Growth Mindset

Harry: I hit a wall at UWL. I got to a point where you either had to pass math or you weren't getting your degree. And somebody, and I wish I could remember who it was, it might have been my counselor, Chris Bakkum, was that her first name, it might have been her. She was fantastic, I do remember being very fortunate having her as a counselor. It might have been her, she said “You know you might wanna go to,” I don’t know what they called it back then, Student Services or whatever. And it was in a building I never went into, I don’t know if it’s still here, it’s in the middle of campus. It was a dorm and then it was something else, and I don’t remember, I’ll think of it. But, I went there and somebody said, “Well you should go to Gunderson clinic and get tested for a learning disability.” I said, “What’s a learning disability?” “Well some people don’t learn like everybody else learns.” So they—I called home and I said “I don’t know what they’re talking about.” And my mom and dad were like, “Yeah you should do this, you should do this.” And insurance wasn’t like what it is today, it wasn’t a big deal, you just went to the hospital and they sent you a bill, right? So I went to the hospital to the Learning Center whatever, I don’t even know what the hell the department was. Weirdly enough I think my mother-in-law was working there back then and I didn’t know it. So, so, I went in. I got tested, and I thought it was really a weird set of tests, but it was to figure out what I could do and couldn’t do. And when I knew, I knew I had a problem. Nowadays it’s no big deal, we had analog clocks, the round clocks in a classroom. I have to say it like that cause I talk to my kids like that, and they look at me like, “What.” I couldn’t tell time. Here I was twenty-three and I couldn’t tell time on an analog clock, so I knew I had a problem. And that was one of the tests, tell me what time it is, and I couldn’t do it. And it was—it was disheartening, it was like oh my god I’m so stupid. I am just so stupid, but then, so now I had this information. What good did it do me. But I got to school and realized somebody, somebody, maybe, maybe it was Mrs. Bakkum, I don’t know if it was Doctor, I don’t know, I hope I said that right. Maybe it was her, but I needed some kind of proof that I had an issue to get out of a math requirement for the B.S. degree. So, so I got the proof, I had all the paperwork and everything. And I’m like “What do I do with this?” And then they were like, now you got to take this math class. There’s no way I’m passing this math class. So I went to her, and she said well you need a math waiver. So I had to go in front of this council. I don’t know if it was student disciplinary. I remember the kids were there were definitely there for disciplinary issues, and I showed up in a suit and tie and I laid out my case cause I was looking for a waiver for the math requirement for the bachelor of science degree, and they were telling me I couldn’t have one. And people were telling me, “Oh you need to have a lawyer with you.” But that was just at the time where everyone was like, “Oh you need to call a lawyer.” I didn’t call a lawyer what do I know from a lawyer? So I went in front of this council, and I had my folder and my paperwork in front of me. I remember it was a Saturday morning and I pled my case. And they said oh–and I remember–I remember Mrs. Bakkum saying it would probably take a week or something like that for you to get an answer. And I wanna say she was there. I’m trying to picture it, I remember–I definitely remember sitting at the table. I can’t remember. I know none of my friends. I was there alone. And they said, “Okay, thank you very much we’ll consider, blah blah blah.” And I walked out thinking, alright, let’s see what happens. I had no control over it. I’m either gonna graduate or I’m not gonna graduate, and I have to figure out how to tell my parents that I’m not gonna graduate. Later on, years later, realizing my parents knew this the whole time. That they had no idea. So I’m walking down the hall, and it’s definitely Mrs. Bakkum was running after me, she says, “They made a decision already.” I’m thinkin’ this is not good. She said, “I can’t believe it, but they waived all your math requirements. You don’t even have to take an alternative. It’s waived.” So I have a B.S. degree with no math.

Harry: There isn’t one lesson in particular. I am who I am because I attended here.

Isabelle: Right.

Harry: I think if I learned anything at that time, like in particular, it was to believe in yourself. Because once I got in the flow of going to school, it became a goal to get that degree, I could have easily said screw it I’m gonna fail the math class and I’m gonna go home, I’m done. But it was, and I didn’t realize that about myself like I didn’t understand till I was much much older in life, but it came from my college experience. That–that and the fact that–so believing in yourself and understanding that you can accomplish certain things and there’s certain things in life, and I don’t care how rosy anybody paints it, there’s just certain things you’re not gonna be able to do and I realized that here too. I realized I was never going to be a history teacher. I tried one more time by going to grad school, but I never even finished the process ‘cause it was just too hard. But I realized that, there are certain goals you’re not gonna obtain and it’s okay, that’s okay. But I think believing in yourself, I think being accepting, I grew up in a very tight closed, you know, we weren’t closed off, I don’t wanna say that. But we were–you knew Jews, and you knew Jews. And my wife tells it that my mom shopped in this Jewish store, but she didn’t go to this bakery cause it’s owned by that German lady, but she went to this supermarket. And that’s how I grew up, but it made me more tolerant like it made me more tolerant like–we’re city people. City people look down on farming. They look down on what they don’t know, and–but it made me open my eyes that there’s a whole other world, so I think coming to UWL, the experience of learning and meeting new people, which I don’t think I would have gotten had I gone to University of Illinois and lived in the same dorm with all the other Jewish kids and everybody I went to high school with. I went out of the–I went out. I mean I–my friends were like they couldn’t believe you know–they–they were–they’re all–they lived in Illini tower which they used to call the Israeli towers, they lived in Illini towers, they went to the same fraternities and the same sororities and the same parties and they’re still friends with the same high school people. I on the other hand, one of my closest friends lives here in town. Last night I had dinner with my college roommate. None of these people are from my base, they’re not from my community. So I think the–the thing I took–the thing I appreciate the most about going to school here is the experiences of learning new people, new cultures, even though were all Americans it was still a different culture, and just not–I always tolerated but just appreciating, that’s the word I’m looking for, appreciating the way other people live.

Harry: Not to sugarcoat it cause I think most people wanna hear “Oh, it was very anti-Semitic and blah blah blah” you know. It was the exact opposite.

Isabelle: Right.

Harry: I will say I always wear a Star of David around my neck or what’s called a Mezuzah, which is a prayer scroll around my neck. And I am not a religious person in the least bit. I wear it out of tradition. Strictly out of tradition. And I wear the star now to give you an idea, my wife is not Jewish. I wear the star now because it’s the first thing my wife gave me and I’ve never taken it off. So most people think it’s a police star [laughs] cause it looks like a police star, but I never, but I wore it back then I always had one on. I have a brother who always wears a Chai, which is a Hebrew letter, and I always wore a star or a Mezuzah. I got to school, the very first thing I did when I unpacked was I put my stuff out of my trunk and I took my star off. I can’t remember if it was a star or a Mezuzah, but I think it was a glass star at the time, and I took it off and I put it in my drawer because I wasn’t gonna tell anybody that I was Jewish. My name is actually, we learned recently more Scandinavian than it is Jewish or Eastern European. So, I didn’t say anything to anybody. And I figure it’s just better not said. I had a few anti-Semitic incidents in my life, and I thought eh I don’t need that you know. And not anything horrible. but probably–I don’t know the timeline probably the couple first weeks of school, I walk through the lounge and there’s a group of kids there and this is now the late eighties, we’re in the farm crisis, that’s when farming became really big, and I’m sure, do you know who John Cougar Mellencamp is?

Isabelle: I don’t, unfortunately, I’m sorry.

Harry: I listened to him all the way up here. So there was an album. There was a rockstar named John Cougar, at the time he changed his name, and the album was called Scarecrow, and it was a huge hit. And, at that time we were in a farm crisis and the farms were getting foreclosed left and right. The country was in a recession, and I had a friend Dale, or Gale, I’m sorry Gale, who came from Plum Grove and had twelve brothers and sisters that lived on a dairy farm and he got subsidized cheese. I remember him bringing giant bricks of cheese to school, cause his parents couldn’t afford to buy food yet, they were making cheese. It was crazy, things were a mess. But anyways I’m walking through the lounge and it’s the first few weeks of school, and these farm kids are sitting there talking and all of a sudden I hear, “Well you know it’s the Jews, it’s the goddamn Jews, they have, they–they control all the media and they control the–,” They didn’t know the work commodity but they were saying, “–they control the food prices, and that’s why my parents are losing their farms. It’s all the Jews.” Well at that point I had said that’s it, I cannot walk past this. I’m gonna get the crap beat out of me in a minute, but I’m gonna stand up and say, and I turned around and I say something I won’t say on the tape, and I said, “By the way, I’m Jewish.” And I said, “And you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” And that was the only negative and those–those three morons were gone by first semester, so I didn’t really care. But that was the only negative incident I had the entire four years I was here. Now what was said behind my back, I have no idea. Gale’s parents, Gale never took us home to his house, everybody went to everybody’s house, it was a thing because his mother wouldn’t let me in the door. His mother did not want me in their house, which is fine. He and I got along fine, I could care less. He and I were very good friends. But yeah his mother would not let me, she did not want a Jew in her house. It was whatever. But on campus, I never had an anti-Semitic incident. I never heard anything, the people that I lived with in the dorm at Coate [Hall] became more inquisitive. I was the first Jew, ninety percent of ‘em ever met, so they became inquisitive, they asked me questions, they were interested. I–my mother would send care packages and some of this–some of the crap that–that we eat you think about it now you know? But I shared my Jewish food with my friends. I don’t know how they ate it, but at that time you couldn’t get a bagel in every grocery store, it was still in the Jewish community. My mother–and we lived by one of the best bagel factories in the country and my mother would ship bagels from New York Bagel Bialy to me and cream cheese and gefilte fish, and all kinds of Jewish food, and I would share it with my friends. And it was, it was just–it became what we did and who we were and –I think I mentioned this before but they used to put, I don’t know if they still put signs up in the lobby down in the dorms and stuff, kids would make posters. And at Christmas, they would make big Christmas posters and they would say, “Merry Christmas, Coate Hall.” And blah blah blah and there was a Christmas tree and I never cared, I didn’t you know. And then one year Tall Terry, we called him Tall Terry, he used to make the signs, Tall Terry wrote on the bottom in big letters it said, “Merry Christmas to everyone,” and something like that, “and Happy Hanukkah, Harry.” So it never, I never had a negative experience.

Katie: I think that I just really learned about organization. Because, you know, like professors, they give you a syllabus, but it wasn't written on the whiteboard as you walk out of the room that like “this is due tomorrow,” or “this is when your exam was.” So, you know, I had never really been a person who used a planner or any kind of like calendar app before. But I was like, “okay, I gotta get organized.” Because I think my first semester I withdrew from a class just because it was a lot harder than I had thought. And kind of keeping track of assignments and exams and stuff like that—it was a little bit of an adjustment. So, I didn't necessarily get the G.P.A [Grade Point Average] that I wanted my first semester. And I was like, “okay, what can I do to kind of make a positive change?” And then did a lot better the second semester once I implemented some of those changes.

Katie: Hmm. It's a toss-up because sophomore year was really fun, but also senior year was really fun [laughs]. I think probably Senior year just because I knew who I was at that point, you know, like my first three years I really just like developed and blossomed as a person. I think I was really quiet in high school, didn't try a lot of things. But I found my voice at UWL and just tried a bunch of stuff and by senior year I was like, “okay, I've arrived like I know who I am. I know what I'm involved in, what I'm doing. I'm excited to, you know, graduate and kind of, you know, flourish from there.”

Ellie: Would you kind of say that UWL really helped you in that or was it kind of other aspects of life?

Katie: It was UWL, for sure. Just everything I was involved in and all the people that I had met really, you know, just helped me become a more confident person. And I just learned a lot too. I had told you that I had gone to Catholic school the entire time leading up to UWL and I had never had diversity training, or equity training, or heard really different points of view. And I did at UWL. And then I got to choose for myself like what I was passionate about and what I believed in.

Ellie: Yeah. And then kind of looking back approximately ten years later, like you said earlier, how do you think you've changed from your first year of college to your last?

Katie: Hmm. I think probably just in how much I put myself out there. So you know, I was involved in a lot of stuff freshman year and kind of put my name on lists. But did I speak in meetings? Or did I share my ideas? Probably not as much freshman year. But by the time I was a Senior I was like “I've got this. I can run an event from start to finish and do all the prep and know it's gonna be successful.”

Ellie: And then how do you think you kind of changed from your last year of college to now?

Katie: Hmm. I think that I just have to like be responsible for more people now. Whereas, you know, senior year was very like career-driven, you know, I was preparing for grad school, I knew what I had to do to get my master's degree and what job I thought that I wanted to have. But now I'm married, and I have a three-year-old, and I live in the town that I did not grow up in. So I'm just kind of, you know, navigating a new city and making sure that my plan for my future also molds with my family, and my spouse, and what we all want to accomplish.

Alex: So I would have to start out with—or end with—my last semester in college and really compare it to my first. You know, I came in and not knowing anybody, really out of my element, just needing to continue to keep trying and stick in there and hang in there to my last semester, where I was a President of an organization, I was serving on the Student Association as a Student Senator. I had developed a really good core group of people that were my friends, and still are my friends today, and were—they stood up in my wedding, they I see them—I mean they've moved across country most of them. But you know I married my wife who I met freshman year and now, we have a kid. So, I think that those relationships had really developed in my last semester, and I had figured out how to deal with college coursework, how to continue to study and make sure I was successful academically, but then I had really found you know the place, the area of study that I had found interest in, so that was exciting, too. You know, I know that people I come across people in my line of work today that are kind of finishing up their college career, and they may be stressed because they can't find a job right away, or they don't know where they're going to go, what they're going to do, where they're going to live, and I think that I spent a lot of time in that last semester thinking about those things. Whereas I wish—and I did for the most part—but I wish even more that I had spent time just being in the moment, and really, really, taking time to just appreciate where I was and what I was doing. Because really not a lot of other times in your life are you going to be in a place with all of your friends, living together, studying new things every day, being involved in things that you love and enjoy. And I mean in my life, now I found those things, but in a different way, and not necessarily the way that I felt my last semester of college and I think that every semester kind of built up to that. So, I always tell people “make sure you live in the moment and enjoy that time in your life.” And that's advice that I got when I was a freshman and when I got that advice I was like “what! This is so hard.” Like I'm trying to enjoy it, but really do, because each moment is something that you'll remember fondly

Alex: That's a great question. I remember them being very difficult. I'm not going to lie. I was in an Economics class, in a Earth Sciences class, a History class, and I remember just kind of being in this whole new environment this first week. You know, we're trying to make friends, build a new community, oftentimes even if you came, if I came to UWL with people from Middleton High School they were across campus, or making friends of their own. So, I definitely remember kind of needing to figure out how to operate both socially and academically on this campus and it was hard. And so, I always encourage people now that I'm kind of past that freshman phase of life is that in trying something new or doing something new it is always going to be a little bit difficult in the first week or so when you're doing it. So, don't give up. Don't stop. And I remember calling my mom a few weeks after that I had been there, and I was like, “ugh it's just so difficult I feel like I'm still trying to meet people, I'm still trying to make sure that I'm succeeding in my academic work.” And she's like, “I just want you to stay there and try it a little bit longer, keep going.” And that first week, that first month was tough. That first semester was tough, because this is new, a new course load that I have never looked at before. I'm living in a completely new place trying to meet new people.

Alex: I would always suggest students getting involved in policy-making and decision-making on their campus. I think that kind of from my position now looking back, I think that the more students are engaged in what's happening on their campus and things on the outside that are impacting their campus, the better opportunities they will have for resources to come to their campus. What I mean by this is, you know, being involved in those discussions about at the state level about, you know, what's happening with your tuition. And you know how you know how your UW system is funded. And you know why it's important that it's properly funded year after year, and not, you know, kind of, you know, staggered along. And I think in my student government experience I learned about a lot about student segregated fees and how those impact campus resources, and I learned a lot about student lobbying or student advocacy. We went to the [UW System] Board of Regents to advocate for certain policy changes and I’d encourage students to continue to do that. I don't think I ever came to the [Wisconsin] State Capital, but as a legislator now I'm seeing many students come to me and tell them their firsthand experience. I would encourage people to continue to talk, not only with their legislators, because I know sometimes Madison is a little far away. Email them. Call them. But, also their local officials. I mean the city of La Crosse has a big impact on what campus is able to do in the policies set there and that's something that I tried to get involved in my senior year with those parking things that we were speaking about. And, you know, really just staying connected with the community that they live in because, you know, it's not just temporary for students like it was four years of my life. That was four years that I lived in a different community, and that, you know, now I look back on it and think of it as a second home to me. So, and I really care about the success of La Crosse as a community now in my policy-making position here. So it's kinda how I connect those two things.