Transcript: Part 2: Panel Discussion - Make The Cut 2021 Webinar [Upbeat Rock Music Playing] [Inspirational piano music playing] Hi my name is Daryl Rock and I graduated from Carleton in 1988 with a Masters in Public Administration. What I plan to share with you in my presentation are some of the strategies and lessons I learned as a student with a high-level disability attending Carleton university, but also as an adult with a disability living and working in Ottawa and traveling around the world. You already know that there are barriers out there and what I plan to do is to share with you some of the strategies I developed over the years to overcome these barriers and have a great and satisfying life. [Inspirational piano music playing] [Upbeat Rock Music Playing] [Superhero Music Playing] Hello everyone! My name is Quayce. I'm the founder and developer of timsle.com which is a buddy system for improving your health with the support of family and friends. I went to Carleton to study architecture, but then in my second year, I had some really bad problems with my mental health and everything changed. About four years later, I'm now running a software company and working on affordable housing. I've contributed to the legislation on accessibility here in Canada, audited the parliament buildings of Jamaica, presented my research at conferences and worked for IBM. So, at Make the CUT this year, I want to encourage you to focus on turning the challenges that you face into opportunities and to pick courses and side projects that are exciting to you and just to go where your interests take you wherever that may be. So, I will see you soon. [Superhero Music Playing] [Upbeat Rock Music Playing] Hello students! My name is Jenna Lambert. I am a athlete. (Jenna's Swim Team Member shouting to fans on boats nearby) "I can't hear you!" (Fans shouting from boats) "Go, Jenna, Go!" [Fans on shore applauding and cheering] (Crowd on shore chanting) "Jen-na! Jen-na! Jen-na!" [Fans on shore applauding and cheering] (Cheers and applause from the crowd gets much louder as she steps on shore) I am a lifetime student and I work full time at Carleton University. I am so excited to be joining you this year at our virtual Make the CUT event. I look forward to seeing you there and sharing a little bit about my career and academic journey. [Upbeat Rock Music Playing] PADDY STEWART: Welcome back everyone to our live webinar, "Course Choices Impact Career Options." We're really pleased now to have our next two speakers, led of course by Amanda Blais, who have their their perceptions, their incredible career paths. So, Amanda it's over to you uh to introduce these folks. AMANDA BLAIS: Thank you, Paddy. I know I am super excited and honored to be moderating this panel between Jenna and Quayce. I'll give you a bit of an intro between Jenna and Quayce before we get into their, their journeys. So first, I want to talk about Quayce. So Quayce is a former Carleton architecture student who developed an app called Timsle, a web-based accountability network designed to help students improve their physical and mental health by sharing their goals with friends and family. So that's a little bit about Quayce, as you probably saw in the intro videos. And Jenna, who is our other panelist, Jenna Lambert is a competitive and marathon athlete and a lifetime academic. She works full-time at Carleton University as an advisor for students with disabilities seeking employment. So, Jenna has all the knowledge you're looking for in terms of what that transition is going to look like. So first what I want to do is ask Quayce to get us started. um So, Quayce you went from being an architecture student to an app developer. Can you tell us about your story and that transition? QUAYCE: uh Yeah sure, Amanda and thank you. So, growing up I had always dreamed of becoming an architect. I spent a full year working on my portfolio for architecture. I was every day of lunch, recess in grade 12 taking art classes after school and I got in, uh and it was amazing. I worked really hard to do that and by second year, I was a student body president in Architecture. I had top grades and my work was being published. But I in order to do that I was kind of burning the candle at both ends. I was pulling several all-nighters each week. I was eating really unhealthy food and I wasn't taking care of my physical health. And then one night, I can like remember, I started to taste and smell, hear and see things that weren't there and by the end of the week, I was starting to harm myself and I couldn't talk properly. I was put on a suicide watch and taken to the hospital where I was diagnosed with psychosis and bipolar disorder. After that happened, I had to leave school and stop working. And within this mental illness, acute psychosis, the expectations for students after that are really, really low. My doctors were like "you're not dead, uh you're not in jail, so, what's uh what's the problem?" and that wasn't good enough for me. It was really frustrating that because of this illness, I couldn't work on my dreams anymore. So, I started to study my condition and found that the medications I was taking uh we're tired of getting the serotonin and dopamine receptors in my brain, and those chemicals form the basis of what's called your circadian rhythm and it's responsible for waking you up and putting you to sleep and rewarding you for activities that improve your odds of survival, just kind of getting better at things. And in mental illnesses, these systems stop working properly. So, you stop waking up, you stop going to sleep on time, and eventually small tasks like making your bed or brushing your teeth become almost impossible to complete and keeping up with any sort of responsibility is really difficult. So, I designed a social accountability network and it worked kind of like training wheels, but for your circadian rhythm. It would trigger a reward in your brain for doing daily tasks like waking up or going for a run and then when you stop doing them, it would let my friends and family know how to support me. At um first, it was a calendar on my wall and then as I, you know, developed it more, it became a bunch of connected spreadsheets. And then I realized this needed to be online. It needed to be just something that many people could use. So, I taught myself to code and built Timsle, and in the process of developing it, I got better. It took several years, but I did recover completely which is a much better than the standard of care, what you'd get in uh in a clinic program. After that I was able to return to school part-time and showed my initial designs to my coordinator at the Paul Menton Centre and they encouraged me to submit it to the in Ideas competition which is a competition for innovative designs for accessibility, and usually Carleton students win, and that year I won first place. I got featured on the Carleton homepage, in the Ottawa Citizen, and the Globe and Mail and that felt so cool. It was like, it was really, really exciting and then after that I was invited to present my work at several conferences internationally, the Parapan-Am Games, the Invictus Games, and then the International Society for Bipolar Disorders in Mexico. So, it's like really crazy how things happen when you start getting into it. And by this point, my interests had shifted from architecture to software architecture. I got a job at IBM and found that it was really possible for small teams to build solutions that can be used by millions of people, all around the world, which was super encouraging. And so, I wanted to build something that, you know, people could use. I was getting a lot of interest in Timsle uh from some big companies, but people would pick it up and it'd be really challenging uh to get set up on the app. So, I knew I needed to take some time, really invest in its development. So, I took out a loan and built a team around the app and got to work. um And my goal over the next couple years is to get a free mental health app for students that can be used at school with families and at work and I, like my kind of model is if I can get 100 000 - which seems like a big number, but it's actually a pretty small number when you think the amount of people that have mental health problems - If we can get a hundred thousand of organizations to build these peer support communities on Timsle, um for $29 a month, then that can be 35 million dollars a year which I can use to build my other interests which are sustainable housing, food and medicine. In the long term, my dream is to get back into architecture and really into the field of personalized medicine and to do that I'm just focusing each day on doing my best at working towards my goals, getting better at coding, getting better at running, yoga and just developing my organizational abilities. And so today I am an app developer uh but like all things that grow, that too will change, so yeah. AMANDA: Holy cow, Quayce, um Wow! I know that's only been over the last few years, right? So um I know I have a lot of questions, so, audience members remember, if you've got questions there is a Q&A. You can post your questions for Quayce and Jenna in the Q&A because we will be out opening up for them to answer. So, Jenna, let's jump into your story. Can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are now? JENNA: Yeah, thanks, Amanda! So. the first thing you should know about me, apart from my love of giraffes, my disdain for caterpillars and my slight obsession with dill pickles, is that I was born with cerebral palsy, a disability which affects my mobility and a non-verbal LD or learning disability. If you met me outside of Zoom land, you would see that I walk using forearm crutches or zooming around on a scooter, pun absolutely intended. But I promise I wouldn't run over your toes. The next thing you should know about me is that I was blessed with an incredibly supportive family and community who encouraged me to pursue my dreams no matter how big, hairy or audacious they are. At age 15, so when I was in grade 10, I swam across Lake Ontario to raise money for a new accessible pool at the Kingston Family YMCA. At the time, I was part of a competitive swim program for athletes with disabilities and their siblings and we really needed a new pool, so this was a way that I knew I could help. With the support of an entire community and an amazing marathon coach Vicki Keith, I became the first woman with a physical disability to successfully complete a crossing of Lake Ontario. It took 32 hours and 18 minutes, straight, no breaks, and it was a long couple of days, but I made it to shore and we raised over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars toward the construction of a new pool. I didn't really know what I wanted to do at that point in my life. Media and communications experience from the marathon and my competitive swimming career led me to a communications degree. I considered going to college for a radio program, and even did a co-op at a radio station. I loved it but ended up going to university. At that time, I wasn't sure what the right decision was, but my parents both really encouraged me to go to university, so I made that choice. Looking back I'm glad I did because there's no way I would be where I am today. However, I know that college would have been an equally excellent and exciting choice if I had decided to pursue radio instead. In about the third year of my communications degree, I realized that, although I loved communications and was learning a lot, it wasn't quite where I saw myself. I started talking to friends, family, folks at the university and other schools to explore more options. I opted not to do a co-op in my program at that point, even though I was eligible because I knew it wasn't for me. One day, I was talking to my sister and a friend of my mom's who suggested that I check out social work. After looking into it, touring a couple of colleges, and speaking to more of my trusted community members, I decided to apply to the Masters of Social Work program at Carleton University. When I got my acceptance letter, I was thrilled, but when I started the program, I was even more so. I remember sitting in about my third week of classes thinking, I found it - this feels like me! This is where I fit. And that was such a good feeling! Then I went through two of the most grueling years of my life: academically, socially, and spiritually. It was a tough program and it's shaped a lot of the person that I've become. I did two and a half practicum placements in that program and the last one led me to my current job as the Student Advisor for Act to Employ at Carleton. I get to work with talented students who identify as having disabilities, to help them find meaningful employment opportunities while they complete their degree. It's an honor and a privilege to get to do what I do and as I look back, I realize even though it's not directly related to anything I've studied what a good fit it is for me. It combines my love for people, my passion and experience working with folks who have disabilities like me, and my love for the university where I did so much growing. It also gives me the opportunity to study part-time. I'm now in the middle of a second master's program, this time a counseling program, to further my education and professional development. I have no doubt that this isn't the end of the road for me. Life is a journey and it's beautiful and challenging and complex and hard and fun. It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been a joy and I'm waiting in excited anticipation for whatever big, hairy, audacious adventure comes next. AMANDA: Again I exclaim "holy cow", the two of you are... I don't even have words for how awesome the both of you are, um, and I will say, like, given my experience with working with our students that uh Jenna and Quayce are two of several students that um find a lot of success in exploring their journeys and their experiences. But Quayce what I want to know from you um is what do you think has been the most impactful or important part of discovering your academic or career journey? QUAYCE: That's a, that's a good question for me it's definitely was learning how to learn how to get better at things. uh It's that's a really important skill to have because usually when you ask people why they're not working towards their dreams or not, you know, doing things that are important to them, they'll say something like, I would but I'm not that good at it, or I need to be able to do this, or, you know, these barriers which are actually within their ability to eliminate. And the first thing about that is that, except in like very unusual circumstances, you're not gonna be good at something when you started for the first try. It's like that's just not gonna happen. In order to get better at something, it takes real time and real work, and you know it's time when, you know, it's actually minutes on the clock. You have to spend time doing it and if you can go from putting zero minutes a day to 10 minutes a day into something, you're actually gonna start getting better and that's going to, that's gonna, that's gonna add up to stuff. And as you go through this, you'll start to notice some patterns. You'll notice that you'll go through these times where you can put in very little effort and have these huge results and then these times where you kind of flatline. It's like you're putting everything you got into it and it's just not going forward. And then you'll also have times where you kind of relapse into your old ways and at those points in time, it's just really important to be able to look at what, what's happening, realize that you're stuck or you're just, you're feeling kind of stuck, and move into a resourceful place. So think now, "what can I do to try and get myself out of this?" And then you kind of take a deep breath and keep going and in that- so, learning to breathe and control my breathing was extremely important. You know, when- if you're breathing in your, uh up here, you're gonna make yourself really, really anxious, and give yourself all the reasons to to get out of something, and that's really important for your fight-or-flight response, like getting out of a situation. But if you can move your breath down low, then you can slow it down, you know, think very calmly about your goals and, you know, make the decision to to move forward. So, uh, the turning point was learning how to learn, learning how to control my breathing, learning how to do self-talk and just pump myself up, and uh you know build my uh passions. AMANDA: Wow! So again, lots of good ideas there. Learning to breathe I think a lot of us uh especially recently have probably forgot um that you know to take that breathing deeper and to use it to help channel some energy. So, thank you, Quayce, for sharing that moment. Jenna, same question over to you, what do you think was the most impactful or important part of your academic or career journey. JENNA: Great question, Amanda. So, I believe one of the most integral parts of my journey has been my supportive community. Surrounding myself with people who understand who I am, what I'm capable of, and where I want to go in life. um There were lots of people who told me that swimming across Lake Ontario, or pursuing a second master's program, or completing a triathlon, or getting to the paralympic trials would be too hard for me. And if I had believed them and given up, then then they would have been right. But, fortunately for me, I have a strong faith in God and in myself and I have a rock star community of supporters who also believe in me, who encouraged me to pursue my dreams and never let anything, least of all my physical limitations, get in the way of my success. Don't get me wrong, the journey hasn't always been easy. There have been times when it would have been easier to or less painful to throw in the towel, but sticking with it and pushing myself to achieve what many others thought would be impossible for me has always been worth it. It's in those moments, where doubt creeps in, and you're tired, and in my case, soggy, or hurting and you just don't want to go on anymore, that the voices of support and love and affirmation are the most important. No matter what your goals are in life whether you're thinking about what courses to take, or how to step up your grades, or if you want to try out for a new sports team, fill in your goal here, um, in my experience, surrounding yourself with people who love and believe in you is a big part of making dreams come true. AMANDA: Love it. um Support networks and belief in oneself, it's really important. Actually, we did have someone who wrote in and said, "Thank you so much for the webinar presentation. It's really inspired me and I will keep secret tips in mind and the three life story present presenters. So, their question actually to um Jenna or Quayce, or maybe both of you, and maybe even Daryl. Daryl's gonna be still available through um uh, you know, answering questions remotely, through writing. So um the question is "did you always believe that you will be that successful?" So, I'm going to turn it over to Jenna to answer that question. The question, um Jenna, did you always believe you're going to be as successful as you are today? JENNA: That's a really great question and I think it's an important one, right? Because it kind of speaks to um what I was mentioning around the the doubt that can creep in um and sometimes there are moments in life, right, where we don't, we don't believe in ourselves, or we wonder whether or not we're going to be able to be successful, or we set goals that we think are a little bit too big, and so, of course, there are those moments, right? Of course, we have those times where we question ourselves. But again. I would say that it's important in those moments to ground ourselves in and surround ourselves with the people who believe in us, so that when we're doubting ourselves, they can pick us up. They can cheer us on. So, I guess to answer that question, Amanda, um no, right, no not always. Sometimes you doubt yourself and sometimes you think, "Do I really want to swim across Lake Ontario? Do I really want to go for that second masters program? Do I really want to do those things? That's going to be a lot of work for me!" So, of course, you know there are those moments, but then it's, you know, talking to people and getting connected with your community who can build you up when you're feeling down. AMANDA: What an excellent answer! um You're right, it's not always easy to believe in yourself but that's why those, those strong support networks to help you remind you that you can do it um is really, really important. Quayce, um I would say another question for you, do you, like, what is the hardest part about building an app and coming back so strongly like you have? QUAYCE: Hmm well, there's a lot of hard parts about building an app and the first and biggest one is figuring out how to make something that is going to work for people where they're at. You know, everyone has very, very different requirements, very different lives, very different challenges, and I mean in a, in an app that helps you get better at things, they also have very different things they want to do, and very different things that are going to work for them. And so, the challenge is figuring out what's going to be general enough that anybody can get in and find uh some, and find a system to uh to get support. And then um making that, and then making that, and then turning into a package that can be deployed kind of anywhere. It's really hard to scale something. It takes a lot of time and so you need to, you really need to have thought of everything! And so the most I can do is sit down at my computer, make some good plans, get feedback from people and just um know that when people are frustrated with something that what they're actually telling me is “Oh, it'd be better if you could, you know, add a feature that does this” or something like that. So, um being able to make something that works for everybody, or makes something that works for a lot of people, and also being able to take people's criticisms their skepticism and turn it into the information that you really need to get to the next level. AMANDA: Excellent! So many complex things involved, but, um, I think in the end you've, you've created an app that's very easy to use, user friendly, so that's pretty cool. um One of the other questions that has come in, I'm not sure who wants to field this one, but uh anything to encourage students with an IEP, so that's an Individual Education Plan - that's usually how students receive their accommodations in high school. I'm hoping to join university or college. So, who would like to field this question? JENNA: I'm happy to, Amanda. AMANDA: All right, Jenna. JENNA: I can start, yeah, for sure … um So so advice for folks who have an IEP in high school who are looking to um become involved potentially university, college whatever you're looking at. That is a great question um and I think it's important. A couple of different things to keep in mind, right? Um One is talk to folks within your educational community, at your high school, guidance counselors, folks that can help to guide your decision-making. um But, in addition to that, right, once you, you make those steps, make some phone calls or send some emails. um Figure out, do some research around um accessibility services and folks that are within the university or college community that you're hoping to join who can support that journey for you. There are, in our experience at Carleton, there's a huge community of folks who are looking to provide guidance um to you if you're wanting to take those steps to go to university, to get into college, or whatever the case might be. um So, make sure that you're using your resources and connect with folks who can support you in making those decisions. AMANDA: Thank you so much, Jenna. I know those words were um very helpful to a lot of people and um I do want to let you all know that Jenna and Quayce and Daryl will have their contact information that will be published in the Q&A should you have follow-up questions. I know that the three of them are happy to um connect with anybody who wants to connect with them personally. So I am going to talk a little bit about um kind of what I've noticed having worked at the PMC for the past 10 years. I've seen countless students explore their journeys to future careers and it's not always straightforward. As a PMC coordinator, I set up accommodations and services for students who self-identify as having a disability. So, as a learning strategist, I teach students how to use various tools to help them learn the material in their classes, like how to take notes for class, how to complete their readings, how to study for their courses and so on. So, I wanted to share a little bit about my journey with you as well. Every day I get to witness students discover how things, things about themselves and seek guidance about the supports and services they want to use. I see students learn how they learn which makes them more confident in their abilities and often results in them doing better in school. It's not uncommon for me to hear a student say, "I wish I would have asked for help sooner" or "I wish I knew about these services sooner." But I like to remind them to focus on the current moment as we go we can't go back. In the past, they may not have been ready to implement the changes or services I recommended. In the past, they were still figuring out uh who they were and making decisions they thought were right for them. It probably resulted in a lot of self-doubt and a lot of hopeless moments. But one way or another, they find themselves in a place where they're ready to receive support. Jenna and Quayce have some truly phenomenal life experiences and stories, as you've just witnessed, that highlight their abilities to overcome adversity and believe in themselves. Like Jenna and Quayce, I've been fortunate in my life and being able to have a strong support network of people to help me realize what my strengths were, and I'm also a Carleton alumni myself. Unlike Jenna and Quayce I'm not a person who identifies as having disability, but that did not prevent people from trying to deter me from accomplishing the things that I knew I was capable of doing. I can remember my grandfather telling my parents when I was very young that someday I would make a great lawyer because I've always been very vocal and somewhat argumentative. But the main quality I believe he was highlighting is that I'm able to very strongly advocate for myself and those around me who might require my support. For me, this ability really was necessary when I was starting to think about my post-secondary journey. Growing up in a small town, my guidance counselor happened to be the same one that both my parents had when they went to school and when they went to high school. When it came time for post-secondary applications, my guidance counselor told me that I should go to college like my parents did and not worry about going to university as he didn't feel that I would be successful. Now either he knew me extremely well and knew that I would take his advice as a formal challenge to prove him wrong, or he was just basing my future potential off my perceived performance in classes which was average at best. But based on the career aspirations I had for myself, college should not seem like the best route for me and my parents encouraged me to apply for university anyway. I now have two undergraduate degrees and a master's degree which has led me to a career that I thoroughly enjoy. I often wonder what my life might look like had I listened to my guidance counselor when making a pivotal decision in my life. Now attaining those degrees did not go as smoothly as it sounds. I did experience a lot of challenges and times of discouragement. But again, I've always ensured to surround myself with people who know me well and could reassure me of the resources that I could access to help me succeed. One piece of advice that I hold onto strongly in helping me to overcome any adversities I've faced in my life has been to seize the opportunities that are presented to me and to listen to myself when I feel like it's time for a change. Had I known back in university that people like myself existed, and by that I mean people who could help me understand who I am as a learner and how I could best learn the information I was being taught in class, I feel like I might not have had to endure as many struggles as I did or I might have been better equipped to not get myself into some of the difficulties that I faced. That being said, I continually feel like all of those stumbling moments helped me prepare for the career that I have now and my ability to problem-solve and overcome challenges that I faced with. College and university are environments that require a lot of independent learning and motivation, but it's not meant to be done alone and there are more resources than one could imagine available to for students. The key thing to remember and develop is who your point person is to help you get connected with those resources and that person could be a disability or accessibility advisor within the college or university you tend to choose. I always tell my students to ask me whatever questions they have because if I'm not the person to support them through it, then I can connect them or guide them to the resources on campus that can. Despite the fact that I'm not a person with a disability, I have seen hundreds if not thousands of students that I've worked with over the past decade discover a path that either they have created or has been presented to them and becoming successful persons within their field of specialty. I've also seen countless students start in college and switch to university or vice versa. I've seen students take time off for personal reasons and return several years later. I've seen students who are looking to start a second career and coming back to school. So, the bottom line I guess I'm getting at is that the decision that you make for yourself now does not define who you will be in the future. I myself changed my major three times before my third year, worked in the field that I graduated in for several years and then was presented with the opportunity here at Carleton which came at just the right time in my life. Take the time now to volunteer, as Jenna has said, research and speak to people on careers or jobs that you're thinking about going into and even just to gain the perspective of the potential things that you might want to do. Those are the experiences that will help you determine where you would like to continue your journey so that someday you can make come to Make the CUT and share what your journey was like just like Jenna and Quayce have. In summary, and based on my experience, I would encourage you to seek out supportive voices, develop your ability to advocate for yourself, and your needs. Also allow yourself to uh some flexibility when selecting courses and making career choices and prioritize it getting connected to supports and resources within your post-secondary context. Find a person or department who can support your academic journey and don't be afraid to ask for help. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and encourage you to take the time to explore students stories at the institutions that you might want to go to and see which students stories most align with you and what you want your future educational experience to be like. Remember to learn and understand your strengths what your strengths are so you can foster them and have them lead you into the journey you're meant to pursue. Paddy, I'm turning it over to you to close us out for this evening, and again. a huge, huge, huge thank you to Jenna and Quayce for their great panel. I know we had to cut them off a little bit there, but Paddy, take it away. PADDY: Absolutely Amanda ... good for you! It's fantastic to hear from these two speakers as well as yourself and one of the themes that I get from it goes back to our questionnaire or our poll at the very beginning. A lot of young folks don't know exactly what direction they're going to go. They've thought about it somewhat and it seems to me all three of our speakers, as well as you, Amanda, have said you keep your head up, things change and you can shift and move. Um Your goal path is not a direct line. So, thank you very much to our speakers, and and a special, very special thank you to all the PMC staff who work so hard to put this together. Not enough time to name every one of you! And finally, thank you very very much to uh each and every one of you students, parents, guidance and teachers uh, guardians and teachers that have come to join us. Finally, we're going to try and post after a minute or so uh the videos that we couldn't get up for you uh adequately during Daryl's speech, so if you want to stick around, we'll see if we can get those up for you. Again, thank you all for coming. Thank you very much to the Paul Menton Centre. Fantastic!