't even talk about getting up to that one. Trust me. Problem after problem,

00:37:29.940 after problem, after problem, of course. And we all just say, oh, they're just not right for us.

00:37:33.980 or they were crazy or this was that whatever no no no no no no it's on you it's on what you

00:37:43.360 haven't worked through what your relationship pathology is what is broken in you even if you're

00:37:49.660 the nicest most lovely person on this planet those are your mistakes when people say things

00:37:56.620 like what chemistry is well a lot of the times chemistry is a very real very dominant powerful

00:38:03.400 thing that can be completely destructive. Being drawn to somebody and having that chemistry

00:38:10.560 does not make them right. Does not make them right. And I had no idea about anything.

00:38:16.560 And then I got married. And I got married and I had no boundaries. And I had no ability to say

00:38:23.980 no or to say this isn't okay for me or to say this situation is not working for me.

00:38:30.560 So what did I do?

00:38:31.640 I said, yes, of course, I love you.

00:38:33.720 And I kept running up a hill, running up a hill.

00:38:36.280 And I'd still be running to this day had she not left.

00:38:42.580 I wouldn't even have pulled myself out of that mistake.

00:38:47.220 I would never have pulled myself out of the mistake because I didn't even know how.

00:38:51.500 Because some of the biggest mistakes we make start with lies we tell ourselves because

00:38:56.660 we don't know yet they're lies.

00:39:00.560 so you go on this treadmill right i was on this treadmill and that's on me

00:39:06.800 a lot of people sit and talk about their partners and what they didn't do and how they weren't

00:39:14.720 this or they weren't that listen i'm not saying that's not that's not the case i'm not saying

00:39:20.260 other people can't have damage or can't be selfish or can't be any of those things having said that

00:39:26.260 if you're self-aware, if you're mentally healthy, if you've worked through some,

00:39:36.300 become at least aware of some of that relationship pathology, you can put stuff on the table and you

00:39:42.340 can say, I have to go through this knowingly, or I have no interest in going down that road anymore

00:39:48.880 because it's not going to serve me. But if you're not aware of it, then you go blindly down a road

00:39:55.720 and some of us longer than others. You go blindly down a road and you make mistake after mistake

00:40:00.840 after mistake after mistake. I severed friendships during that relationships because I thought that's

00:40:06.900 what I needed to do to protect the relationship. Family, I excommunicated. I changed so much about

00:40:13.680 who I was. I never would have been doing social media ever. It wouldn't have been tolerated in

00:40:21.660 that situation. I wouldn't have been able to be the person that I am because I was too busy trying

00:40:27.160 to be the person I thought. That's key. She needed me to be. Mistake. I can't even count all the

00:40:36.780 mistakes I made. And it's funny. After she left and I was obliterated, the only time I started

00:40:47.400 feeling really better wasn't when I didn't want her back. It wasn't when I was so angry. It wasn't

00:40:56.620 when I could point to all the things she did and my friends all knew the things that she did and

00:41:01.800 could point with me. It was when I finally said, holy shit, I did this. That was me. I set up that 0.99

00:41:12.980 dynamic. I allowed that dynamic. I perpetuated that dynamic that was on me. And when I came to

00:41:22.960 that realization, even though I was far from healed, when I came to that realization, what I

00:41:28.420 realized is the mistakes we make are truly mistakes because we are not aware. We do not

00:41:40.860 get the bigger picture. We do not understand aspects of ourselves. We find ourselves digging

00:41:47.300 holes we never wanted to dig and then having absolutely no idea how to get out of them.

00:41:54.080 I think mistakes aren't a sign of just bad choices everybody make. No, no, no, no, no.

00:42:01.780 They're a direct reflection of where your head is in that moment. And it's not just a mistake that

00:42:09.520 you had to have to get to something good. It's a mistake you had to have to understand something

00:42:13.700 about yourself. It's not a coincidence. It's not a mistake. Well, if I didn't get dumped by so-and-so,

00:42:21.300 I never would have met so-and-so. No, no, no, no, no. If I didn't get divorced, I never would

00:42:26.980 have met Anna. But if that was it, if that was all the freaking learning I did,

00:42:33.840 my relationship with Anna never would have been what the amazing,

00:42:37.020 beautiful relationship that it actually is because I would have learned nothing. I would

00:42:43.120 have made the same mistakes because my headspace would have still been telling me to make those

00:42:48.280 choices because in my head, they weren't mistakes yet. They're only mistakes when you get smarter,

00:42:54.480 when you get more self-aware, when you can point to them and understand where was I in that moment

00:43:01.640 to make that choice. What didn't I do? What were my failures? What was my lack of understanding?

00:43:10.320 And I'm not saying we all have to have it together all the time at all. Please don't think that.

00:43:18.400 I am saying though, the people we're drawn to, the mistakes we make, the times we don't put in

00:43:25.280 our full effort, the times we coast and hope things are all going to work out, all of those

00:43:31.060 are reflections of how much we either understand or don't understand ourselves. It has nothing to

00:43:38.280 do with anybody else. It had nothing to do with my grade three time teacher. It had nothing to

00:43:45.300 do with my mom. It had nothing to do with my ex. It has nothing to do with my volleyball coat.

00:43:53.880 These are all reflections. These people are all reflections of where you put your head,

00:44:00.040 how you put your head, and the lessons you choose to learn, not about life, but about you.

00:44:07.180 So, those are a few of my mistakes. Now, I have juicier, juicier mistakes, bigger mistakes,

00:44:15.580 dodgier ones, ones that wind up with big public fights and dramatic lesbian drama, 0.59

00:44:25.360 and I used the word twice on purpose, times where I lost friends, times where I didn't 0.96

00:44:33.460 treat people the way that they deserve to be treated.

00:44:37.620 And I'll talk about all of that.

00:44:40.180 You guys leave me messages, comments on this podcast, and let me know how deep you want

00:44:46.860 me to go here.

00:44:47.960 Because I'm also not in the interest, I have no interest in limiting how I share.

00:44:55.360 and how big it gets, especially if what I say helps to resonate with something,

00:45:02.300 with a fraction of something somebody else is going through.

00:45:05.440 Because I think what we also don't do is we also don't talk about it, right?

00:45:10.260 I can talk about 10 years ago because I'm done with it.

00:45:13.460 I'm over it.

00:45:15.100 Can you talk about today?

00:45:17.380 Can you talk about the mistakes that you made yesterday in a real way?

00:45:21.400 can you admit that the attractions or the things that you have about yourself

00:45:27.540 that are that are leading you down roads you know you're not supposed to go down can you

00:45:32.460 admit that they're about who you are in this minute and and it's not quite right because I

00:45:39.540 think that's an important conversation so let me know in the comments let me know if you want to

00:45:45.540 share anything and I'll talk about that let me know if you want about any specific time in my

00:45:50.000 life, and I will go deeper, and I will go longer about all of those different facets that I've just

00:45:56.300 talked about. And until then, I will say the same thing I say every week around this time.

00:46:04.740 I'll see you next Tuesday, same bat time, same bat station. Have a great night, guys. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - May 09, 2023

The One Where I Make ALL The Mistakes

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