00:00:00.000classes in session and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session and guys today i know i
00:00:10.400might have promised you somebody else would be sitting virtually next to me but that listen guys
00:00:16.320sometimes you gotta roll with it right i'm just gonna fix my hat here for those who are watching
00:00:21.120sorry i look a mess but you just get me today but in thinking about it i think it was time
00:00:28.400that I go back I think initially when I started this podcast I started with my my why why am I
00:00:36.520doing it and I gave you a few stories and I think today I need to go back to that time and I need
00:00:43.460to I need to give you my origin story a little bit and hopefully maybe little glimmers of it
00:00:50.280you will understand and you will you know maybe relate to as you go through your life
00:00:58.400So I'm going to give you a synopsis. Are you ready? Here we go. So I was born to my mom, obviously, Angela, my dad, Ross. They were married for just a wee short time. Ended up getting divorced when I was young. And when I was young, and this was around three, they separated and then finally got divorced when I was about, I think about seven or eight.
00:01:24.360So at that point, my mom decided, she was a nurse in her entire life, she decided to pick us up and we were going to move and we were going to go live with my grandparents and we're going to buy a store in a very small, like 1100 people.
00:01:45.040We're going to own the general story of my grandparents.
00:01:47.020Now, you have to understand that part of my origin story is incredibly important.
00:01:51.800And of course, it ties back to my dad and divorce and yada, yada, yada.
00:01:56.460But I'm going to give you some glimmers, all right?
00:02:15.040As a young kid, I watched my mom nurse. I watched her be this amazing individual that knew everything, that was incredibly responsible and hardworking and empathetic and a caretaker, and all of it I admire.
00:02:32.820You know, and I watched her do that in my younger years.
00:02:37.520And as I got older, I still spent a lot of time there, even though we're about to take
00:02:41.180this little break and we're about to move up north for this kind of weird sidetrack
00:03:02.820And I think watching, speaking of my origin story, and each glimmer of this is going to give you sort of an inkling into who I am and why I am.
00:03:11.740Watching her do her job, I realized two things subconsciously because I was young.
00:03:17.880Number one, doing something well and being respected for that hard work and what you give in that environment is incredibly important.
00:03:45.640Back in the days, we were allowed to do stuff like that.
00:03:48.240And I understood what that hard work looked like.
00:03:52.400I also saw an incredible level of respect that my mom was given.
00:03:56.500she gave and and was given to her by both her co-workers her bosses and patients
00:04:02.640right my mom also allowed me a lot of latitude in helping and again back in the day when i was
00:04:14.360allowed to help i i asked patients what food they wanted i i took them things they needed
00:04:20.700i spoke to them a lot of older patients that i would speak to you know and i would hear how
00:04:26.700they would talk about my mom and what she did and the job the importance of the job she did
00:04:33.740and i think that's where when people say who do you look up to and i say my mom i mean that's
00:04:38.780a big reason it's not just some random reason that i you know i'm sure everybody everybody
00:04:44.140respects their parent but i don't just respect my mom for being a great mom and loving me and
00:04:50.860all of those things we'll talk about that later i respect her because i saw her do this thing
00:04:56.780external to me it wasn't about me her nursing wasn't about me but i saw a power in it you know
00:05:04.780and and i saw i think i saw her as a more complete person so the first thing is that
00:05:11.180And the second part of my origin story here has to be, I saw my mom do something she was passionate about.
00:05:19.860She loved nursing, and some days it was hard, and some days it was traumatic.
00:05:24.900But overall, she was incredibly passionate about those people, about what she did, about how she did it, and how she affected the lives of people within that hospital.
00:05:36.520and so right off the bat i think i got two incredibly important lessons
00:05:41.700number one you do something and you you go all in and i've i have done and i'll talk about
00:05:49.380different jobs but i have done many a job in my lifetime leading up to teaching but i've always
00:05:54.520gone all in it doesn't really matter i've always done it to the best of my ability i've always
00:05:58.840taken it incredibly seriously and number two i've always considered what i do a part of who i am
00:06:03.880some people don't and i get that not your origin story i get that but i always wanted my job to be
00:06:10.440a reflection of that passion or to be an expression of that passion to embolden it to grow it and for
00:06:18.200me those two pieces of who i am of that origin for me are probably two of the most fundamental
00:06:27.480things to who i am as a person and why i am happy doing what i'm doing even though it might be hard
00:06:35.080i mean guys today at school what a day by period two i'm like it's time for the week to be over
00:06:41.800and it's monday but i realized that those elements that she taught me not purposefully
00:06:50.120those weren't sit down lessons right she didn't sit me down and say joe you gotta have a hard work
00:06:55.960ethic joe you got to do everything to 100 joe make sure you're passionate about your job
00:07:00.920she didn't sit down and articulate those things to me i was incredibly lucky enough
00:07:07.400to experience them with her and i think those are the biggest lessons right the biggest lessons we
00:07:14.040learn aren't the things that are necessarily explicitly stated they are things that we get
00:07:20.360to be around and we get to see an action especially from our parents especially from our parents
00:07:29.400you know so so those are foundational for me now my parents did you know unfortunately get a divorce
00:07:36.440and it wasn't the the smoothest of relationships and i don't remember any of that i'm sure
00:07:41.880subconsciously i do some you know therapist out there really wants to have a chat with me about
00:07:47.240my deep dark whatever when it comes to that kind of stuff guys till i was 14 swear to god i thought
00:07:54.280my parents got divorced because my mom liked figure skating and my dad wanted to watch mash
00:08:02.840that was the biggest argument i remember them having my mom loved the olympics i don't know
00:08:08.040what she was watching my dad liked mash i couldn't watch mash until i was much older just out of
00:08:13.640you know pure protest so i don't know how much that fed into me i really don't
00:08:20.280subconsciously yeah sure is it a part of my origin story of course but there's bigger parts
00:08:25.880of my dad that are part of my origin story i think than the breakup because the breakup also
00:08:30.920showed me something and and this was a big in part again because of my mom my mom made sure
00:08:38.840she was friends with my dad and i don't need to go in their marriage but for whatever that didn't
00:08:44.920however that didn't work out for her my mom made sure that her relationship with my dad was was
00:08:53.800important to make sure that my dad could always be around me and it was always happy like for
00:08:59.320example when they first got separated my dad was at christmas morning before i'd wake up every
00:09:04.520morning he didn't sleep there but somehow he managed to get there before i woke up
00:09:10.920um anytime i would go to my dad's side of the family for christmas or anything like that my
00:09:15.640mom would always come with me my mom went to my dad's second marriage why because that was good
00:09:23.400for me now there are some people out there that's like wow joanna your mom that's too much for her
00:09:29.640like maybe she should maybe i don't know but that's her that's her origin story i'm just telling you
00:09:36.040that that what that gave me was a sense of stability and love and acceptance and i didn't
00:09:42.920need to ever choose i didn't even i really never knew why they got a divorce until my
00:09:48.680grandma told me years and years later which my mom still accepted so as they got a divorce right
00:09:56.520my mom needed help and i spent a big part of my origin stories the time that i spent with my
00:10:01.240grandma my mom's mom you guys have seen her she's grandma ruby if you watched on tick tock she is
00:10:08.280you know 96 no 95 94. she's in her 90s um and when i was young i was babysat by her a lot so
00:10:21.880my mom would go to work my mom was a nurse my mom would go to work and my grandma would go after me
00:10:25.960now here's where some conflict started to brew my grandmother started raising me the way my
00:10:31.320grandmother raised her kids and my mom wasn't okay with all of that specifically let's say with
00:10:37.240questions i'd ask the way that she would answer them or the way that she would um you know my
00:10:43.960grandma was a little bit more kids should be seen not heard whereas my mom was always encouraging
00:10:49.720me to have a voice and for me to have a say and i think when those conflicting ideas happened
00:10:55.960to too high of a degree my mom said you know what now's the time for you to be her grandmother but
00:11:01.800not to be her her mother so i was then put into a very lovely um private daycare and and i went
00:11:10.040to a monastery daycare and and here's where another piece of my origin story went a lot of
00:11:15.880people wait to spend money on their kids education in like high school when they're not doing well
00:11:21.160right and they send their private school or get them tutors whatever that's backwards i truly
00:11:27.800believe that by my mom sending me to this to this pre so the daycare and then i did my junior and
00:11:34.920senior kindergarten there sending me to this kind of establishment this amazing montessori school
00:11:40.200that costs money absolutely so if you get not everybody can afford that guys i honestly believe
00:11:47.160that their perception of education actually formed my confidence when it came to it so by
00:11:55.640the age well before i before grade one i was able to do the three little bears in french
00:12:01.800i think i was baby girl neither here nor there but what i need to explain is that i think it gave
00:12:09.240me a level of i then went off to public school for the rest of my years but i still no joke have
00:12:15.640very visceral memories of this daycare very significant memories and some of it's because
00:12:21.560my mom's told the stories or whatever but i'll tell you a couple uh number one i i'm you know
00:12:30.520kissed this little boy i think his name was jesse jesse if you're listening you know
00:12:37.960thanks um but i it's funny because i've seen pictures we look identical i can't the height
00:12:44.120of narcissism i think is it was that kind of dynamic anyways we got caught playing house or
00:12:49.240whatever it is you do in daycare and and the teacher got upset that's not what we're supposed
00:12:54.120to be doing here whatever we got in trouble we weren't allowed to have our apple that day for
00:12:58.440snack i know that sounds kind of awkward thinking about it but guys it's a long time ago right we're
00:13:03.560talking 40 years forward everybody can just pause take a moment of silence for that unfortunate
00:13:12.440revelation all right back to it couldn't have an apple and i went straight up you gotta know i
00:13:18.360loved apples i went straight up to this woman and i said that's okay i don't like apples anyway
00:13:24.040that's the strength and fortitude i had at like five and i had that strength and fortitude because
00:13:31.000my mom always said i was allowed to have a voice and i think a huge part of my origin story
00:13:36.920is that my mom didn't just love me and i think father parents love i think by enabling me and
00:13:45.460supporting me and encouraging me to have a true opinion and a voice it gave me a level of self
00:13:54.340confidence and awareness at least at the very least to put myself in positions where i didn't
00:14:01.380feel shy i didn't feel sort of anxious i didn't feel any of those things because i had been given
00:14:07.860this this strength from my mom and from my family in general to be able to have that voice and i
00:14:16.340think that's incredibly important right so that was very very young now after my parents you know
00:14:23.300separate and get divorced and the whole nine yards my mom decides at seven years old so i'm in grade
00:14:28.420one um or i've just graduated grade one that we're still gonna stay oh that's not true we
00:14:37.460still stayed in we're in minutes we're in uh marking for a little while we still stayed there
00:14:41.540for a little while because eventually i end up in grade three and that's when we decide to move
00:14:49.940now in grade three i have a teacher who constantly wants me to stop talking so much
00:14:57.460you know and i say to my mom mom this teacher's really mean to me she hit me on the head she
00:15:03.060tells me i can't talk so my mom listens to me and this this is also the balanced parent
00:15:11.220she listens to me and says okay i'm gonna go talk to your teacher i said good go straighten her out
00:15:15.700right so she goes in her the teacher's name is missus and she says listen i know kids
00:15:22.980joanna has a very strong identity a very strong whatever this is how she tells the story do you
00:15:31.160mind telling me your side of the story and mrs self said listen joanna doesn't stop talking and
00:15:37.860that's great for her because she loves it and she's encouraged by it she's very intelligent
00:15:42.780she can do all of her work but sometimes the other kids can't get it done because they don't
00:15:47.700necessarily have that aptitude to do it as quickly so i've asked her to be quiet i've asked her to
00:15:54.020stop talking to her neighbor so that they can get their work done and one time while she was turned
00:15:58.900around i turned her head to the front of the classroom my mom said thank you very much i i
00:16:08.180i agree with you i'm gonna have a talk with her so when i say my mom bolstered me i want you guys
00:16:13.700to be really clear and i think this is super super important you can love your kids support your kid
00:16:21.220give them all of this confidence in the world however make sure they're still accountable
00:16:30.740and my mom always made me accountable so when she went and had that conversation with mrs self and
00:16:34.980she came home and she said joanna that's not how the story went and she recounted it she goes so
00:16:40.980you need to accept your portion or in big portion and then you kind of tried to lie
00:16:48.100and and i listened and i accepted it and i said okay well maybe but i still don't think she likes
00:16:53.540me and my mom said well she says she likes you a lot she thinks you're incredibly smart but she
00:16:58.820also thinks you're occupying too much of the other kids time so they can't get the work done can you
00:17:03.060do better and i said absolutely and i'll tell you mrs self and i went off to have an amazing
00:17:08.820teacher student relationship so i think my mom gave me all of this confidence but also instilled
00:17:15.520in me a level of accountability she never let me get away with anything she never let me um
00:17:21.460you know sidestep responsibility even as young as that and then we go off to the store so we moved
00:17:29.560up to a very small town in grade so when i went up in grade four whatever age that is and you got
00:17:35.280do cool things mansfield was a super small town north of toronto and um we own the only store
00:17:43.680in the town and my grandparents owned it with my mom and me and my two uncles also lived in the
00:17:52.320house but it was a huge house right so my uncles had bedrooms in one area of the house in their
00:17:56.960own living room my mom and i had bedrooms in another area our own living room my grandma had
00:18:01.360a huge room in our own massive living room and then we had the downstairs that we shared in the
00:18:07.040kitchen so we kind of had our separate idea you know living arrangements and sort of would come
00:18:12.960all together during the store my uncles john and ray were going off to university at the time
00:18:17.360but i became very close with them my uncle ray and i'll talk about him in a bit he's a big big
00:18:22.080big part of who i am and why i am but while i was there i started to work and i mean not not a lot
00:18:30.640child labor guys but i started to work and one and my grandfather at that point who was you know just
00:18:38.000a brilliant amazing guy who he was from poland he was an immigrant from poland um an electrician
00:18:47.360in poland and came here and worked incredibly hard built up you know however much money being
00:18:54.240an electrician here in fact he laid all of the telephone wires all the way across canada that
00:19:00.320was his job early on enough to save this money he wanted to own his own business and we went up
00:19:05.040there we ran this general store and then he let me work in one of the first things he taught me
00:19:10.480was how to deal with money guys i was in grade four i was in grade four and my first thing my
00:19:17.520grandfather teaches me is how to count back change show me where somebody knows how to count back
00:19:24.160change now i don't care how old they are nobody knows want to know why because they press it into
00:19:28.960the till by the way my grandfather disabled that function he said if you're going to work with
00:19:34.080money you need to understand money you need to learn how to count i learned how to stock shelves
00:19:40.640i learned you know we went bought in bulk at a wholesale place i learned how a business worked
00:19:47.840i learned how to ski want to talk about my origin story it's where i learned to play baseball
00:19:54.000now it's a cool story because being that young there was only in a small town there was only
00:20:02.140one kind of baseball to play and it was hardball just regular baseball so as a young girl i wasn't
00:20:08.100playing softball i played hardball so did all the any if you want to play baseball if you're
00:20:13.180a girl or a guy it doesn't matter you're young enough you all play together
00:20:15.980and i loved it and i was good at it and by the way one of my teammates was jeremy tagger
00:20:23.640who is the drummer for and was the drummer for our lady piece a very famous canadian man that's
00:20:29.620another story he's going to be on my podcast later i promise so i learned and i was great at it
00:20:36.260and then my mom didn't want me to be a teenager in this small town she thought it was
00:20:41.880a lot of a lot of bad things can happen in small towns teenagers and my mom wasn't as passionate0.66
00:20:49.540about this store and about owning a business as she was about being a nurse. And she never really
00:20:54.120gave up on it. She did it part-time while we were up there. And so we were going to move back down
00:20:58.600to closer to Toronto in order for her to start nursing again. And for me to be in a bigger city0.87
00:21:06.360in order to go to elementary, like grade seven and eight in high school. And we moved back down
00:21:12.740there and as we moved back down there you know everything changed again and and i became because
00:21:21.060it was just me and my mom at this point and i became incredibly responsible now some people
00:21:25.460might say too responsible for a 12 or 13 year old but as we shifted down there um i wanted to play
00:21:32.580baseball and initially it wasn't it i was wearing oshawa and it was fine for some reason the teams
00:21:40.740in oshawa were fine with it it wasn't until we moved to whippy which is another town and they
00:21:45.380had an issue with the fact that i was a girl playing hardball because at this point i was
00:21:51.140the only girl and they're like but why does she play softball well because i've always played
00:21:56.740hardball that's the sport i play and i was good at it and so come with me i had to try out
00:22:04.660it's just house lee guys i was never playing anything elite i had to try out we had to say
00:22:09.620listen, let me play for, let me try out for a host league team, which you didn't have to do.
00:22:14.460And if I'm not good enough, fine. But if I'm good enough, fine. And I played there until I was
00:22:20.62016. And it got increasingly harder. But being, being the only girl on a guy's team was, was a
00:22:31.380huge part of my identity, a huge part of my origin story. Because again, it taught me, maybe I was
00:22:38.140different i was i was definitely not the norm and a lot of people looked at me funny a lot of people
00:22:46.380didn't know i was a girl until i took off the backcatcher's helmet when i was young i had short
00:22:50.620hair and a lot of people questioned if i could play and in that every game i would prove how well
00:23:31.500right and i think that's incredibly important and i played baseball right up until i was about 15 16
00:23:37.420years old and then the differences between guys and girls really kicked in right i was a pitcher
00:23:43.900and a backcatcher and i realized that i wasn't able to to play to the level that i would want
00:23:50.060to have played to now looking back could i have yeah i could have worked harder for sure but it's
00:23:55.900also a different era different age now i would push my kid you know to to play um because i think
00:24:05.820i think the differences aren't as big as we always thought they were but nonetheless it
00:24:11.580gave me sports gave me a level of confidence you know second part of my origin story i roll into
00:24:18.220and i start playing volleyball at my high school now most people are like joe girls volleyball who
00:24:23.580cares like it's volleyball guys my coach and that team changed everything and i know i've spoken
00:24:30.380about it before so i'm not going to get too much into it but let me be very clear i wasn't great
00:24:35.340i wasn't great for some reason the assistant coach saw me play rugby and told the coach that i had
00:24:44.060what it took take a bet on me and by that not by seeing me play volleyball by that he gave me a
00:24:50.060shot at the senior girls volleyball team which by the way was the best team in all of anderson
00:24:54.380my high school years combined just the best team any level any sex doesn't matter the best0.94
00:25:01.740and he gave me that trial and what that showed me was i busted my butt because this team was0.86
00:25:08.700everything to me and i busted my butt to become a good volleyball player i don't know about great
00:25:14.700but i was a great leader and i was a great athlete in the sense that i wouldn't i wouldn't
00:25:21.100mean anything on that court and that taught me more than natural skill ever did my coach
00:25:28.940was incredibly supportive Gordon Williamson was this amazing guy he was an amazing role
00:25:33.420model in my life but what it really taught me was that if you want something enough and you're going
00:25:40.460to work for it, good things were good things that happened. I think it was the best thing
00:25:46.540before. Never. Never skill-wise, right? Mostly I blame my mom because she used to smoke and
00:25:54.060I should have been an easily four inches taller than I actually am, which would have made me
00:25:57.360a much better volleyball player. But nonetheless, I'm not that bitter. But what it taught me
00:26:02.800is that determination work ethic and drive means everything and and that was such an identity
00:26:12.480former for me right and then i go off to university and i get my butt kicked first year want to talk
00:26:20.800about origin stories i'll tell you an origin story for some reason i thought i was going to be a
00:26:25.360marine biologist because i saw free willy i changed my entire career path in grade 13 ontario had
00:26:32.720grade 13 at the time and i went to university to go to go learn to be a marine biologist and i
00:26:38.480sucked at it i was brutal want to know why i was brutal because i didn't give it a go
00:26:45.680i was so excited i made the volleyball team i was so excited to be playing university volleyball
00:26:50.800and had a scholarship in the whole nine yards that's all i did i barely went to class it was
00:26:55.600embarrassing and it was a failure my marks were a failure my effort was a failure heck
00:27:02.560i wasn't even that good at volleyball in that particular state and i came home my tail between
00:27:08.480my legs looked at my mom and said i'm not good enough for university i i i'm not smart enough
00:27:17.680i don't know full well i didn't even give it a 30 go but i was broken by a lot of it
00:27:25.600i thought i was going to go out there and it was going to be so amazing and i was going to
00:27:29.360i was playing volleyball and i was going to do all of these great things i was going to go swim
00:27:32.880with the whales or whatever the heck i thought marine biology was i don't know i probably thought
00:27:39.120i'd be working at sea world i know that's like a four-letter word now but back in the day
00:27:44.960and i came home pretty broken people say like have you always been good at school i've always
00:27:53.200always figured out how to do well in school. I've never, I wasn't. I am now. I was never a critical
00:28:01.380thinker. We were never taught that. Or if we were taught that, I ignored it. I once had a chemistry
00:28:07.600teacher say, you just have to understand it. Stop trying to memorize it. Start trying to understand
00:28:12.260it. I told him to buzz off, but he was 100% right. Stop trying to memorize it. You need to understand
00:28:18.820it. And I came home, my tail between my legs said, mom, that's it. I'm not going to university
00:28:24.620anymore. The panic in my mom's soul at that point should have been pretty big because all she wanted
00:28:31.220for me, right? My, my life was always about going to university. Always. I was, there wasn't even a
00:28:36.100choice. And I, and I thought I wasn't good at it. And I thought I'd done so horribly. How am I going
00:28:42.840to get into another university. And I was stressed. And I thought in retrospect, I probably thought if
00:28:50.880I just give up and do something else, I won't really fail at it, right? Because I already failed
00:28:57.120once, got horrible marks. You know that dream where you can't go to the exam because you've
00:29:05.740never been to the class. That was the reality of my biology lab. I had asked somebody where
00:29:12.180the bio lab was. If kids are listening, don't do what I did. That's a horrible, horrible lesson
00:29:18.020to learn. But guys, if there are kids listening, don't do that. What a waste of money. What a
00:29:24.140waste of time. And it sure as heck isn't indicative of my intelligence, just my laziness and my
00:29:30.560avoidance. So I came home and I said that to my mom. My mom said, listen, okay, whatever you want
00:29:37.580to do. And I was going to apply to the police college because my uncle was a cop and it was
00:29:43.220going to be easy. They were hiring all these women. I was athletic. I was smart. Could have1.00
00:29:47.300got a job with the police force. And my mom said, okay, but why don't we just try
00:29:54.020to get to university, and then you can decide. And I don't even remember what the tipping point
00:30:01.360was, but I decided to apply to Western. And then I learned one of my most important skills. Are
00:30:06.800you ready, guys? Are you listening? One of my most important origin stories. And this is one
00:30:10.980of the things that happened that I did and that I use to this day. I picked up the phone. I sent
00:30:18.380in my application, and I called. I don't even know if you can do this anymore, but you can
00:30:23.480always do it in some way. I called the admissions office and I got a woman named Carol on the phone.
00:30:29.800I should send her a fruit basket. And I described my story and I talked about how hard it was. And
00:30:36.380I said, these are the marks that I got, but this is what high school was like. And she said, Joanna,
00:30:41.960because we're, I chatted to her a few times. She goes, you're going to call me. I'm going to keep
00:30:45.820an eye on this for you, but I know it's going to work out. So I need you to, I need you to do A,
00:30:50.340B and C. And I'm going to help you with the admissions process. Cause I couldn't go back
00:30:54.160to high school and do it the way we did it before. And I pick up that phone and guys,
00:30:59.040I must've talked to Carol five or six times. And every time she learned a little bit more about me,
00:31:04.920do I know end of the story? I get into Western university. Do I know if Carol helped? I don't
00:31:11.000know. Here's what I do know. Making it personal, picking up that phone, putting yourself in
00:31:19.600positions and and letting yourself get known and sharing your story and connecting with people
00:31:28.320never did any harm and all that did all it did is enabled me to be known to somebody and for
00:31:38.800somebody within a particular organization that could help me to know me and to actually like me
00:31:44.480And I think it's hugely important. I tell all my students that. Let people get to know you. Be a part of the environment. Offer help. Offer skill. Do whatever you can to make yourself important. Because if you're not going to make yourself important, who the hell else is going to?