Coach, the energy out there felt different. What changed for the team today?
It was a new game day scratches from the California Lottery player is everything.
Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.
Are you saying it was the off field play that made the difference on the field.
Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made the game.
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Well, jump right into it.
So you guys are college professors, right, and you know, college is something that is very It's a hot topic and it's something that triggers a lot of emotions in people, especially nowadays. It's like anytime we put a post on Instagram about college, we get a thousand comments and people saying, I guess a scam, don't wast your money, and other people saying all kinds of stuff. Right, So I'm just going to jump right, I'll just jump right into it.
Is college still necessary to be successful or was it really ever necessary? But in today's society, is college still necessary?
Still needed?
I mean I think that college, I mean it's not needed, it's I mean, it's something that you can do, It's something that's possible.
I think should be an option, right.
I don't think it should be forced upon that people have to go to college. I know, I will say there's other ways of being successful and going to certain fields that college is not needed as much as it was five years ago. But some things you do need, like if you want to be a lawyer or a doctor, or you're in a stem fields like college can be very productive. But then there's some other majors where honestly you can you can learn on YouTube, or you can learn about reading books, or you can learn.
About just doing so.
I don't think it has to be a necessary thing to go to college, but I do think it should still be an option.
Yeah.
I think also one of the biggest things about college are the networks and the relationships that are made. So it's very far and few in between that you get to sit in a room with doctor, a future lawyer, a future dentist, a future teacher and have conversations that are not about your fields of study, and because we all know that once we get into our you know, our real.
Lives after college, it starts.
To become a little bit closer in the bubble where you're just dealing with people who are who have similar interests. So college for that particular space, there's not many other places that create that type of environment. And academically there are some fields that do still need it. But you know, I think that these institutions, a lot of them are
just not created for the benefit of the students. I mean, there are a number of colleges and universities that are doing that work, but I think there are a lot that are scamming people, and I think there are a lot that are not doing the work.
It used to be looked at as a badge into middle.
Class life, but you had to have that piece of paper if you wanted to get a good job, get a house. Like that's going away with Like what then he was just saying, it's like some things we're just going to learn on the fly.
Like we say this all the time.
We have no training in broadcasting, but we're doing a podcasts right Like we're learning these things as we go on I think, like, yes, there.
Are options that you can do outside of going to.
School, but if they're on careers like lawyers and doctors, like you said, then it's mandatory. Man, I'm a college guy, right, Like we had to do it in education, but like I said before, like I feel like we could. I could have done it out of high school had given the proper training rather than seven years of dedication to that career.
You know what I mean, right.
I think what college does is we live in a society where image is very important, right, So what college does is that it gives you a badge to say, Okay, I have a certain level of success already built in
because I've completed my degree. So now I can at least speak to you on an intelligent level when I can be taken seriously, which not is not always the case, right, because there's plenty of people that graduated from what Kanye speakle what Kanye said, people graduate from college who be still stupid.
That's all the time, every year.
And then you got some people who never went to college who are brilliant or never finished college that are brilliant. So my personal opinion, you know, and it is that I think that college is beneficial. It can be beneficial from the social standpoint, specifically from a social standpoint and growing as an adult, right because especially if you go away to college, that's probably your first opportunity living on your own, and you mature, you develop a certain relationships,
you meet people. That part you really can't get just going out of high school. In the real world, you can, but it's a lot more difficult. You're not in an incubator where you're just around a thousand people and you can just develop those type of relationships. It's not easy to do that and just real world life. But I feel that a lot of times people are misguided right when they go to college. So this is my next question. As far as you know, one of the biggest things
for college for me is majors. Right, So you guys are on the inside, and I see I saw that even when I was in school. Anybody that doesn't know I have a communications degree, I don't have a business degree. So but when I went to school, they told me like, look, just get a degree.
It doesn't matter.
If you're not trying to be a doctor or a rocket scientist, it doesn't matter. And it honestly didn't because when I graduated, I'm a financial Advisorble when I graduated, in order to do what I had to do, I had to pass like three different tests, so I had to study for like nine months. So it doesn't matter if I would have got a business degree or not, I still would have had to study. So it's kind of like I went to college. After I went to college anyway, and now I have my licenses so I
can do whatever I want to do. So but I could have had an art degree. I could have had any kind of degree, right, So how important is it to pick the right major and how do you determine what is the right major?
So this is for parents and people got in students for college. So before I was a professor, I shtued to work in a mission. So the most important part when talking to parents or talking to students is when you're choosing a school, especially when it comes to majors. Your major should be a top five major within that school. What I mean by that is top five with enrollment and also they have placement for companies that deal exactly
what your major. And if you're not I those like top five areas for your major, what can happen honestly is you can be two years in at the school and if it's not enough students enrolled in that program, your program get dropped and now you're still at that college. So it's very important as we guide our students telling me to go to college, Yeah, that's great, but please make sure whatever field you're trying to go into is one a popular major within the school. Two has the
partnerships outside of the school with the different companies. And then, last, but not least, is the mentality of knowing where the United States or where your country, where you're living at, is going to be the next five years as far as the job market and careers and what's going to be in demand. Not i A would say this my mentality of not five minutes from now, start taking five
years from now right. So when you're making that decision, what does a communications degree look like five years from now right? What does that feel looks like, look like? Is even going to be around photography? Is that's something that you really have to go to school for when you can potentially learn that, you know? So that's that's kind of the key when picking your majors is making sure that the school provides the resources but can also place you at the job.
But it also is a demand. Butin the next few years, I.
Couldn't agree more.
Man Like a lot of times, especially in our community, when our kids think about college, the first thing they think about is the athletics, right, Like I want to go to do or I want to go in North Carolina. I want to go to Yukon, right, And when you get there, if you're not there on athletics, it's like, well,
I want to study communications. Well that's not one of those majors that is one of the best things at that school, So like you should be looking past just like yo, I'm alumni and I go to that school for the sports, right if it means it doesn't mean as much when you come out of Yukon with the communication gree.
I have a communication degree. You know what I'm saying.
But I want to go back to what you said.
I don't go back to what you said because you said that.
It doesn't matter, and in my head, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't matter if you're on an athletic scholarship. If it matters to a guy like me who was like, I'm studying physical therapy and I don't want to be a physical therapist, right, and I've paid thirty thousand dollars for four years. It's like this matters a lot, right, Like now what do I do? Do I have to continue going when I don't want to do this? Or do I have to figure out what can I do?
Like that, I kind of fell into that thing. It was like the school I was at it was greatus physical therapy. I couldn't pass the science classes. I'm like, yo, I'm not going to be a physical therapist. I got to figure out what I can get and gratefully, I was able to go to school with a health.
Science degree and I was like, all right, well what does that even mean?
You know what I'm saying.
So I have to start figuring out, like and what's gonna happen.
We talk about this all the time, and Jeff in particular use this analogy of you know, and everything else you buy something, you challenge to make sure that the service that they're providing is correct, right, And I feel like people are not challenging some of these schools when they're paying all this money. You know you're paying and maybe because you're not physically using cash and handing over fifty thousand dollars.
You're not seeing the money, so you maybe don't.
Care as much as if you're going to a restaurant, like you know, Jeff always says about you know, if you order steak and they bring out chicken nuggets, are you gonna eat chicken nuggets?
Or you're going to say, I ordered steak.
And many times students are paying all this money for a school and then not providing the services that they're promised, and they're not challenging the school right or asking questions before. And I don't know, maybe it's because again you're not physically handing that money over and you think, I go, I'll just get a job and I paid off later. But I think it should really treat it like everything else you purchase them.
That's a problem especially in our community, man, like we don't know how to advocate for the things we want. Like I've seen it over and over with parents not being able to advocate for the kids. But then the kids grow up and they don't how to advocate. So if they all being mistreated at school and the things that not being avided, it's.
Like who do I how do you challenge the system? Because I mean, that's like going up against that.
System. How do you challenge?
So I don't want to even say like challenge the system. It's simple things.
So, if there's like a college fair at your school, like every school, typically at high school, they bring in college representatives, you know, instead of asking questions, like students get these questions from guidance counselors and some people. I don't know where they get these questions from, like what's the percentage of student success at your school? Like that's not the question should be asking you. She'd be asking
you know, look, I want to be an engineer. How can you how can this school help me become an engineer? How can this school help me become a bio mechanical engineer?
Like whatever?
How does how? What are the tools at your school to get me there? But also is this major a popular major at your school?
Can I talk to.
Somebody at the the institution, the career center and find out how many people you placed at a job in the last three to four years at some point? You know, like those type of questions need to be asked, and unfortunately we don't. We don't provide those resources, them tools enough, And that's why we create the platform that we create.
That's part of the things that we deal with to let students know, like you do have a voice number one and number two to ask those type of questions before spending all of this money.
Jef, I wanted to ask you a question. We spoke of CAM about the hitting curriculum.
Yeah, so the idea, so it kind of goes into the aspect that the students don't know who to ask, so that there is that problem. I don't know where to go, and the institutions are not doing the job properly. A lot of institutions are not doing the job properly and creating a space for students to understand things like acronyms that students don't know. So I don't know what FASSO might stand for, and that's talking about financial aid. If you don't know what that means, then you're out
of luck. If you don't know what the bursar office means, and these are the things that are just directly dealing with your money sounds so you.
Don't know what these things are.
So I think it's just essential for and this is where I think the big problem is is that there are institutions that are about creating careers.
For people who want to be educators.
So they want to go up the ladder and become vice presidents and become deans and become provosts and presidents of institutions without caring about the students. So then they create these platforms and they create these spaces where the students cannot succeed.
So I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
There are academic institutions that are out there primarily just to build careers and primarily just to make money. The proper institutions that are doing the work are the ones that say we are going to make sure that you know who to speak to. And with the hidden curriculums, that just means that there are things that are being
hidden in regular nomenclature. So it's saying we know what it is, but a seventeen year old does not know what that is, and we expect them to know what it is then succeed in that space and then excel beyond that, and then by the time they hit to year two or three, we see the retention level drops because the student doesn't know what the term retention even means. So we're saying we want to keep you here, but are we even doing the work that needs to be done.
So ultimately, at the end of the day, that's where we have to start to do more work, is saying what are the students getting and who do they need to speak to? So to really touch on the comments that we were just saying. One of the things that I can tell all people who are sending any of their students to college or are going back to school themselves, is that you have to really find particular individuals on your campus. I can't stress the I can't stress it
enough that you have to get involved. So I means you have to find somebody who's already doing the work and make sure you align yourself with that. Find the Jeff or the Lenny on your campus and sit in their office introduce yourselves. Because what ends up happening is I'm the one that's going to put you in touch with this person, that person, this individual to help you succeed because doing it by yourself is literally impossible.
Now we was talking off camera too, and it's difficult because I think my experience is a little JD because I was I played basketball, so when I went to school, I was on athletic scholarship, so anybody's not familiar athletes, it's different, especially at a Division one school. So when I got to campus, you know, we had our own study hall just for the athletes. We had our own advisor just for the athletes. Our books was free, and you know, they would stay on us like make sure,
like what are you're doing? Like you just going to class?
You know what I mean. It's like, so it's easier because it's more structured.
But for somebody that's just going to college on their own, and especially if you're if you know, your parents didn't go to college, but you don't your first generation, it's a lot that goes into college that's different from high school. Like I remember the vali valedictorian of my school a couple of years ago that my high school that I went to. He's a lot younger than me, obviously, and I spoke to him. He's in Harvard, and I was asking him, like, how you doing at Harvard, And he's like,
you know, I wasn't prepared. This is the valedictorian of the school. He's a smart kid, obviously, but he's like high school was just so easy for me, and I'm in Harvard and it's just way different. And he was like, you know, I never realized how much I wasn't prepared until I was in that position. And I think that
that happens all the time. And like you say, a lot of times unfortunately, especially you know, you might have family issues, whatever, the kids just drop out because you know, you fall behind a couple of semesters and let alone, not even talking about financial issues, just social issues and just dealing with school and structuring your time. It's like, how can somebody fully equip themselves for making that jump from high school to college?
First you sign up with Trill or not Trill, but uh, you know, to fully equip yourself, it takes a lot. And this is where we have to really invest. We were just talking about that off camera too, about how much money you place on a college.
Degree, whether you're going there for free or you're paying full tuition.
There's no I mean, outside of a house, there's no larger investment that you're really making probably throughout your life. And in the same way that you invest in the house, you're searching for multiple houses. But then even before that, you want to know how is the house, How you know how is it built?
What was? What do I have to do to fix this space?
What do I have to do to make sure that my family, if I want to start a family, goes in here. It can't just be let me just show up, pull up and figure out.
The rest investment?
Right?
And so what what the what people have to do is is really start to invest in the child and the student's education before they even get in there and find the programs. Because colleges and universities some of them will do it, but a lot of them will not, and say, listen, we're going to give you a two day orientation session to figure out how to succeed in college.
And you know you and they're trying to holler at other people you and they're trying to have fun, you know, because they're also doing that too.
There's a DJ at that thing directors there.
You're sitting here thinking like, man, I don't even know what registraw is. And I remember, like as a college student, I was like, is it register And they're like, no, it's registrar.
And I'm like, why what does that even mean?
For class?
Correct when you're registering for class?
So there are these simple little things that that students aren't prepared for and so for me, I just think that you have to invest in the same way that you would invest in a house, the same way that you wouldn't buy a car without making every possible detail for it.
You have to do the same thing.
And I think the key is invest past financials because a lot of people always talk about college and investing, and it's only the financial piece when we're saying about the investment, saying due to research as well and understand where college is going, what colleges are doing at different degrees, because it can be really beneficial for you.
And it's also a very important I think what Jeff said as far as to find people on campus that know the deal and because that helped me out a lot, as far as like when I first got there, I had somebody chott my mansion real he's from Lebron.
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And he was a junior when I was a freshman. He was on the team and he was seasoned. He was there for two years. So he kind of explained to me, like take this class, don't do this and have this many credits, and like this professor is cool, and he kind of walked me through it, and from there I was able to have a smooth transition. But I think it's important to have that mentor. I don't know if schools have.
Program they do, and then the other thing before you even talk about what you want. The mentors just don't get too caught up on titles as well. Right, looking for somebody with a leadership title to be a mentor. There's just people on campus that literally run a campus but don't have any fancy title.
A person that works in a book store right right, everybody.
And they've been there for twenty years, so they know exactly what books to get, they know exactly where to go. There's the person who's cleaning up the student union building. They or know, hey, listen, you know you need to join this club, or hey, you know you need to talk to Jeff because Jeff knows who everybody is. And so that's where, you know, we always talk about the
difference of what a mentor means. So we tell people, number one, you need a digital mentor, and the digital mentor is somebody that is online, that has an online presence at that institution or otherwise that you know you can just.
Watch what they're doing.
And that might just mean I'm watching somebody's Instagram feed or Twitter feed and saying, all right, you know what I need to just know because this person is providing
a wealth of information. There's a generational mentor, So that means you also need to know somebody who is from a different generation than you are, younger and older, who have different mindsets and different viewpoints that you can say, all right, this is the generational mentor that's older than I am, that's going to be providing me the traditional sense of leadership.
But then here's this person that's also maybe a little bit younger than I am.
That I can give them information and then they give me back some information.
And then like your boy that you said at your school, be what we call peer mentor, right right, somebody that's in that same age range, same age bracket doing this you know the same things that you're doing, and that's a fellow peer of yours that can really help you out important.
Yeah for sure. All right. So now we're going to go into the next seven.
We're going to talk about the financials and we're also going to talk about chill natural.
So yeah, yes, I love that environment. All right.
So now we're going to talk about the number one thing when it comes to school is how to pay for it?
Right, money, money, As.
We said, man, it's the biggest financial decision that they gonna make, and they have, especially high school sudents, they got about three years and that's you're making that.
Decision at a team.
Like a lot of people won't get approved to get a loan for a house.
They probably won't.
They may not get approved to get a loan for a car, but they will get approved.
Student loan is real and something like I said once again, I was fortunate not to have to a loan because I had a scholarship. But I have brothers and sister and they both have to I think they both still paying on this. They're both older than me. But student loans is real. Financial aid is definitely real. All that is real.
So and you can't escape it. No, no, no filing for bangrucy on doingent loan.
Oh they're gonna want their money, thank you, so so. But like, what's what's What's some hacks that parents because a lot of parents listen to our podcasts and you know, might have children in college or children getting ready to go to college. What some hacks that and even children or young adults can use to minimize the cost of college.
One of the big hacks for high school students is taking college courses while you're in high school. Now, some high schools and some districts provide that, and they're called like articulation agreements, another fancy words, another fancy hire edward, but they're call articulation or dual agreements or partnerships where a lot of community colleges now and some four year schools are trying to build upon their enrollment. So what they're doing is they're allowing high school students to start
taking classes at a lower rate or for free. So that's something where you look at in your area, your region, your district, especially within the community colleges, your kids can take some of those level one hundred courses at a lower rate.
Do you how do you get going on campus?
You can go on campus, so you can call.
What you can do is you can call most colleges have what they call like a pre college program, pre summer program, summer academies, and look look inside of some of those programs, those summer camps and maybe don't send your kids to maybe a sports camp in the town. You send them to a business academy camp at like let's say, at Pace University, and then they can potentially get credits for class while they're at that camp. So that's that's the way to kind of look at it.
I would look at your local community colleges first, give them a call. A lot of them do allow high school students to take classes on Saturdays and at night, so that's something that you can you can definitely look out for, and you can go in as what they call another fancy college for like a non matriculated student.
That's yeah, that's a good word, I know.
I think another thing too is to just be honest about going to community colleges. So community colleges are way less expensive than they are than for your institutions are. And so if your student is not fully prepared because they just don't know.
I mean, at eighteen, you just may not know.
And at eighteen, I thought I was going to be a high school basketball coach, teaching English classes that in my old high school, and that's what I thought I was going to do. And I went into college thinking that that was the plan. And I realized that I didn't want to do that at all about two years into the game, and so I had I don't know if community college was particularly for me, but I'm paying I paid for those two and I paid a lot of money for those two years.
And for some people who are just.
Not quite sure if they want to go to college or if this institution is go to a two year and bang out two years of college that are going to be a lot less expensive, and then succeed at those two years and then you can get into whatever school you want.
I mean, Harvard is giving.
Away full scholarships to students who excel at a community college, as are so many other excellent institutions, So you know, I think that's one that's another way to minimize some of the costs. And another thing I wanted to add is alumni offices are a secret hidden money giving a space.
It's called advancement at most universities. But your alumni offices are always collecting money from donors who are saying, we want to give money to a black male student from upstate New York who enjoys watching soccer, and they literally will say that's the only way we're going to give five thousand dollars to this program, or we're going to get five thousand dollars to a student who's involved in the Haitian Students club, and that's the only way we're
gonna give five thousand dollars. I donate to my school and I give money only to the Black student Union that helps shape my career. So we have money that we give to. You have to be involved in that club. But students don't know because they don't always announce those scholarships. They're just there on the website that nobody knows.
So I tell.
Students once a month go into that office and say are you offering any scholarships?
And they will be there.
And then for those people, I mean, we both did it. We both donated and created our own scholarships. I created one out of community college, create one out of his high school. And for those people that are watching that don't know how to give back money, you can call the foundations and advancement and alumni officers at these colleges and do a two hundred and fifty dollars scholarship or
a five hundred dollars scholarship to help students as well. Another misconception is that you have to finish a community college in order to transfer. That's not true. Every school is different. So for example, in New Jersey where I live, two things that I want to kind of put out there.
There's two things.
In New Jersey.
Let's say you have twelve credits in the two point zero you can transfer into most four year state schools in New Jersey. It's give me two point five into most state schools in New Jersey. New Jersey also has another program, and most states do have programs like this called NJ Stars where a student maybe didn't do particularly well in their SATs, but they're in the top twenty percent of the top ten percent of their class. And if you're in the top ten percent of your class,
you go to college for free community college. Then when you go to community college, if you get your associate's degree and you have a three point two GPA, you can get another scholarship to go finish your bachelor's degree at a four year college and that'll be it in Jstars two. So in Jstars one, it's community college. You can transfer out and then you go into in Jstars too.
So these are type of programs that they have in a lot of I just know that particular because I'm from New Jersey, But they have these type of programs within the states. So don't get too caught up saying, well, I'm top twenty percent of class. I want to go to this big school.
Yeah, you might be.
Your top twenty percent might be different from another high school, so you might not get as much money as.
Far as scholarships.
So take advantage of the scholarships that you do have, be at that community college, and then go on and then potentially transferring get scholarships as well.
So it's just transfer scholarships.
As you're talking, I'm listening because we do this this project with the kids who are going into college, like even say an associate's degree, they like have no idea.
So that's traditionally fifty six.
Credits, right, and then obviously a bachelor is when you finish traditionally one hundred and twenty credits of school. That might take for four or five years hopefully because it's going to cost you ever and you don't.
But and on top of that, you know, after a certain amount of credits, after I think one hundred and sixty, I want to say, you run out of financial aid. So you can continue to go to school. They'll let you go to school, they don't care, but your financial aid. Can you can exhaust your financial aid?
That's important And I was going to say, like in addition to that, like a lot there's a misconception with community college. Like you said, like after those two years you transfer to a four year school. Like when you graduate and you go into your career, nobody's looking at like, yo, what junior you transfer from community college?
And then New York State has now.
Like in the past two years they started the Excelsia program.
So state school is also a good thing, right, it's a least it's less than if you went to a private school.
Right.
So if you go to state school and you live in New York and you know your parents make under a certain amount of money, you can have I think room and board for free and to which well, so that's another option. If community college is like it's not something you want to do, go to your local state school if you live in New York, and then I think the only recommend requirement is that you have to work in the state four years after you however.
Long, Yeah, a lot of schools are doing.
You know, if your parents make seventy thousand hours, your household income is seventy thousand dollars, you go to school for free. That's something that's happened in New Jersey where all the community colleges will be free start in September. These are again, these are the type of programs that you should know. But most importantly, you just brought up a really good point. Public understand what a public college is and a private college. Right, nine times out of ten,
a private college costs more than a public college. And it doesn't mean that, And it goes back what I said early. It doesn't mean that they're a better school. It's literally because they're privately funded, so it's a little it's a little bit different when it comes to how much they charge for tuition. So it's very important to know what a public college is and a private private and know the difference.
That'sant Yeah, because I actually did a podcast before and somebody asked me that question, and I was saying that nobody cares, like especially if you plan on getting a degree outside of the other first degree. So like if you know you're going to get a four year degree and you go into a two year school, or if you know you're going to get a master's degree, right, they only care about the last degree that you have and that school that you went to. So like Barack
Obama is a perfect example. He went to his first school that he went to for two years is like some no name school in California. Then he went to Columbia and then he went to Harvard after that. Right, when you hear the stories, it's only that he went to Harvard Law and he graduated from Columbia, they never say the first school that he went to.
It doesn't matter.
But you save a lot of money, you prepare yourself, and you grow so a lot of times I'm not the best person to give this speech because I went to the University of Hawaii, But you might have to humble yourself and stay home right and learn, learn the ropes, and you know, stay at home for a couple of years and then go out on your own. Or you know, you might just sacrifice for four years, stay at home, save money, go to your local school in your area,
your state school. It'll you might not get the same joy as you know, going out on your own and you know, going to a crazy destination. But the grand scheme of things, it might make a lot of sense long term.
That's my story in itself.
Right, I stayed home, I went to school locally, right, But what I did during that time was I was able to get experience, whereas somebody who comes out of school and is looking for experience, I.
Already have four years on you.
So sometimes when you go to a career or job, it's like, yeah, you have this, but do you have the experience? Like I'm doing that as I'm going to school and obviously I don't have to pay for room and board or anything like that.
So it helped in that way.
Yeah, and also look at another complotment by experience. Also look at the career centers within the college. I know, in my junior year, my job, my internship was also kind of as credits, so it could be considered like a co op program. So your class can actually eliminate I mean, your job can actually eliminate you taking a certain class because the work that you're doing, the experience
that you're doing is learning learn learning experience. And then they'll give you a professor to kind of you know, follow you along and then you write a paper about it in the semester. And not only did you get paid to work, but you also got credits which saved you money as well.
So Jeff, you have an interesting story about j Cole.
Yeah, so you know this is the thing about college. So this kind of goes into this conversation about how to find money and how to be more successful in it. So I went to Saint John's University and I went to school with J. Cole, And you know, I was president of our Black student union which was called Harayah, and at that time we were the largest organization. They had a massive budget, over one hundred thousand dollars. And what we were able to do was I became president
of that. And becoming president of that, they gave me a five thousand dollars stipend. So right there, I got an extra five K that I didn't have for doing some student work on top of the stipend. With that budget, I was able to also bring in a bunch of different speakers. I mean Cornell, Wes, Maya, Angelou, all these people that I wanted to meet, We had the money to bring them in. Now that J colepiece is is
leveraging the networking opportunity. So if you're going to go to a college, I don't care what school it is, I want you to go in there and make sure you meet as many different people as you possibly can. Get yourself into every room and so when I think about Cole, one of the things that I remember Jermaine was just wrapping in the random open mic or wrapping in the residence hall in the dorms, and then that flipped into him getting involved. He eventually became president of
our Black student union. And then when that happened, he always had a crowd. There was always five hundred people that were guaranteed that we're going to buy the mixtape, that we're going to come out to the show, that we're going to support him at the open mic, that we're going to go out to this And me, I see it all the time as we do speaking gigs that I still perform poetry. Half of my audience are people from Saint John's for my undergraduate career.
So I tell.
People make sure that once you get in, get yourself involved, get yourself entrenched in the university, because that's how you get them to start paying you back.
And that's the thing. School's really expensive.
But I'm going to find out how do I become a resident assistant. And a resident assistant is when you're in charge of a residence floor and you're in charge of a dorm floor, they pay for your housing. But I did not pay for housing for three years of my college career. And when you get into those spaces, I was an orientation leader, which were the people who introduced the people when they came to college.
I got paid for that. So that's where you find the money.
You leveraged the money by the network, by the capital of the individuals, as well as the capital that the school hasn't.
He said something interesting, You said that Jacole, being the president of the Black Student Union, he was in a unique position because he booked concerts.
So then that opened up for them.
Yeah, it was fascinating. I mean I remember, you know when I was wrapping back in the day, that was the same thing. I'm like, I put on my little resume. Yeah, I opened up for Kanye, I opened up for quality, I opened up for comment And he did the same thing every time we had a major artist. He was one of the performers that opened up for it. And then that just again creates more leverage, creates more opportunities. You get practice. And he didn't pay a dime. He
didn't pay anything. You use the studio that's on campus, use every possible resource that they have because they're they're they're taking the money.
From you in tuition.
They're never gonna They're never gonna say, hey, you know what, it's okay, you don't have to pay today. So I'm gonna say, listen, I want They're never gonna say that, right, So I want the studio, I want the gym, I want I'm taking everything that this school could possibly give me.
And he was like a straight a student something like that.
Yeah, I mean he was a good student from what I heard. I mean, I wasn't in the classes with him, right, but he was.
I mean.
And that's the thing is that I can't stress. And I'll say this over and over again. You have to succeed in that space. So do everything you possibly can to to leverage every opportunity.
Did they have.
My graduates from my school being false?
Bad?
Drop drop Mike, drop bag drop.
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