S02 EP07: Your Teacher Doesn't Hate You & Fostering Intellectual Curiosity: Interview with Matt Gainsley
In this episode, Thomas sits down with his long-time friend and esteemed educator, Matt Gainsley. They explore the importance of intellectual curiosity and the evolving dynamics in education.
LISTEN NOW
In this episode, your host, Thomas Caleel, sits down with his long-time friend and esteemed educator, Matt Gainsley. With over 20 years of teaching experience, Matt has been inspiring and stimulating intellectual curiosity in students for more than two decades.
Join us as we explore the importance of intellectual curiosity, the evolving dynamics in education, and the impact of parental involvement, and why a college degree doesn't necessarily define who you are.
Want to be a guest? Send us an email at hello@thomascaleel.com to apply!
Key Highlights
The importance of intellectual curiosity in the learning process is the primary focus of this episode.
Thomas and Matt discuss the shifting dynamics in education, where parents, students, and schools interact in unique ways today.
Matt shares his personal journey into teaching, and how when he started college he didn't necessarily think he was going to end up in education.
Matt reflects on the changing teacher-student relationships and emphasizes the need for students to take responsibility for their own learning.
Parents' role in supporting their children's education is vital, but there should be a balance between involvement and allowing the child to grow independently.
The frenzy around college admissions and early childhood education is discussed, with Matt offering valuable insights on achievement and finding the right school.
The concept of a "good school" is explored, highlighting the importance of a school that works best for an individual's needs and goals.
How Matt 'walks the walk' by teaching a class on the "History of Hip Hop" something he is deeply passionate about.
Why universities now recognize the value of depth of involvement and passion in applicants.
Why universities now recognize the value of depth of involvement and passion in applicants.
Willingness to embrace interests fosters deeper connections with fellow humans and enriches lives.
Parents, students, and educators alike can gain valuable lessons from this conversation on how to navigate the changing landscape of education and support the growth of young minds.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
Follow Admittedly on Social Media
TikTok: @admittedlypodcast
Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
-
Thomas: Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes, but I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And today I have the great pleasure of speaking with my friend Matt Gainsley. For over 30 years he's been teaching for the last 23 years he's had a distinguished career. Over the last 17 years, he spent at his alma mater, the Oakwood School in Los Angeles, where he's been teaching seventh to 12th graders, Spanish. Matt, in Veneto Santa Barbara, it's really a pleasure to have you here.
Matt: Thanks so much, Thomas. It's great to be here. Really lovely to be talking with you about this.
Thomas: I'm so excited to have you here. Because we talk a lot about a lot of things on this podcast, we talk about intellectual curiosity, we talk about the learning process, we talk about all the things that go into your time in life as a student, and I see it from a very removed point of view, but you are for lack of a better term in the trenches day in day out and really excited to get your perspective on the students that you teach. And your thoughts as a teacher stimulating intellectual curiosity, bring out the best in these young young people.
Matt: Great, yeah, I'd love to talk about that. I mean, I think that's, you know, we're in a moment right now, particularly coming out of, you know, still coming out of COVID, or the last couple years where people are sort of questioning in all realms, why they're doing what they're doing. And you know, when we talk about schooling, and we talk about, supporting young people as they develop into adults and start to consider how they want to spend their lives. It's there are times when something like intellectual curiosity can get lost.
And so I think it's, you know, super important too, you know, talk about, you know, all the possibilities, we tend to get into patterns of thinking that there might be only a couple of ways to live a successful and fulfilling life. However we define, however, we each define successful and fulfilling.
Thomas: You know, I love that you frame it as finding your passion, what you love, and all the different ways because we talk a lot on the podcast about students finding their path, and also not succumbing to this pressure of what I might major in in college is what I have to do for the rest of my life. Right. But let's take a step back because, you know, teaching is a very noble profession. It's something that I think is a labor of love. And how did you get into teaching what drew you what was your calling,
Matt: you know, I So I not only you know, as Thomas mentioned, I not only work at Open School, but I attended a good school. So it's 12th grade, it's it's a kindergarten through 12th-grade private school, in Los Angeles. And at Oakwood, I had incredible teachers, I mean, people that I really connected with people that inspired me, people that I just loved learning with, I see Oakwood as one of those schools where, you know, learning is looked at as something that we do together, we can certainly do it individually.
But the collaborative nature of the teacher-student relationship, or the student-student relationship is really honored and, and pushed at Oakwood. And so I was really fortunate to have not just like a couple, but many teachers who showed me that being interested in various subject matters, being you know, diving deeply into the content is something that could be fun and just super enjoyable, even though it can also be laborious, those people really inspired me.
I mean, I maintained relationships with quite a few of my high school teachers after high school, through college beyond college, when I in thinking about how I wanted to spend my you know, I guess, quote, unquote, adult life, or what I wanted to do one at once I figured out what I was going to do with myself, teaching was something that I just was drawn to just and I can't tell you exactly why but working with people, like helping them to see the beauty in various subject matters or it or helping them to make their way through.
In this process of school, right, which is something that we seem as a society to be pretty committed to. I just I loved that. And so that's how I came to it.
Thomas: But did you know that so when you headed east and, you know, started college, what did you major in?
Matt: Yeah, well, you know, that's a good question. And I will give my shortest answer, which is, you know, I only mostly have long answers. When I went to college, I went there with the idea that I would really enjoy being a teacher. And I actually let myself get away from that. Penn is a place that draws a lot of people who are looking at like, you know, like pre-professionals. And, at least this is how I saw it.
Thomas: We were surrounded by a lot of pre-professional types. So, our universe at Penn, I think, may not have represented the entirety of the university.
Matt: No doubt, no doubt. And I, you know, I, when I got to school, it's all this I got caught up in this idea that all of a sudden, it looked like everyone else knew how they were going to be spending their lives, and like they had it all sort of planned out. And I didn't, and it seemed like none of them, none of their plans included being a teacher. Right, fair enough. And so I was like, Okay, well, maybe I need to reconfigure what my plan is, or even get a plan that ended up bouncing around a little bit in terms of my major I, I graduated with a degree in Communications, which I enjoyed because mostly because it allowed me to, I mean, it was a true like liberal arts education. Yes, like, I pretty much took it pretty much every class I wanted to take that interested me in any way. I took it.
And so I took, you know, mythology courses, and I took comparative literature courses, I took the history of Russia, and I took history I was that was great, it was a great class. So was, so was the history of jazz, right with Neil Leonard and other great, amazing classes, right? I didn't get back to the idea of teaching until after I graduated, to see about getting a job. And I had no, right moved up to the Bay Area, I'd moved to Oakland, I was like, looking for any job. And it was the summer, and I started looking through the ads and I saw start started seeing a couple of ads for teaching at private schools, the ones that stood out to me, were PE, physical education, and jobs at elementary schools, there were a couple of them listed.
And I thought because I, you know, I spent my childhood and you know, through college, like playing competitive sports. And I thought, oh, yeah, that would be great. I would, I would love to read, I feel confident, I felt confident that I could talk my way into that. And one of the things about a private school is that it's not required to have a teaching credential. You know, private schools can earn whoever they want. And so I managed to talk my way into a job at one of them, one of the K, like, K through eight private schools in Berkeley, taught there for two years. And then I taught, at a Jewish Day School, just north of Berkeley, and Elsa Rito for three years.
And it was, for me the best teacher training of all time teaching K through PE because I saw different age groups every 45 minutes, right, and speaking with, you know, my colleagues, like really seasoned teachers who knew how to teach their grade levels, getting strategies from them, I was able to employ those right away and change that, you know, I like what works with first graders does not work with second graders. And so I came away from those five years really feeling like, I could teach anyone anything, I just needed to know the subject matter. It was great.
Thomas: And then and so then you moved back down to Los Angeles, was it because you had an opportunity at Oakwood or decided to create that opportunity?
Matt: No, no, my life was a little bit circuitous in my life. In terms of where I was living was a little bit circuitous, I made a couple of moves in terms of moving where I lived for love, which was fantastic. And is there any more noble cause?
There is no more No, so cause when I was in a space where I was not, you know, in a relationship, and I had an opportunity to move back to LA, I took it in the time between leaving college and moving back to LA, I got a second bachelor's degree, and I got it in Spanish because I knew that I wanted to eventually teach high school and that I wanted to be in the classroom. And I thought that language, I knew that language would be the easiest way for me to do that. And then the one that I thought would be the most enjoyable because that's just language study is something that I've loved my whole life.
You know, one thing that happened was that I was still in contact with them. A few of my teachers were from Oakwood, one of whom was the head of the language department. And she knew that I was back in LA and that I was looking to teach Spanish. And a position opened up. And she called me and told me that she thought I should apply. I love that it was amazing. I mean, it's such like a vote of a huge vote of confidence from this person who, you know, is one of my, like, language study mentors.
Thomas: So, so it's interesting. And this loops back to something you said earlier about these teachers that inspired you and had helped you and supported you. And you know, during your time as a student, and I look back, I can think of those teachers in my life and something that comes up a lot when I speak with high school students. And I know you've heard this is, Oh, I love this teacher. I love, this teacher, but I didn't get a good grade in this class, because it was a bad teacher. Right? Sure. And so I know some of my listeners are thinking right now. Geez, I wish all my teachers were like, Matt, right? And I personally don't really think there's such a thing as a bad teacher. I, that's my perspective, but I'm not a teacher. So you must encounter students saying that, like, oh, I don't get along with the service Teacher. Teacher? What's your perspective on that being on the other other side of the fence?
Matt: I mean, I don't think there's any teacher, that's the right teacher for everyone. Just like there's no such thing. So that's the right school for everyone. I wish it were more than lucky to have that connection, that great connection with a teacher, but I don't know what else it is, you know, we don't get along with every single person we meet. Right? Not everyone we meet becomes our best friend. And, yet the teacher-student relationship is, I think, in some ways, it has a tremendous amount of pressure on it, there's a lot of expectation that like the teacher will be that thing that each student needs, right? I mean, I'd love it if someone if you know how to do that, I would love to know, because as much as I have, I think I have a lot of great relationships with a lot of my students like me, there are many students that I don't connect with or who don't connect with me.
When I say that what I think about is this old idea that somehow students owe something to the teacher, I run into this all the time when a student will, for example, not complete a homework assignment. And the first thing they do is apologize to me. And I'm sitting here thinking, like, this doesn't hurt me at all. Right? It hurts your grade. Right? You know, like, if anything. And I would love that, to me, that's one of the primary things I would love to change. Don't get me wrong, there are still teachers out there, who also believe that students owe them something. Right?
Thomas: And they're everybody in everybody is different in their own approach.
Matt: That's right. And there are teachers who treat students, the way they treat each of their students is sometimes more than loosely based on how the student is doing in their class. It just, it gets in the way, right? For me, it's about the teacher saying, Hey, this is what I'm offering. And this is this, and I have support for you. Right, right. And my part of this is that I'm going to show you how to do this thing as well as I can. And you're part of this is that you're going to try to do this as well as you can. And if you have questions, if you're confused, if you're unclear, like please ask me, right? Because I want to help you, but I can't guess what your need or what That's right. And I can't guess if you're having trouble.
Thomas: Exactly and that's you know, my advice to students is always to look at it as a two-way street. And you need to make a lot of effort, you need to make the effort to show the teacher that you are concerned you do care, you need to figure out how the teacher needs, you know, needs to communicate things, right, because they communicate, everybody communicates in their own way everyone receives in their own way. And you know, we'd certainly some of our listeners in Asia, are kind of rolling their eyes at some of your comments, right? Because you do at times have very hierarchical old school teachers, for example, who for sure demand? Absolutely right. respect and attention and it's a very different system.
Matt: Right, I mean, what I'm talking about is absolutely based on the experiences that have worked best for me, you know, that's something that is important for students to understand also, like, who is their teacher? What do they What did what does the teacher say they want to provide for the students? What is the teacher able to provide for the students? Yes. And then how do the students achieve what they want to achieve? How do they feel successful? Sometimes in the face of, yes, what a teacher, like won't do for them.
Thomas: Exactly. And so when you think about, okay, 23 years of doing anything, right, would make you by Malcolm Gladwell's standards, or anyone's standards and an expert, right? What are some of the things that you've seen over your 23 years? What's changed in the classroom? For good or worse?
Matt: You know, when you the primary, the first thing I think about when you ask that question is about the relationships that involve the student, the teacher, the parents, and the school, I think about when you and I were growing up, and again, this is not for everyone, but this is what I experienced. And I say This is what I saw for a lot of my friends and classmates. When I was when we were growing up, it felt like it was more like the students on one side, and the parents in the school on the other side, if the school ever called home for my house, the first thing my parents would say, as well, they would turn to me and say, Well, what did you do? Yeah, what do you do? And not like, what did you do? So I can support you? But like, more?
Thomas: How much trouble are we?
Matt: Right, that's right. Yes. And, you know, what I've seen since I started teaching was that the relationships have shifted, so that it now seems to be more the students and the parents on one side and the school on the other side. Yes. And so when a school calls home, it's not necessarily the first reaction to turn to the students and say, What did you do but more to defend the student? Yes. And so that, I mean, it's certainly not all the time. But that can. If we're talking about helping children, learn how to become responsible, self-motivated adults, then the tension and the arguments that can happen when something goes amiss, just kind of get in the way, right?
Thomas: And gets in the way of good independence and learning experiences and outcomes total for the student.
Matt: Totally, totally. There are more parents now than when we were growing up, who want to be very involved in their children's lives. And that's just as I stated, it's a wonderful idea, right? It's great. And it also promotes some scenarios where it would be better to allow the child to work stuff out on their own.
Thomas: Yes. So, you know, it's not just I think the parents too, in the school setting, when I'm counseling students when I'm working with students, we have issues sometimes with the parents, right? And as a parent myself, I think at times very well, meaning they want, you know, quote, unquote, the best show for their children, they want to push them.
But in the process, a lot of times, the students lose their voice. And they lose their ability, especially when we get to senior year, and they're writing their essays and trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. And when I tell them, Listen, next year, I'm going to be living in Santa Barbara, your parents gonna be living at home. This is 100% about you, and what you want, because you need to live with the ramifications of this choice. And a lot of what I do over time is building that awareness and confidence. You know, I see that and if you had, do you have advice for parents who want to support their children, and really do you know, have their best interests at heart? But sure, you know, maybe are not going about it the best possible way?
Matt: Well, first of all, thank you for asking me to give advice. I don't know that I'm the arbiter of parental advice. Is that the right word?
Thomas: Arbiter works?
Matt: Thank you. I mean, I should start this off by saying that I am. I'm a parent. I have two young men in my house who are wonderful. What yes, they're fantastic. They are middle and high-school-aged. And I would never think that make mostly the right decisions for them. I'd like to believe that I do. But it looks to me like people are somehow afraid that any misstep is going to ruin their children's futures. Because, you know, as you said, we want the best for our kids. We want them to experience great things and we want them to, you know, have beautiful, ideally happy lives, I think sometimes it's hard to take a step back and think about our own lives, and how we feel about them. And also look at the variety of experiences that led us to the point that we're at right now, you know, a lot of parents who are sort of succumbing to the
Thomas: A lot of peer pressure, in there, and they end up whipping themselves, certainly into a frenzy. And if it's any consolation, you know, I ran an admissions office, highly competitive admissions office, and we tell I would tell people to listen, failure is not fatal. Right. Right. I mean, your regular failure that most students, you know, go through can be a learning and a growing experience. And if you address that, internalize it, and grow from it, it actually can be a huge positive. That's absolutely right. They don't listen to me anymore Apparently, they're listening to you. So don't feel too bad.
Matt: Oh, no. I mean, I appreciate that. I would love to see people. You know, just look at the whole process. As this is not the final step. It's just another step. Right? You know, these days, the craziness, I'm going to call it that the craziness that surrounds college admissions. That was there to some degree when you and I were applying to college.
Now, that emotional state has trickled down all the way to preschool. Oh, he does. So we have, you know, adults smart, like grounded, clear-headed adults who buy into the idea, well, if my child doesn't get into this preschool, then they're not going to be able to get into this elementary school, which means they're definitely out for this. Just a secondary school, which means they'll never get to x University.
Absolutely. I would like to think that when it comes time for my children to apply to college, I will remember this and remember what I'm saying right now, I'll remind you, thank you, I promise you and you know, to to, you know, remember that there are people who have been to all of the name schools from birth till through graduate school, and who have contributed very little to this world. And there are people who dropped out of school, in middle school who have contributed incredible things to this world. And I'm not saying that because it's all about, you know, what, you contribute to the world. Right. But if we're talking about part of what we're talking about here is achievement. Yes. And there's just there's no formula for that.
Thomas: No, there's not. And I think I think that you know, going to a quote, unquote, a good school is a wonderful experience, but it does not define. And it certainly does not guarantee you a happy or productive or fulfilling life.
Matt: Right. And, you know, I want to sort of talk about something that you just said, right, which is the idea of a good school, right? For me, a good school is the one that works best for you. Right? Right. And that means, whatever you want that school to be, but there is also, you know, another hallmark of a good school is something that helps you to fulfill a life goal or a career goal. And so,
Thomas: In different schools have different strengths. Absolutely different return on investment, which I've talked about before. Absolutely. In the podcast, I think it is very studied, you really need to be aware of what you need from the school, which is asking an 18-year-old, that's a lot to ask, and 18. You know, when I was running Wharton, MBA admissions, we were dealing with 30-year-olds who still did not have that kind of clarity. Sure.
So you know, it's a lot to ask. I want to shift gears a little bit right now because one of the things I really admire about you is something that I've talked about a lot on the podcast, but I think giving people a real example, is always better than just listening to me talk. And that goes to intellectual curiosity. And you are just one of the most intellectually curious people that I know. And you bring that into your classroom. I won't ruin the surprise. I'd like you to talk about it because it really is this passion project of yours. But in a unique setting at Oakwood, that is really kind of focused on intellectual growth, intellectual curiosity. Can you talk about that?
Matt: Absolutely. And thank you for those lovely words, by the way, appreciate that. Yeah, at Oakwood, we have a program. It's a two-week program that we call the immersion program, where regular classes are suspended for two weeks II Each teacher teaches one class all day every day for the two weeks and has a group of students with them that are there. That's the class for all day, every day for two weeks, when the program started in 2009, prior to it starting, as we were developing it, we were asked to develop classes that were either deeper into our fields of professional expertise, or that were more like passion projects. And the class that I developed, which is the only class I've taught since 2009. This program, is, it's called the history and Skills of hip hop. And it's a history. It's a history class. And it's also an art class.
So half of each day, we're in the classroom, and we're talking about and reading about and watching documentaries about, you know, the birth of hip hop, and also, for example, the history of New York City, what New York was like, prior to hip hop, and by the way, this is a very timely conversation, because on August 11, of this year, it will be 50 years since Kool Herc through the first block party, which was looked at as the birth of hip hop. Yeah, it's amazing, it's an amazing feat, right? I mean,
Thomas: And by the way we can, for my listeners, you can go to Spotify, and find this course, and all the music in the course. And I would strongly recommend it.
Matt: Thank you. I appreciate that. And so, you know, that's half of each day, we're talking about the people who developed the art, who the culture. And then the other half of each day I bring in local guest artists to teach, you'll be bowing, Girling, or otherwise known as breakdancing, graffiti, art DJing, and emceeing. And so we spend about six hours on each of those arts over, you know, a two-day period for each one class, when you talk about intellectual curiosity, you know, it was for me, it was it, I developed it out of the idea of that I don't look, I love hip hop, you know, I was, I was born in 1973, which is here that hip hop was born to, and it for me, it's a coincidence,
Thomas: I think not,
Matt: Not at all, though, the creator has a master plan, you know, grew up really just loving hip hop from the I mean, I heard it first when I was about nine. And there was just everything in it that just spoke to me musically. You know, after that I ended up you know, becoming a drummer. And like, it wasn't necessarily because of hip-hop. But I mean, hip-hop certainly had its influence. Alright. When I thought about developing a course, I started to think about hip hop, I realized that the conversations that I had with the students about hip hop, you know, and this is in like, the late 2000s. You know, the conversations would be like, Oh, well, what do you listen to? Oh, I listen to kids who say, Oh, I listened to old school. Okay, well, what's old school? And they will say, okay, A Tribe Called Quest. Okay.
And I said That's okay. That's not wrong, right? It's not wrong. And there's, you know, if you know, Tribe Called Quest comes out in 1989 1990, with their first album, you have about 15 ish years prior to that, where things were happening developing. And, you know, just like you and I took that history of jazz course, right, at Penn, you know, where is the history of hip hop course? In 2008? Right. I mean, we're far enough away where, yeah, we should be talking about this, this, this hip hop is clearly, you know, a mainstay of American culture of world culture. And so, why are we talking about this more,
Thomas: but I can also do to ask a question that I know we're going to get in our messages. You know, because we have some very earnest students and very focused parents.
So what, why would we take a week or two off of calculus prep? To study hip hop?
Matt: I guess? Well, I guess so. What for any class that decides what education is? Right? Who decides? Like, what are the necessary skills or course or coursework that has to be taken to earn a degree? I think they're they, you know, we have a number of if we look at the university level, we have a number of different types of university settings. There are some schools where it's, you know, it's education as it was envisioned as like, you know, the core subjects, you got to know math, you got to know history, right? So on and so forth, and a regimented schedule, right? There are some universities where the idea is No, you tell us what your course of study is. And we will tell you how to earn a degree Isn't that right?
Thomas: And so, and with universities, like the liberal arts concept, right, developing the whole mind, and so I get a lot of students that say, I don't want to go to this school because I have to take a science class and art class. And that's, I want to be an engineer. Sure. And it's this concept of developing the entire mind.
Matt: Yeah. And I think that that is, I think that that's an important concept. And I think that there are some people for whom that doesn't work. Of course, you know, like,
Thomas: Always, there are exceptions, always.
Matt: Of course. And so, you know, I think you when you say, so what, with regard to this class, or any class, you know, my answer is, well, it interests me. And I think the stories and the events of this particular cultural development are amazing. And I think other people might also enjoy it. I think that there's a lot these days about achievement, right? It was a documentary that came out a while ago, there's this really like, excellent scene, like a, like a seminar happening inside of a school where students and their parents and school administrators are all talking about what it is, the general idea is what it is that the students are experiencing, this young woman who's in high school, gets onto the mic and says, you know, the, the worst question that I hear from adults all the time is, and what else? Right?
Or if somebody says something in that realm, like, well, I'm, you know, I'm on the debate team. Oh, and what? I'm the Captain of the swimming team, right? And it's this idea of like, the achievement seems, it doesn't ever seem to be enough, right, in order to reach this goal of like, getting into university or like, I'm not sure what the goal is.
Thomas: Right. And we, you know, I've talked about that before, I think some of that is actually legacy, right? Because our generation Sure, it was what else right? Because you needed the universities, we're looking at you and you needed some athletics, you needed some community service member community service, you needed your academics, and they were looking for well-rounded students were now they're looking for students that are deeply passionate about one or two things.
And when I talk about intellectual curiosity goes back to what you just said about you. And you said, and when you say, so what, and you could just, you could feel the passion, and you could feel that excitement. And as somebody who has read and decided 10s of thousands of files, I always tell my students that come through. And so when I talk about intellectual curiosity, what I want is that conversation about whatever it is, history of hip hop, cooking, sailing, marine conservation, whatever I the What we want is that passion, not just to make you a better candidate, but most poorly make you better human shirt, have that passion, have that curiosity, look at something and say, How can I figure this out? How can I make this better? How can I improve it? Because it's all I think about? Because I love this?
Matt: Right. I mean, look, I completely agree with that. And I think that you know, I think many of us, hopefully, all of us have had some conversation with someone else in our lives, where what the other person is talking about, is just completely captivates us. Right? And because what this person is talking about is something they're doing or something they're into, or something they heard or something they read, and they were so touched by it, that the way they're talking about it is just mesmerizing, right? And we want to just and rather than offering our own opinions on it, we end up asking a bunch of questions. Right, right. And that the idea of being able to connect with other humans, I think is a key element to, you know, just living in our world. I would say that most people I interact with would care more about talking about something that they or I or the both of us are deeply into, or invested in, rather than hearing about, like what I studied in college, right, unless I was deeply invested in that. And then they might be a
Thomas: A quote requires an element of courage for sure requires, you know, as you talked about, originally going to going to, let's say University being surrounded by people that are going a very different direction, and having the confidence and we all waver in question, that's part of being an intellectual person. But having the courage to say, You know what, like, I really care about this thing and I've devoted a lot of time and effort to it. And I want to talk about that. Because there's this matters to me. Absolutely. I'm ranting, which unfortunately the universities have shifted to acknowledge. That's what they're looking for. Yeah, they're looking for that depth of involvement. Passion. Yeah. And I think this is a great place to wrap up. I, you, and I could talk for hours and hours on this subject matter. I'm deeply grateful for you coming and spending your time with us today. I think our audience really is going to benefit from what you had to say I would encourage everyone please to go check out what is the official title of Spotify.
Matt: It's, I believe it's called the history and skills of hip hop. Yeah,
Thomas: We'll put it we'll put it in the show notes. You know, really, it's amazing what you've done and what you've dedicated your life to. At this point in our life, we get to look back and say How have I spent my time I can say, somebody who's going out with you in Los Angeles to dinner. It's like going out with a celebrity Rockstar, literally people stopping us on the street students of his current students, former students, and it's it's a really beautiful thing. So thank you for the impact that you make on those lives. And I'm sure that you have inspired some of our listeners here today,
Matt: Thomas, thanks for having me. This has been a fantastic experience. Gracias.
Thomas: Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to my admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
