Ep. 62 The Language of Learning with Kelly Hill-Zirker

I'm Lacey Jones with Elevate the Individual episode 62 the Language of Learning with Kelly Hill zerkers Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today. Why don't you just dive in and introduce yourself and your family and maybe some fun facts that people might not know about you?

Hey, well, thanks for chatting with me. So, I'm Kelly. I am married to your brother.

Yes.

And we have two kids, and it's a girl who is almost eight and a boy who's almost six. We've been married for longer than I like to admit because it makes me feel old, and I'm having a hard time adjusting to my new decade. We've lived kind of all over the place, but we've lived in many different places. We've moved a lot throughout our marriage, and some of that has been because of my well, actually, most of the moves have been because of trav's career or educational choices, but I've been very able to find work and do what I wanted to do wherever we've gone. And it's always been like, I'm like, yes, let's move to London. Yes, please. So, a few facts. I lived in Brazil. I grew up on a dairy farm. We have a vespa scooter, and we horrify the neighbors by driving around with the kids on it.

Okay, wait, push pause. I think you horrified more people. Like, several years ago, weren't you writing this in DC traffic while yes, yes. Not just like, a little bit pregnant. Like, a lot of I was seven.

Months pregnant, and that was my commuter vehicle, was the Vespa. And it was October, and I was on my way to work, and it was my fault. I crashed. Not at super high speeds, but I crashed into the car in front of me as I was trying to switch lanes, and I flew off the scooter and landed face down. Luckily, I had a helmet on and slid across the road and flipped and then woke up blacked out for a second and woke up staring at the sky like, what just happened? Kind of hysterical and more hysterical, I should be ashamed to admit, but I was very concerned about my scooter.

Yeah.

I figured baby had to be fine because there was, like, a layer of coat and then a layer of me protecting baby. And so I didn't even think about that, but I was like and then I ended. Up. I had to stay just overnight in the hospital, and they had to do some monitoring of the baby to make sure everything was okay. But it was actually not a good thing. The scooter was totaled. But that's how I found my midwife, which I had been going to OBGYN, who I really didn't like at all, and I did not want to deliver at the hospital she delivered at, and I was really unhappy with my medical situation. But then I found this lovely midwife practice at this other hospital where the ambulance took me.

Imagine that.

It was great.

So it was meant to be for you, flying off that scooter.

Yeah.

Also, another question. You mentioned you guys have lived several different places. Can you list them? Do you know all of them? The different countries that you've lived?

Oh, the countries isn't too hard. It's more like states plus countries. That becomes tricky. So we've lived in, obviously, the US. We currently are, and then Guatemala. That was only for a summer. Back to the US. And then after several years, we were in London, England, for a year, and then back to DC. And then yeah, we live in DC right now. And then Brazil for five years. And in Brazil, we were in Sao Paulo for two years, and then Brazilia.

For three kids in Tow. Right?

Like kids in Tow for the Brazil portion, but for the rest of it, just us.

And then do we want to talk about where you're going in the coming year?

I always like to talk about that.

Hey, where are you going?

So next summer, we are moving to Seoul, Korea, for two maybe hopefully a little bit longer, but two years. And so Trav works for the State Department as Diplomat in Foreign Service, and he'll be doing his first non Brazil posting. That's why we were in Brazil with the foreign service. And so now we'll be going to Korea. So he has to learn Korean over the next ten months, and then we'll go.

Okay, and what will you be doing as far as language? Because I know language is your jam. So what's your goal for that?

So I have a full time job, which unfortunately means I don't get to sit in on Trav's classes. If I didn't have a job, I could do that when I'm like, do we really need my we? Can't I just quit my job now and just take care in with you? But DC is expensive. We need my income. So through the State's Department, they let the accompanying family members take some language training. It's distance learning. So I'll have like three to 4 hours, of course, work every week, and then I can meet with a teacher like 1 hour a week. And I'm hoping between my love of K dramas and that language class, that I will keep up with Trap. We'll see.

And I would say that you learning Korean and me learning Korean would be a completely different experience. You have the background knowledge of how languages work and how many languages do you speak, even just partially?

Yes. Let's rephrase that question. How many languages have I studied? This is a better question. Okay. So I studied linguistics, so I am also obsessed with languages. But having studied linguistics, some of these I had to study, and some of them I just did because I really like languages. So I have studied Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese. A little Korean now. I started some months ago in hopes that this would happen, and it doesn't really count, but I still sometimes include it because it is a different language. Old english, like 1100 english.

It is a different language.

It is.

Okay, so you studied linguistics. Was that your bachelor's?

Yeah, and my master's.

And your master's. Okay. So let's go into your educational journey.

Okay.

Did you always want to go to college? Were you encouraged to go to college? What was your post high school experience like?

I was desperate to get out of my house, first of all, and I wanted to move far, far away from everything and everyone that I knew and loved. But I did just really want to get away. And it was always just an expectation that I would go to college. And so I went to BYU, and I originally thought I was going to study microbiology. Don't laugh. I know. And I did like, why, though? Well, I thought I wanted to be some sort of scientist doctor of some sort, which was really dumb only because my interests were clearly in the realm of language and culture.

But you had to figure that out. You had to start somewhere. Yes.

So I did one semester of the prereq for the microbiology major and quickly realized that it was not for me. And that there was a world of other classes that I could take and majors that I could possibly study that involved language and culture and history and literature and all the things that I loved so much, always. And so I switched my major a couple of times before I finally settled on linguistics. But that was a very good fit. My dad thought it was horrible because not super practical. He's like, what are you going to do with linguistics? I don't know, but I really like it, so I'm going to do it. And that's something that I chose a major that is not super lucrative. Like, yes, I can get a job with a linguistics degree in my field until my most recent job. It's never been super well paying, but I care about money, obviously. I want to be able to pay my bills. I want to have a comfortable life. But I also really hated the thought of having job in something that I didn't enjoy.

Yeah. Just for the money.

Just for the money. Yeah, the money is nice, but also if you have to go and do something every day and you hate, like, that wasn't the way I wanted to. Yeah.

So, linguistics, did you know it was a thing when you went out to BYU? Or how was it introduced to you?

I did not know it was a thing. I mean, I knew that language study was a thing, but I didn't know there was a major called linguistics. Because I'm from a small town in a small high school, we didn't have anything like that. And the counselors, like, the guidance counselors never mentioned anything like that. I don't know if they even knew would have thought, like, oh, you like languages. Maybe this is for you. And so I took, like, a composition class or something, and someone said something about linguistics, and I was like, oh, please tell me more. And then I immediately switched my major.

Oh, I love it. So kind of like, you got to just start the process and then kind of weed out from there. Okay, this works. This doesn't work. And then you're gradually introduced to things. And so if you had to define linguistics, what would that be?

The study of languages and their impact on society and culture. And it encompasses everything from psychology and the psychology of language and getting into the more medical aspect of language, all the way to it stuff, which would have been very lucrative. And my dad always said, why don't you do computational linguistics? Once I told him what that was. And I'm like, you know, me and computers just know. So anything from brain to tech to sociology and how cultures interact and how language affects that, or how culture affects the language, which one came first? That's a big question.

And I tend to think that you landed exactly where you needed to land for you, because when you start talking to us about languages and words and all that, I'm like, yeah, you're exactly where you need to be. And so the computer part of it, I don't know that you would have as much passion for that.

No.

Okay, so you get your bachelor's. Where do you head from there?

So I knew I was going to get a master's degree before I even was close to graduating. I was like, of course I'm going to get a master's. I kind of thought maybe I would get a PhD in linguistics and then teach linguistics. Partly because with the degree in linguistics, if you want to do linguistic stuff, and you don't want to do anything like computational or forensic linguistics, that's another thing. Also wasn't super interested in that. So I knew I wanted a master's, and I felt like I could have gotten a know in any linguistics program. But I stayed at BYU partly because it's so cheap that I'm sounding very money concerned. But it's so cheap. Like, how could you not?

But it's a factor in life, right? And it's a quality education for a beautiful it.

It is is. And the linguistics program at BYU is solid. So I figured I would get a linguistics master's degree at BYU, and then after that, apply to PhD programs elsewhere. So I got my master's at BYU, and then when I graduated, I wanted to take at least a year know. That's a lot. Like six years of school in a like, that's a I just, I don't even know how I landed on this job, but somehow I got a job teaching english as a second language at utah valley university.

Oh, yeah.

And I had never really considered being an ESL teacher. I had done some coursework related to ESL just as part of a linguistics master's degree. And my focus in my master's was more on the practical application of linguistics. I mean, sort of practical, not practical like computer stuff. So I had taken a couple of language acquisition classes and a couple of teaching how to teach classes. So when I started teaching, I was sort of prepared, but I didn't actually know what I was doing. I think back with horror on that first semester, those couple of classes that I taught, and I was like, I had no idea. But I was like, well, I'm going to just do this for now, because I need a job, and this is something I can do with my linguistics degree. And then I stayed as an ESL instructor for like twelve years at UVU. No, I was at UVU for three, four years, some years, and then we moved to DC. And I taught at georgetown and also did some curriculum development work for a curriculum company.

So that leads me to the next question is, what have you been able to do with your degree? And so kind of this evolution of where it started to where you are now. Can you kind of go through the different jobs and things that you've done? And oh, by the way, you've also started your family along this path. So UVU, where do you go from there?

So after trav, his career has been bouncing around a lot of different, completely unrelated fields of work. And so in the middle of my time at UVU, he decided he wanted to get another bachelor's degree in a totally different field of political science. And so part of his degree was to do an internship, and that internship was in DC. For a congressional representative. And so we moved to DC. And I got a job at this company doing curriculum development. They were language courses mostly for military personnel who were going to Afghanistan. And so the two languages were pashto and dari. And I didn't at the time know anything about pashto and dari, except that they both use the same script that you use in arabic, so I could sort of read it. Read it like a four year old can read.

Yeah.

And so I worked with all afghans and learned a ton about that part of the world that I did not know.

Yeah.

And it was a really good job. And it was also like, doing curriculum development was something I'd always been kind of interested in, like designing textbooks, basically, but I didn't have any idea how to get into that field with a linguistics degree. I mean, obviously it was possible, but I hadn't thought of that beforehand. But trav found that job back in the day on craigslist and he actually wrote the COVID letter for me because I was like, it's the end of the semester. I'm doing finals. I don't have time to apply for this job. So he just did it for me, and then I got it. And so after Trav's internship, we just stayed because I had a real job. But meanwhile, while I was doing this job, I kind of wanted to keep teaching. And so I got a job teaching just one class a semester at Georgetown in their English the Foreign Language department. So I did that for one or two semesters part time and then got a full time job there at Georgetown and worked there for a couple of years in the English program. English as a foreign language program.

Okay. How many years ago was this?

Like, where are we at Timeline 2011 that we moved to DC.

Okay, so you're working with Georgetown. Then what comes next?

So I'm just working along and still doing some curriculum consultation jobs for the same company, but working full time at Georgetown, and we don't have any kids, and I am very happy for it to be that way. Trav decides he wants or needs to get a master's degree, and kind of as we make as many of the choices in our lives have been, we just decided kind of spur of the moment, like, let's go to England and get this degree. And I say we not because went together, but because I really helped Trav with this degree. And sometimes I think they should have given me an honorary master's because of all the work that I helped him with.

I think I may have done the similar route with a bachelor's and a master's in our.

Uh so we went to England, and I had a really hard time finding a job because I didn't know this until I got there. Should have done a little more. We just travis applied in February and then got accepted in March, and then we left in or maybe it was yes. And then we went and he started in August of 2013. So I discovered that my master's degree in linguistics was not sufficient to teach English really anywhere in England. They wanted me to have this specific diploma, okay. Which is actually less of a qualification than a master's degree, especially if you consider the coursework, the types of classes, the number of hours, course hours, and the thesis that you have to write for a master's degree versus the small project that you have to do for this diploma thing. But everybody wanted this diploma that I didn't have, and so it was so frustrating. I finally got a school to a private was really it was a horrible job because all of these students that I worked with were, like, really rich tourists who just were in England for a couple weeks or maybe a couple of months, and they were, like, one on one or two on one classes, and they were very difficult. They wanted everything to be their way. And I'm like you're, not the teacher. You don't know what you're talking about. It was not fun. But I did realize from that it looks like if I'm going to teach internationally, maybe I need this diploma, this certificate, in addition to my other qualifications. So when we went back to the US. After the year in London, I did part of I still haven't finished it, but I did part of that diploma. It's called a delta certificate. I can't remember what. Diploma for English language teacher. I don't remember what it stands for, but a Delta Certificate. So I did the first part of it as soon as we got back because I was like, this is ridiculous that I didn't have this qualified, that I need this qualification. But also really frustrating to be in a situation where I have experience and I have knowledge, but because I don't have this piece of paper, I had a really hard time finding a job, so I didn't want that to happen again. So at some point, I will finish my Delta certificate. Right now, it's part one of three. I did the longer part already. So I have to do a teaching practicum and write a think. It's just I haven't done it yet because it requires paying tuition. And I have to have, like, an official mentor. That mentor has to be qualified through that Cambridge Delta program, which is kind of hard to find in the US. So anyway, at some point, I would like to finish it.

What about the teaching practicum? What do you have to do for that?

I have to have this mentor observe me, but I have to teach, like, a certain number of hours and then have the mentor give me feedback. Okay, so it's very doable. It's just a matter of having a class that I'm teaching and having a mentor who's got the proper certification at the same time. Yeah. And in Brazil, there was a school that did like, I could have done it, except then there was a pandemic.

And so minor detail.

Yes, minor detail. That didn't happen.

Okay, so we have this experience over in England. Where do you go from there?

So then we go back to DC, where Trav keeps trying to find a better job, and I'm back at Georgetown teaching. And then he applied to be a Consular Fellow, which is basically a foreign service officer for the State Department. But you have to already speak the language where you're going to go. And so he already spoke Portuguese from serving a mission. And so he went through the process of a very long process of applying for that job and getting a security clearance and everything. So after a couple of years in trying to think how long I guess it was two more years, a year and a half more back in DC. He was finally able to start as a Consular Fellow with the State Department. And I, at this point, finally decided, okay, I guess I'll have a child. I'm 35. It's probably time crap. Got offered this job to be a Consular Fellow, and he was scheduled to start his training, like, two weeks before Ren was born, and he wouldn't have been allowed to take any time off. And I said, that's not going to work for me. Yeah, I'm not having a baby and.

Then doing it by myself.

So he had to defer for a couple of months to start after Ren was so so she was born in December. So I ended my semester at Georgetown like, a week early because my boss was like, you're going to pop in the classroom, and I don't want that to happen, so please just stay. Just, you know, stayed home and walked a zillion miles to try to get the baby out of me, and I was not a good pregnant person. So then Ren was born, and then Trav stayed home with Ren until February, and I had to go right back to work. It was like three weeks.

I was going to say how many? Three weeks postpartum?

Yeah, it was not great at all. That part was not awesome. But I could have waited a couple more weeks. But the semester started, and I really, really didn't want to have to prepare sub plans for the first two weeks of class when I could just go and do it myself and not have to really prepare stuff. So Trav was in charge. He did all the baby things. I made him do all the night shifts. It was actually really great.

I was going to say, this is all spoken like a true teacher. I would rather go in and teach three weeks postpartum than do yes.

Yes.

Yeah. And I remember Travis traveled with cute little Ren, didn't he?

He went to visit your parents. He went to visit Grandma and Grandpa when Ren was, like, six weeks old, seven weeks old. And everybody on the plane was so nice to him because he had an infant. And I just thought, how often are mothers with new infants treated this kind? Everybody wanted to help him. He was changing Ren's diaper on his lap on the plane, and she peed everywhere. And the people on both sides of him and behind him were all helping him clean up. And I was like, I wonder if it had been a mom with the baby, if they would have just been like, can't you control your child? I mean, not maybe said that, but.

A little less accommodating and helpful.

Yes. But he went, he did it, and he stayed with grandparents. And then when he came back, he still had, like, another month before he had to start working. So he just was on childcare duty for that month. And then when he had to start, we found a friend to watch our tiny child, which was kind of weird. Like, I'm sorry, small baby, but she was a mom and she had three kids that were between, like, eight and 14. And I think they loved having a little fake baby sister for a little while.

Okay, so this leads to a question, is how have you balanced all of this education and your hopes and desires and goals and all of that with motherhood?

The first thing is zoloft. So, like, antianxiety medication, because that was.

The next question is how do we manage our mental health in all of this? And so if you share whatever you're comfortable sharing with all of that, I.

Will sing praises to my antianxiety medications forever. So I probably, to be honest, should have always been on some kind of antidepressant antianxiety medication. And I just never, like, since I was a teenager probably should have been, and I just didn't. I just never talked about it to the doctor. Most of the rest of my family was, but I was just like, whatever, I'm fine. And then after I had Ren, I had pretty bad postpartum depression. And so when I went in for my checkup, like, my week or two weeks after birth checkup, I finally was like, I think I need some medicine, as, like, sodbing hysterically. So they put me on Zoloft. And after a couple of weeks, I said to Trav, I was like, is this how you always feel?

I so remember this. Yeah, this is the one thing that I remember him saying, like, she's realizing, is this how other people feel on a day to day basis?

Because I wasn't always worried and always nervous and always doom and gloom about everything. It took some time as well because I think part of my mental state postpartum was hormonal related, like baby related, but part of it was just me. I should have always been on some kind of medicine. And so I have continued with my antianxiety medication ever since then, and I have no plans to ever stop because my life is much better when I don't feel worried and anxious about everything all the time. And I'm a much better parent with that because without it, I think I would be both a nervous wreck and a mean person.

Well, and let's look at what you're accomplishing. Your family, you and Travis have these goals and dreams for yourself individually, as a family, for your children, individually, all of it. And if you're not getting the resources that you need, how can you accomplish these things? Yeah, you can, right? And it's a team effort, too, right? Like, you guys are working together to figure out a lot of the pieces to this puzzle and what works, what doesn't work, all of it. So major kudos to you, to acknowledging that and saying, yeah, this is what I need to do. Moving forward. So is that a conversation? I mean, your kids are young, so is that a conversation that you have with them? How open are you about all of this within the family?

Very open. I feel like when we were kids, having depression was like something that new people maybe had it, but you didn't really talk about it and there wasn't a lot of great treatment options. I feel like now it's much more open and people are much more likely to talk about it. And I just want to contribute to continuing that. I don't want my kids to be worried about telling me their feelings about things. And so they know that I take medicine so that I am a more they see it at this point, they see it as like so I'm a more pleasant person so that I'm more content and so that I can be a better mom, but also just because they know that my mental health is important. And one thing that I'm very grateful for is that I have a spouse who is very supportive of my needs for my mental health, of whatever I identify as ways to keep mentally healthy, is always very supportive of that. And I know that not everyone's partners are that way. And so, I mean, I think everyone's partners should be that way. So it makes me really upset when I hear about people who don't have partners that treat them fairly and kindly and supporting their needs. But I'm really happy that mine does support me in that way. And so aside from zoloft, which is great, aside from the Zoloft, I also make sure that I need time to myself. First of all, I'm fairly introverted and teaching it's funny how many introverted people are teachers because you as a teacher, spend all your time interacting with people and pretending that you're really extroverted and then you go home and don't want to talk to any other humans, including your family. And so my family knows that I need time by myself, especially if I have been in the classroom all day and talking to people. And so Trav's really supportive, like, okay, I'm going to just go sit in my room for an hour. Just leave me alone or just don't talk to me, right? Like, I'm going to make dinner, but please just and it's not personal.

It's not saying I don't want you here. It's, hey, this is a self preservation mode right now. I need to recover from this experience over here.

Yeah, so there's that. I definitely need to make sure that I get alone time. I also need to feel like mentally fulfilled and emotionally fulfilled. I need to connect with other people, especially other women. And so I have a few social activities, like I have a dessert club that I am part of that meets once a month. Or I have a couple of friends that I like to we just. Have lunch together occasionally or I'll go over to her house and eat dinner and watch a movie or something. One time we even had a sleepover, a grown up girl sleepover. It was really great.

I love it.

And things like that I just think are so important for me. They're so important. But I feel like more women should take those opportunities and just say like, I need to do this for me to feel healthy and fulfilled as a person, which will also help me be a better parent, a better partner.

Hence the name of the podcast, Elevate the Individual.

Right.

And then the second part of that is for the good of the whole.

Yes.

So when we focus on the mother and making sure that her needs are met socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, all of the above, she's going to show up differently for her family. That will give her family the best chance of going out into society and making this awesome contribution to society which helps to heal the community. And so what I love is that through your life experiences you've been able to identify ways in which you can create that fulfillment for yourself. You know that you need alone time. You know that you want to be mentally fulfilled and emotionally fulfilled. So you've created really learning opportunities, not just formal education, but you talked about dessert club and the grown up girls sleepover.

Piano lessons. I started taking piano lessons so that I could because I was like, been a long time since I took a piano lesson. I want to improve my skills. I don't need to I don't have anyone telling me you need to be a better pianist. I just decided be a good activity for me to keep my mental stimulation and another type of self care.

Yes. And so I kind of joke like, well, I signed my kids up for basketball camp and athletic events, what's mom's summer camp and mom's skill camp that she's going to attend because I'm just as valuable in taking resources for that as well. I'm sure there's a more eloquent way of saying that, but yes. So what's the benefit of your children seeing their mother state the needs, talk about her needs, fulfilling her needs, going after these resources?

I think first of all, it's really important for children to see their mothers as adult humans with their own interests and preferences and personalities and not just they are my mom who does stuff for me and loves me no matter what. That is also a good thing for them to see. But I want them to know that when they grow up and have a partner, have a spouse, or are parents themselves, that they still can retain their own identity in addition to the identity of being a mother or a father. I mean, I think it's important for both of my kids, girl and boy, I want my daughter to see that if she decides to become a mother, she can keep her identity and have that. It's really important. But I also want my son to see that as well, that if he has a wife, that he supports her through her own mental health, whatever that looks like for her.

We've had this conversation as the kids are getting older and they have friends. And at this stage of the game, finding friends that support your interest, it doesn't just have to be about spouse and partners, but even within your friend group, are your friends encouraging you to be your best self? And part of that, are they encouraging you to go after your dreams, your goals, your talents and develop in that way? Or are they pulling you away from those opportunities and saying, come over here with me and let's do this instead. So it is great. It is within the family relationship, and it can start young and modeling those kind of relationships even in friendships, not just partnerships and that sort of thing. Okay, how has this whole big journey, it's benefited yourself, your family? How about your community? Let's go there.

I feel like it's very nebulous to try to pin down exactly how it's benefited my community. I do think that all of my education and all of my work experiences and educational experiences have made me have opened my eyes to a more global community, which, I mean, in the feel like many people didn't feel a sense of global community because we weren't as well connected. Now it's so much easier to be connected to people on the other side of the world. But having had, like, I now know people from countries all over the world. And so when something happens, like when the US. Pulls out of Afghanistan all of a sudden, and there are Afghans stuck in the country, and their lives are at risk because the Taliban wants to kill them because they worked with the US. Government, I already know a lot of Afghans, and so I have an extra perspective that I can share with people around me of what's happening. But also, I don't have great connections in that context. Wish I did, but I know people in many different countries, and so I feel like that those connections can help. I can share my knowledge because of those connections with my community.

Here it's again, education, sharing the education that you've gathered over the course of what has it been, 1213 years? But you've gained all of this knowledge. And so as situations pop up, yes, you are a great resource to say, hey, here's my personal connection, here's what I've seen, here's what I've studied, here's what I know. I know this individual over here giving that real life connection rather than just, oh, I saw a story on the news. It's like, no, let me give you the personal connection.

So here's a better Afghan example. So when the US. Pulled out of Afghanistan, and we suddenly had tons of Afghan refugees. DC got a ton of Afghan refugees all at once, and they had nothing, like just the clothes they were wearing. That was it. And so a friend of mine decided to do, like, an enormous, basically, garage sale, but it would be free for all of the refugees in our area. And we needed some translators because none of them spoke English, and I don't speak Dari or Pashto, but I used to work with a bunch of people who speak Dari and Pashto. So I contacted them and said, like, hey, is anybody free on these days? We're going to do this huge garage sale. Can I get one of you to come and be a like, because of my education, which led to this job doing curriculum development with all of these Afghan guys, I was able to help in a small way. I mean, it was a small thing to get a translator to come and help the Afghan ladies find the clothes.

I will not allow you to say that is small because I got goosebumps over here. Because that is the effect of a person going after an education, developing, making the choices, working through the fears, working through the mental health, continuing to strive and achieve and grow and expand. Really, you are then able to create the connections for someone else when it's necessary. And so the pieces of that puzzle that you put together, imagine how comforting it was for those women when someone could speak their language and not just like half attempt or drop, you know what I mean, actually speak their language and knew the culture. And I'm sure that created a sense of peace within a very chaotic and scary situation.

Yeah.

So I won't let you say it's small. No. Sorry.

Okay.

But that's exactly what I am hoping to show is that one individual who seeks to be their best self and work through all the crazy, crappy stuff can make a ripple effect and help the next individual so that that next individual sees a little piece of hope or maybe an example of how to move forward and get after their dreams. And so we then have this continuous ripple effect, and community and society is better for it by starting with that individual.

Yeah.

I love it.

Okay.

Anything else? Did we miss anything else? Or one last message you want to leave? Anything?

I don't think so. I mean, I can talk about these things for a long time. I think education is really important, and it doesn't have to be like, I go to a four year college, right. That happens to have been my path because I am very interested in academia. The world of academia has always been where I feel like I fit the best. But even if it's, I don't know, like a trade school or something, a usable skill is just as important as having an actual degree in something, so doesn't matter what it is, but I think it's important to just always be working towards education, whatever that means for you in your context.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for giving this love. I just love the experiences and the knowledge that you've gained over what has it been? I don't even know. It's been a decade plus of this journey for you guys, and so it's been fun to see. And I always love hearing your guys'stories and the connections. So thank you for joining us and sharing that with us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.