Late Bloomer: Woman Finally Decides What She Wants to Be When She Grows Up (Kinda) #4
In this episode of The BT Lounge, Brittanny talks about how she still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up (at the age of 40). Call her the eternal student, or she's having a midlife crisis, but she strongly desires to return to school. It's a bold move, but Brittanny is ready to take on the challenge and embrace the unknown. Who knows, in a few years, we may be calling her Dr. Taylor.
https://www.instagram.com/brittanny/
Podcast artwork by Brittany Lizotte
Podcast music by Joshua Van Ness
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[00:00:00] Hey there, kids. Welcome back to the BT Lounge. I hope you're doing well. Listen, I don't know what this week was. I really don't. It wasn't bad, but oh my god. There was, at the time of this recording, a full moon in Scorpio. There was an eclipse and drama, drama; I don't know what. I watched some videos but didn't remember a thing. It was just a lot.
One theme, though, that I've been coming across a lot is change . I'm going to spend a few episodes talking about change because we're in the midst of it. It doesn't matter what you're doing or who you are; change is happening. Change is always happening, and we have to be ready for it. I'm a Scorpio rising, so I love change. I love destruction. Blow it all up. Let's start fresh. I don't care. But, I'm having a hard time with change in the future. I don't know what I want to do. Yeah, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I still might be a magician slash detective slash lawyer. Shout out if you listened to that other episode; you know what I'm talking about.
[00:01:09] I'm having a really hard time figuring out what direction I want to go. We already know I have too many things on my plate, and I always tend to add more. Although I'm excited to do this podcast, it's still one more thing I must do. It's okay to acknowledge that. I don't regret it at all. It's more things I have to do, and I have to figure out what's essential. I still haven't read the book Essentialism, but you can watch any YouTube video about it and understand what it's about. The thing is, we can only have one priority, and that's ourselves. Then we have to think of what's essential and how much time we're spending on what's essential to us.
I told a friend yesterday that there's nothing I can let go of. Sometimes I write down all of my responsibilities, and then I have a Menty B, you know, a little mental breakdown about all of my responsibilities. I could take on fewer tasks in each responsibility, but generally, it's all I want to do. Yet, there are still more things I want to do, and I wanna do 'em right now, so I'm having a bit of a hard time trying to figure out, okay, what needs to change? What has to be adjusted here? And, of course, it's money, obviously. Money will always be the number one stressor for me and many of us. And listen, it's okay to acknowledge it.
[00:02:29] I'm going to do another episode about the law of attraction and my thoughts on it and the culture around it. But a little spoiler is if you put a lot of energy towards something, you're going to get it. And that's the good and the bad stuff. Ideally, you want to focus on what you want instead of what you don't want. I've been spending a lot of time focusing on my lack of time and how my time isn't giving me the output that I want.
[00:02:58] If you haven't noticed, this will be a bit of a rambly episode. I hope you're cool with that because I did record another episode for this week, and it was scripted, and I wasn't feeling it. So I may rerecord that one at another date, but for now, I wanted to talk about what's been sitting in my brain for this past week and, honestly, this whole year.
[00:03:20] I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know I want to go back to college. I got my bachelor's in film studies in... 2005. So it's been a minute, and part of me thinks that I can't go back to school. I don't know how it works, but I also remember I memorized 18,000 words for my Bikram from yoga teacher training. I could pull it off. I can memorize stuff when I really have to. And this time, I'm excited to return to school. Like there's so much I want to learn, and I want to write a thesis paper or like so many thesis papers on so many things. It'll be like really exciting for me to go back to school.
So, if you don't mind being my homie right now to talk through my options, I would love to share them with you.
[00:04:10] Ideally, I would get my master's in philosophy and my Ph. D. in modern culture and media. Now, that specific Ph.D. program is at Brown University. But they don't have a philosophy major, so I'm like, Why? That seems obvious. They have a Ph.D. in philosophy but not a master's program; my other course of action is getting my master's in psychology and becoming the therapist I have always wanted to be. Like I'm already everyone's unlicensed therapist. Don't come after me. I'm just joking here.
I want to say that you do not need a degree to do the work you want. Now, of course, for some things, you need a degree. You need licenses to do it. I'm not saying, "Hey, go be a doctor!" when you didn't go to med school; that's ridiculous. But there are people out there who are coaches, life coaches, mindset coaches, whatever, and they are brilliant and did not go to school. They don't have a degree; they might not have gone to college at all, and there are therapists out there who got all the degrees, and they suck. So I want to put that out there.
I see a lot of people denigrating the coaching sphere, and it's like problems there. But honestly, there are problems in every single sector of work. So I want you all to keep that in mind when you hear that someone's a life coach or anything of that sort. Okay, now I'm going on a tangent.
[00:05:37] I asked myself why I wanted to go back to school. Even though I just said all that stuff about certifications and degrees and them not being necessary to do the work you want to do, there's something about me that needs a certification that wants the degrees. It's not necessary to prove to someone else that I'm capable of doing this work. I want to learn as much as I can. I want so many things and modalities in my toolbox so I can help as many people as I can. I want to know as much as possible. So, in case someone says something to me, I'm like, ah, yes, this, I know this. I have a technique for this.
[00:06:16] But realistically, do I have the time or the money to go back to school? Not really, that's the thing too, so much can change in the future that, like, I don't know. There could be a wealthy benefactor that meets me one day, and it's like, I want to support you and everything you want to do, and I'm gonna say let's go. Let's do it. I'll drop it all. Go back to school, and have a great time. But until that happens, I need to be a little bit more conscious of how I'm going to go about this.
[00:06:43] I've been looking at Brown University's School of Professional Studies in its mindfulness program. There's this mindfulness-based stress reduction program. It's a certification, and I'm interested in trying it out. I just said that I want to get my master's in philosophy or psychology. And now, I'm also looking at a mindfulness certification. Like yeah, that's a lot. And I know it. Oh, my goodness. I know that I could be all over the place in my interests, and to me, they all make sense together. Sure, it's definitely an option. But I just want to see my options and what feels right for me because I don't like waiting. I'm impatient. I'm an Aries. I just want to get stuff going fast. There's a program that starts this summer, and I'm interested in doing it. It's the prerequisite course, and it's eight weeks, and I'm going to do it. Thankfully, it's not the entire certification. So after I do this course, if I feel good there, I'll stop there. And if I like it, maybe I'll continue.
[00:07:43] Last night, when I should have been sleeping, I was looking at Harvard's Extension School. So Harvard extension school is their continuing education program. It piqued my interest because, according to the marketing, it's the same as going to Harvard. It's not at all. It's a 100% acceptance rate. You have to take three classes, get at least a B, and you can continue with the program. The Harvard Extension School website says It's the same as going to the Harvard Divinity School. I'm like, oh sure, I should do that; I'll be a priest. But this program is meant for full-time workers, people who don't live in the Boston area. You could do it online. I really like that this is an option now with these institutions because, listen, I didn't do that great in the SATs. I don't remember the number, but it wasn't that great of a number, and I really don't feel like doing the GREs, so I'm kind of like, hey, this seems like a really good option for people.
Again, according to their website, it carries the same weight as going to Harvard University, and I'm like, sure, whatever; I mean, they also say, like, listen, don't be saying that you went to Harvard University when you didn't, you went to the extension school, like, don't play,
I really like that it's making these higher education institutions more accessible to the community. Now it still costs money, but definitely not Harvard money. Do you know what I'm saying? So I'm kind of interested in that route as well. I can get a master's in psychology through this program, which is amazing. So add that to the list.
I was also looking at Cardiff University to get my master's in philosophy. And for those who don't know, Cardiff is in Wales, and my husband's Welsh. It wouldn't be, That wild to move to Wales for a year. Also, the master's program is one year. Yeah, sign me up for that.
[00:09:32] Okay, so this episode turned into me talking about all my college options. I feel like you're my guidance counselor right now, So thank you for listening to this, but I just wanted to throw all this out there because it's totally okay not to have a clue what you're doing or what your options are Or if you want just to do something wildly different from what you're doing right now It's totally okay. You should welcome that. It's not scary to change everything you thought you would be doing in your life. It's okay to want something different for yourself. It's okay to be 40 and say, Hey, I think it's time for me to go back to school.
[00:10:10] This reminds me of a conversation I interrupted at. I was at a local cafe. I was sitting at the bar with a friend, and I heard these two college-age girls talking about going and getting their master's. Now, one of them was getting their master's, and the other one wanted to take a year off. I heard the friend say, you can go to grad school whenever you want. You can be 40 and go back to grad school. And I was like, That's my cue. So I like walked over and sat down with them. I was like, sorry, I'm interrupting. I heard your conversation. I told them that I was turning 40 soon and I was looking into going to grad school.
I do believe that college is wasted on teenagers. I'll say it. It's like, you need to live some life. You got to get out there. You got to work. You got to meet people. You get to see things differently from what you know. So when you go to college, you have all that as a foundation to work from. So yes, I may go back to school. I still haven't figured out the timing part of this, but like that's, that's for a different session with my guidance counselor. I don't feel like thinking about that right now.
[00:11:08] So my friends, if you're. Thinking about going back to school, taking a class, picking up a new hobby, changing your job, or doing god knows what, or picking up and moving to a different state, it's okay. And it's okay to just dream about it as well. It doesn't mean that what you're doing right now is bad or you're wrong for not going after these dreams. Sometimes the dream is just enough, and if you're thinking about it so much, you're like, Jesus Christ, I have to go do this. Go do it. Test it out. Take a class. See if you like it. And it's okay to quit. It's totally okay just to try out stuff. See if you like it. And if you do, keep going. If you don't, you try.
[00:11:53] That's all I got for this episode of the BT Lounge. I really hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you went back to school later on in life or if you went back for something completely different. Have an amazing week. Do something different. Let me know all about it. And I'll see you next week here in the BT lounge.
