(light music) - Eye on Education.

The director of the public health undergraduate program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is also an author.

Her book is Giving Back: Lessons from an Adopted Immigrant on Why A Happy Life is about Helping Others.

We welcome Jenna Jamieson to Eye on Education.

Jenna, it is great to have you with us.

- Thanks for having me today, appreciate it.

- Good to have you here.

Congratulations on the book.

I really enjoyed reading it.

It was fascinating.

I have to say, we were just talking about this right before starting the conversation today.

It was sort of...

The beginning of the book was sort of chilling for me, thinking about a time when I lost control of my car because your book opens in a harrowing way where you describe an actual car accident and how it actually changed your life.

Tell me about that.

- Yeah, so that accident I think just provided more perspective.

I think when you get into an accident where you flip a truck and you're on the side of the road and then you have people driving by and no one's stopping and you can't find your cell phone and you can't get the door open, I think that gives you a different perspective on life and I think it just gives you new ways to look at life just because you feel a little overwhelmed at that moment, but then you also realize that you're still alive and that you have to find a way to get out and you don't have very much time because you don't have a cell phone that's working and you're out in the middle of nowhere where there's very few cars driving by.

- Yeah, I mean, I guess it's fair to say from the description that you give, it's an incredibly vivid description of losing the control of the car, the accident.

You thought this might be it.

It might be the end of your life.

- Yes, I did because when I flipped the truck, I actually blacked out as it was first moment as it was flipping, and then I ended up on the opposite side of the road so it was very overwhelming to have that feeling and to feel scared cause when I did black out, that was just like a moment of I didn't know what was happening and what was going to happen.

And so when my eyes did open again after, I was on the opposite side of the road, it just gave me this just strange feeling to know that I just survived some type of accident that I really didn't even know at that point what had happened because you're inside this truck.

I didn't know that I was on the opposite side of the road at that point because I had flipped and I was going down a hill and it was a very odd coincidence because the seatbelt had just gotten fixed about a week earlier.

So if I hadn't had that seatbelt on, I don't think I would be sitting here today.

I think I would've been through the windshield and there was just trees all around me.

So the likelihood that I would've been able to go through the windshield and survive an accident of that nature would've been almost next to nothing, I think.

- And you feel, I assume that this had a profound impact on you moving forward and how you saw your path and what you wanted to do.

- Yeah, I think it just gives you the ability to realize that you can't take life for granted.

You have to remember to tell those people that are around you how you feel, what they bring to your life, giving back to others.

I think for me, it just made me remember how fortunate I am, even coming from Calcutta, just that I'm in Carbondale and I have this story and this opportunity to help other people, I think it just further reminded me of my purpose in life.

Just to have that kind of accident, not to take for granted the ability to change the lives of others.

- Absolutely, and your book is full of ideas and advice, it's also part of an effort called Project Kindness and your website, if people search for you and this book, they'll find your website, they can learn more about it.

But tell us about Project Kindness, what it's all about.

- Yeah, so the goal of the book was just to encourage people to give back to the community and I thought to myself, so it's easy to say, oh, go out and volunteer or go do this or go buy someone lunch or something like that, but to be able to put some type of project or program together that actually allows people to get an inside look at how they can make a change was my goal with the book just so that it's like a call to action.

And so Project Kindness, the goal with that was to use your age as a way to give back to your community.

So if you're 35 years old, then you'll do a minimum of 35 random acts of kindness in a year.

And I think that just helps also keep us accountable for...

It's easy to say, oh yeah, I'll do this or I'll go volunteer, but sometimes we do these small things that maybe we do two or three times a year and we don't realize that there's so many other opportunities in our community as well where we can give back and change the lives of other people.

And I think with Project Kindness, it does kind of... You can put that on your calendar, you can put that that in your phone as a reminder and it just gives you that opportunity to for sure make sure you're going to give back.

- Yeah, and that's a great lesson in the book.

It's one of the things that I really took away from the book that it makes a big impact and I've certainly done that in my life, not to this extent where I had a number for my age, but I know it makes an impact.

I wanna get into a whole variety of lessons from your book.

We won't get to all of them in a half hour cause there's a lot there, but I wanna get to some of them that I think are really profound and really important and often aren't written about in books, but they should be.

One of the things you describe in the book that is I think so valuable in your own journey after your bachelor's degree was how difficult it was for you to find the job and the career that was right for you.

I think this will help people who are in this boat when they read this.

Tell me about that.

- Yeah, I think that was one of my hardest points in life is graduating with my undergraduate and then my master's degree and then realizing that I needed to find a job and I still actually have all the cover letters that I wrote to try and get a job and it's over 200 cover letters that I individually wrote to try and obtain employment and it was like I was applying nationally, didn't matter where, I was just trying to get my foot in the door and I think sometimes we don't realize that we get a bachelor's degree or we get a master's degree and we think, oh, it's gonna make us more marketable or it's gonna make us be able to get a job right away and it will make you more marketable, but you have to have some patience and I think, when you're young and you're 22 or 24 years old, sometimes we forget that it's not gonna happen overnight.

It might not happen in six months, it might not happen in a year, it might not happen in two years and I think we have to be able to have people that can mentor students or motivate students to realize that it's okay if it doesn't happen right away, there are other pathways.

In fact, actually not being able to get that job is what helped me allow me to write this book.

And so there are some silver linings in being able to maybe not have a job right away and there are other ways to be employed.

Maybe you're not gonna have your dream job right away.

Maybe you're gonna have to work at McDonald's for a little bit or you're going to have to work at Walmart or you're gonna have to work in an entry level position that you will have to work your way up.

So all those different areas where you can't just have the perfect situation, the perfect scenario and I think sometimes when we graduate, even now sometimes students graduate and they think, oh, I'm gonna go be a doctor right away and I'm gonna work nine to five.

Well, probably as a doctor right out of school, you're probably not gonna have that nine to five job right away and there's probably gonna be lots of overtime and there's probably gonna be lots of night shifts and things like that.

So I think just providing the perspective to our students, especially as a faculty member in public health, now that I have the ability to mentor students and help them understand that, I think that's something that we can pass on to other generations just because it's not easy getting a job, but we can still learn from it.

- You and I first met when I was hosting some journalists from Germany and I brought those journalists to your high school class.

You taught at high school before teaching at SIU, your mom is a teacher, but you didn't originally think teaching would be your career.

Tell me how that changed.

- Yeah, I thought I would be in business and work in corporate business for a long period of time.

In fact, I still like thought that that would be probably my career for the last five or six years that I would be in business.

My undergraduate is in financial economics, so I really did go into my university education thinking that I would be in the business world.

And then I met a really cool principal along the way and she helped give me a provisional license that would allow me to get my foot in the classroom and just see what it was like.

And through my experience and through that provisional license, it allowed me to teach.

And I actually think, I didn't realize how much I was gonna like teaching.

I never saw myself as a teacher.

I don't think my mom even ever saw me as a teacher.

I don't think either one of us would've said, oh yeah, you'll probably be a teacher one day.

I think it would be farthest from the actual career that I would end up in, but it just happened to be that I ended up at a grade school and it was actually another point in my life where I wasn't in a job that I wanted, but I was like, okay, this is the job that I have at the moment and I've gotta make the best of it.

So I think having that job actually helped reinforce kind of my ability to see like, oh, I actually do like this.

So after I had that provisional license, I went to this elementary school and worked as an aide and I kind of realized like I actually really like working with children and youth and youth programming and that's when I got into education, decided that would be a path that I really like and then working at Carbondale High School, just being able to mentor students at that level was really, really fun I think.

Bringing in guest speakers was fun to me, just making that community connection cause as a high school teacher, I really wanted the community to be part of their education as well, not just me as a teacher.

So that's why I loved bringing in guests like you and journalists from other countries just to give students more perspective because I think, perspective helps expand our minds and make us better people.

- And your students at Carbondale Community High School were amazing.

They had great questions and lots of curiosity about Germany and about journalism.

In the book, you talk about the importance of being curious all throughout life and what it can bring to your life.

This is another message in the book that I think is great and so important.

- Yeah, I think just having the ability to be curious.

I think what I like to tell students is you have to soak up all the information, be like a sponge.

You're not always gonna be... Like it's not gonna be in that moment like, oh yeah, I'm gonna use this information this second, or this information is so boring to me and I said, yeah, but think about it.

You might use this information in 10 minutes or 10 months or 10 years.

So if we can just be curious enough to realize that not all information may seem relevant at this moment, but that it could be useful down the road, then I think students can learn that that curiosity, that ability to absorb information and ask questions will be more meaningful to them as they're learning.

- Of course curiosity doesn't mean seeking out information about everything.

In the book, you talk about your childhood.

I thought this was a interesting piece in the book.

You were born in India and adopted as a baby.

You grew up in Carbondale.

You say in the book though that you, at least while you're writing the book, you don't plan to search for your biological mother.

Tell me about that and that decision.

- Yeah, so I still get asked this today actually at 35, like are you gonna find your biological mother?

Are you gonna look for her and I think part of it is I was in a Mother Theresa orphanage.

I was born on the streets of Calcutta.

My umbilical cord was just cut with unsterile scissors so I had an umbilical infection when I was born and I was premature so I weighed eight pounds at four months.

So I had a pretty interesting story probably that I'm actually surprised that I survived in India at that time, but I think it probably wouldn't be realistic, maybe even for me to find my biological mother and probably she put me up for adoption because she knew she was gonna be giving me a better life than what she could provide in India just because in Calcutta, there's so much poverty, there's not as much opportunity.

And she may have even been a single mother out at wedlock, something like that as well.

But when you're in a Mother Theresa orphanage at that time, you didn't really... Actually, they didn't really collect information on the biological parents so really it was just hope.

They would just hope that they would put you in an orphanage and that somebody would be willing to adopt you.

- I was struck by another fact in the book that your mom told you about the adoption when you were in the first grade.

Tell me about that and about having that conversation at such a young age and how that affected your life.

- Yeah, I actually remember some of these conversations because I remember when I was in first grade, maybe even kindergarten, I started to ask questions like, oh, where am I from?

Like why doesn't my skin look like you?

Why don't we look alike and some of those basic questions that as an adopted immigrant, you might ask of someone, where's my dad, things like that and she openly answered them and didn't seem to hesitate away from them so I remember her actually buying a book about adoption that she would read to me that kind of helped put it into perspective in a little bit simpler terms for a young girl.

So I think that probably helped.

And I think I would even say the same with public health, like in sexual education, things like that, we have to be willing to be honest and open with our children about topics that may be tough or stressful to cover just because that's how we help them grow and that's how they get information and build a trusting relationship with us.

So I think, those are really important aspects to consider as you're parenting.

- Yeah, absolutely, you think that you will travel to India someday at some point, but you haven't done that yet.

Tell me about that.

- Yeah, I hope so.

That's on my list of places to go.

I really would like to do it with my mom because I think that'd be a meaningful trip, in fact.

I just had a friend that said, again, like you have to make that happen before it's too late and I know it's going to be too late soon if I don't do it soon so I really think it would be just meaningful for us to be able to experience and to see kind of just the journey and the path that I was on and that she allowed me to take with me away from a country that I was born in.

- We learn a lot about your mom reading the book and how much she meant to you, means to you, has meant in your life.

You talk about a lot of the advice that your mom has given you over the years.

One lesson is a common one that is a real problem for a lot of people, and I love this section in the book.

It's meaningful and it's important.

Your mom told you life is not fair.

Tell me about that.

- Yeah, I remember her saying this, she still says this to me today, and I think it's just important to have perspective in life and I think reminding ourselves that life isn't always gonna be fair when we have... And sometimes it's simple things as like a flat tire on the way to work or spilling hot coffee all over ourselves or when someone important to us dies, and it's a tragic accident or something like that.

Life isn't always going to be fair because we're gonna have health diagnoses or things like that that are gonna impact us or influence us.

There's gonna be times when it's hard to put a meal on the table for some people, things like that and I think if we can remember that life's not always fair, life's not always gonna go our way, it provides us with a way to look at life in a better light and not necessarily take everything that we have for granted.

I just think that's really important in a world where there's so much stuff and so many things going on, we have to remember to be grateful for the things that we have and for most of us, that's quite a bit, especially living in the United States.

- Yeah, to be grateful, and there's so much more scientific study about the power of being grateful.

Your book is a testament also to the power of resilience and that is part of that accepting life is not fair, but that doesn't defeat me, the resilience that is so important.

I have, of course, as we all have in life, thought about that lesson many times in the past, but I hadn't really thought about it as deeply as I had when I read your description of life is not fair in the book.

I think growing up in the United States, there's almost a cultural indoctrination really, that anything is possible and that can be really positive.

I don't want to imply that I'm criticizing that, because it makes us strive for more, to have that and grow up with that, but I also think sometimes it's not properly balanced, the message you can do anything.

It's not properly balanced by the realization that life is not fair.

The journey to doing anything is not the same all the time as we're on that journey because of circumstances sometimes completely beyond our control and sometimes because of mistakes that we make, there's all sorts of reasons.

But I think sometimes without that realization, people become defeated or they fail to appreciate sometimes what they have accomplished.

- Yeah, I think that's a good point.

When we are in life and we think about...

Some of the things that I think even for high school students are hard to grasp, but graduating high school is a big accomplishment.

Or sometimes I ask students, what are you most proud of?

And they'll say, oh, I can't think of anything I'm proud of, but there are so many small things that we can think about that you should also be proud of that you've done or you've completed.

Even if it's you completed your first year of college, that's a big accomplishment.

And for many people, that is a huge accomplishment because if you think of the barriers that they had to go through or the hoops that they had to jump through to get there, I think that is a testament to their success, but I think we have to teach students that just because it wasn't like you graduated this year doesn't mean that completing that first year wasn't really important and a big milestone for you and I think sometimes if we can think about those small things or pathways along the journey, we can help students remember that, oh yeah, maybe it doesn't seem like anything is possible, but look at the small things that you've accomplished so far that help you reach some of those bigger goals that you're working toward in a realistic way.

- That's right, another lesson from the book, you talk about the value of time and giving others your time.

Let's talk about that.

- Yeah, so time is something that I think is very, very important and I think that when you give someone your time, they should be extremely appreciative.

Like one thing I notice when you give someone your time, you can see whether they're gonna be on their phone part of the time while you're with them or they're gonna be watching TV in the background while you're with them and I think, it's just one thing that you have to think about when you give someone time, they're truly setting aside the time to just give to you to either make a difference in your life or help you accomplish something.

And I think sometimes we undervalue what someone's giving when we set aside like an appointment or a meeting or something like that with a student or a teacher or even at the doctor's appointment, something like that, all those people are giving time to you-- - And it's the one thing they can never get back.

- Yeah, you can't get it back and one thing I like to tell students is do what you say you're gonna do when you say you're gonna do it.

So don't just say you're gonna show up and then you don't show up.

I set aside the time, I came to help you, I wanted to mentor you and then you don't show up.

And it's not just students, it's adults too.

It's all across the board, all races, all genders, everyone can struggle with time, but it's something I think that we should continually try to improve because it really is important to see someone else's time as valuable as your own time.

- Absolutely, you also talk about the danger of entitlement in the book, that people sometimes say that they deserve a job or they deserve something else as opposed to that they earned the benefit.

- Yeah, I think this is something that maybe has changed even in society over time.

I'm not positive that that's the case, but I have seen it in terms of students, just in terms of their work ethic or that they want to I deserve this grade or I deserve to get this job and I don't think that it's necessarily they're trying to avoid or not put in the effort or time.

It's maybe that they haven't thought about it in a different perspective like, oh, you have to actually earn this so that means putting in time, that means completing tasks, it means doing projects, it means helping other people.

All those then will result in you earning what you deserve whether that's earning a job at your local ice cream shop or whether that's earning a B in a class or whether that's earning an internship, things like that.

I think that students just have to be reminded that in a society where we live, we earn things and it's based on the tasks that we complete or how we interact with other people, how we network and I think that's just important that we pass that on to our other generations.

- We end where we began and the lesson in the book that is also part of your life that's so powerful and part of the meaning of the book is the search for purpose.

You say that being kind to others is empowering because it gives you purpose.

Let's conclude our time together talking about that.

- Absolutely, I think giving time and giving back to your community will give you more purpose than any job will ever give you.

Yes, jobs give us purpose.

Yes, we can find purpose, but I think giving your time away for free to people in your community will give you far more just energy and compassion and empathy.

Just to be able to interact with other people from different walks of life to see what other people are going through to gain that perspective, I just think it's something that's invaluable.

It allows you to network with others.

It allows you just so many opportunities and I think just the purpose that you gain from volunteering, whether that's at your local food pantry or maybe that's at a Boys and Girls Club or something like that, that really truly influences those people, but it also actually gives to yourself as well.

In fact, sometimes I think that when you volunteer, you actually get more than the people that you're volunteering for because just the purpose that it gives in your heart, I think is important.

- It's so powerful and I really enjoyed the book.

I've gained so much from it and I'm so glad that you had a chance to share a little bit about this journey and a little bit about the book with us.

- Well, I appreciate you having me and it has been a pleasure to share some of the stories that I share in the book.

- Thank you, Jenna.

My guest was Jenna Jamieson.

Her book is Giving Back: Lessons from an Adopted Immigrant on Why a Happy Life is about Helping Others.

Couldn't think of a better or more important message.

For all of us at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Thanks so much for being here and have a great day.

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