Welcome to Headroom, where we discuss all things essential to mental health and well being. I'm your host, Jim Owens, a licensed professional counselor at Lansing Community College. I'd like to emphasize that while this podcast does not contain medical advice, it does introduce you to some phenomenal people who have incredible ideas for you and your life. Having said that, let's get into the Headroom today and begin our conversation with Rafael Revilla, otherwise known as Gabe.

James. Thank you so much for having me here. Super cool to be a part of the podcast. I've listened to a few episodes now, and it's always a nice treat during the workday to kind of hear from a few other people out here on campus. So it's very nice to be out here with you, too. Good.

I appreciate you coming. It is interesting to hear people who you might see every day in a podcast talking about mental health, which is something we don't talk about every day. That's kind of why you're here. I wanted to talk to you about just mental health in general, and obviously we work together because you work in our office, and you oriented me to a lot of the office work and how it works around here and stuff like that on campus. So I appreciate that.

Happy to help.

Yep. You are the number one helper in our office for sure. No, no disrespect to anyone else, but you're. You're leading the charge, and you've been doing that for quite a while, and I appreciate that. So you know better, or at least as well as anyone, the needs of our students for mental health, because they come to the front desk where you often are, or some of our associates are, and you're kind of the frontline person, hearing students come up and say, like, I'm not doing well, I need some help. What's that like sitting up there?

It's definitely been an interesting experience so far. I've had this position here with student support for about three years now. So it's getting to the point where it's kind of like, you know, I've seen a lot of it and I've trained a few people to kind of help out with the job as well. And the same thing I kind of tell everyone is that I've been through a lot of these experiences that these students have been through. I've taken classes here. I've graduated from LCC myself. Go Stars, by the way. So it's interesting to be in a position where you can kind of be that person that you were looking for back when you were young. I always explain it as you're on campus and you're looking for someone who just can kind of help things make more sense. And it's very gratifying to kind of be in that position. You know, we do have a lot of students who, like you say, come to us kind of in, you know, the dark times. And it's nice to be able to kind of say, I'll be that person for you today. Let's take a deep breath and let's see what we can't do to kind of, you know, get you through this.

Yeah, well, yeah, as you say, you were looking for that yourself at different points of time when you were in school. And because you've been in those experiences as you share with students, you can probably cite it out as it's walking towards you. Like, when the person's walking toward you, I bet you can kind of see, like, I bet I know. Because there's several services students can get at our front desk. I wonder if you can sort of figure out a little bit just by the way they start to present themselves and you're smiling. So I'm thinking, yeah. Have you figured some of this out?

I try not to call it before the student gets up to the desk, but it's interesting because the jokes I always make is that a student will ask for five different things, and they're all different names for the service, but they're just not sure what they're asking for. So some of it is kind of like playing a game of charades, helping them figure out what it is exactly that is going to benefit them. But it's always cool that we have some sort of solution. I think that's kind of rare with a lot of colleges that even if we don't have somebody specifically in our office who is there to help you, be it counseling or accommodation services, I guarantee you there's someone at the college who can help you. And it's just really cool being that person to kind of get you connected. And it's definitely nice after you've been here for a while. Delivering mail was a great way of introducing myself to everybody. So now when I drop a student off at an office, it's different. I'm not just saying, oh, this is the success coach lounge. I'm like, you know, this is Matt Lemon. He used to be my boss. He's a great guy. You got lucky with your success coach. And I get to sort of make those introductions.

It's interesting. Your job before this on campus was mail delivery. And you're not delivering mail, you're delivering students now to some places.

Exactly. I still deliver mail every now and then. So we get stuff in or sent to the wrong office. And I like to put on my old LCC mail person hat, I guess, and get that stuff dropped off, too.

Yeah. I'm just thinking that even though we have our own desk and all these areas on campus have their own front desk, if you will, there's really no wrong front desk. You personify that very well. I think when students show up and they just say help. And for those of you who are listening to this, who are LCC students, that's the only word you need to use. In fact, you don't have to use the verbal word help. You can just show up with a helpless look on your face and we'll go from there.

Exactly.

You're going to connect them to what they need?

Yeah, yeah, of course. And, you know, it is interesting, you know, how often we have people coming up just asking for help, and it is just kind of that simple. They're not exactly too sure what sort of service they're really looking for. They just know that something about their college experience right now isn't going the way that they planned. And honestly, we've all been there, haven't we? So.

Oh, yeah. And even when they get past your desk and then get to my office, they'll sit down and they don't quite know what they're looking for either. They just have this intuition like, life isn't going. It doesn't feel right.

Exactly right.

And that's probably the best way to put it. They just can't put their finger on it. Exactly. And even when they get to you and you'll say, why don't you try an appointment with a counselor? Let me schedule something for you. I can get you in later this week. And then they get to the appointment with me, and sometimes they'll say things like, I don't really know why I made this appointment. More often they'll say, I don't know where to start. Which, if you're listening, doesn't matter. Believe it or not, you'll come around to the important stuff. Yeah, it's pretty powerful what we do on campus, isn't it?

Yeah, it's tough in a lot of ways because it's a very vulnerable position that I think students put themselves in to be able to ask for help. I remember as a student, it took me years to get to that point where I can say, hey, I feel like this is Something that's not going well for me. What resources are there out there? I always thought it was something that I just had to tough through or what am I doing wrong with it? But there's a lot of things that could be coming up, but it doesn't exactly have to be anything that the student is doing wrong. Sometimes it's just a lack of understanding, depending on where you're kind of starting your educational journey from. I've had people stop by my front desk and specifically just say, he. I gotta be honest with you. What is a credit hour? Yeah. Wow.

Great question.

Not everybody knows, let's start there.

But even behind such a benign question, what is a credit hour? There's shame behind that. When people ask that, they're kind of like, well, this desk is in the back of the hallway and there's only one other person I bet I can ask them without fear of embarrassment. It's interesting how deep the shame runs even behind something like that, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. I was a first generation college student, so I did have two older sisters who kind of paved that way for me. They both went to msu. And my first semester at Olivet, I remember the very first class I was in, it was like a foundations of business kind of thing. I remember being so surprised when my teacher was like, nothing that you're really learning here is practical. Like, what you're learning is just. Is theoretical. So just take notes and work well to pass the test. And I just sat there and I was just dumbstruck. And I was like, you're telling me I can't really use any of this.

Wow.

And that was just such a incredible change for me, like an incredible flip in understanding of what exactly I was doing there. And the wild thing for me was, like, you know, in high school, I don't feel like anyone really explained that. And, you know, learning those things as I went along was such a challenge. And even today, I still wish, you know, I just had the courage to ask, like, more questions and just be a little bit more forward with the, you know, the things I didn't know. And that's why I really try to encourage students, you know, there. There's no wrong questions. Feel free to start anywhere. That's exactly what we're here for.

Yeah, it's funny. We're. We're an educational instit. We teach all over the place. We'll teach from a front desk, we'll teach in a classroom, we'll teach in a tutoring session. I'm curious. I want to Go back to this thing where when your teacher says, nothing you're going to learn here is practical. It's all theoretical. It doesn't seem like you were particularly disappointed to hear that. It was more of like, oh, that's what we're doing here.

Yeah, kind of.

It didn't disappoint you. Exactly.

I appreciated the fact that someone was willing to kind of spell it out for me. And I remember kind of looking around the classroom and seeing the other people there who were very much aware that that was kind of the concept and sort of feeling like the odd man. And at that point, the only thing I could think of doing was catch up, change my understanding of what exactly the goal is here, and kind of change that goalpost. And I think once I had that, once I had a little bit more of a clear definition, it was easier for me to move forward. But it does make me think of how many students are here at LCC who might be in the same spot where you get out of high school and you're not exactly too sure what college is supposed to do for you. And you might not even have that goal in mind for what you want to get out of college. It's just such a different experience for everyone who comes through. And I do like to think that LCC provides a little bit more of that chance for you to have that unique experience. You get to kind of decide what you're getting out of it. If you're just here for your classes, that's completely fine. If you're looking to transfer out, that's okay, too. If you're looking for a vibrant campus life, we definitely have that. We have clubs, we have really dedicated groups that share common interest. And there's just such a community that you can become a part of.

Yeah. It's a learning curve for everybody who gets here, though, because some people show up with no expectations, low expectations, high expectations, other expectations of what college is going to be like. And I didn't pick up on disappointment in particular with yourself. But I do hear that from students. Sometimes they're kind of disappointed. Like, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. Socially, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. Academically, this isn't what I thought it was going to be like. Like the amount of stress that this is. Because I know for myself, when I went away to college, I think my senior year of high school, my junior senior year at my high school full time was like six or seven classes.

Yeah.

And when I came to College, they were like, full time is like three or four. And I was like, that's gonna be so easy. You kidding me? I'm gonna have to go to like three or four classes. And it was way harder than like the six or seven high school classes I had. So even for myself, first generation college student myself, and it was like a total like, wow, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be easier, so I had to adjust.

Yeah, it's definitely a surprise, I think, for a lot of people when they first get here. When I was in high school, I think it was definitely drilled into us that, you know, it's going to be a much different experience, it's going to be more difficult. And I didn't really necessarily feel that change in difficulty when I came out of high school. What I really noticed was the change in sort of expectations where it's not really, you know, having anyone guide you, it's, you get to decide what this experience is for yourself and you can kind of shape it the way that you're, you know, wanting to shape it. But up to that point, I had never really had the opportunity to kind of make those decisions for myself. So it was a big learning curve for me.

It's a good point. Yeah. Like, there's a curriculum that's given to you in high school and you just follow this path when you go to college. You really do have a chance to make it your own. The whole experience, I think that's something people have to adjust to, that feeling of empowerment. Now you can make choices about what kind of balance you want to have in your life between work, school, social life. As high school students, we were like, I have to go to school and it's going to take me. It's going to take up 8 till 3pm, 8am to 3pm every day, five days a week. If I want anything else out of life, I got to kind of squeeze it in around that. As a college student, you could say, I'm only going to take one class or no classes, or I'll do 20 credits. I've heard all this stuff. Was that take an adjustment for you to have your hands on the steering wheel of your own life at that point. And what was that transition like for you to have that much power?

Of course, yeah, I think it was a lot of responsibility. And I think it hit me sort of the same way that it hits a lot of college students, where at first it was very daunting and a little overwhelming, and it Was only really, maybe after the first couple semesters where I was like, hey, this is really cool. I can kind of do whatever I want. So I was a little bit slower on the uptick to kind of learn that lesson. But once I did, I think it really changed a lot of my experience. I started taking just one class every semester that was kind of out of the curriculum, but I felt would help enrich me as a person. So I got to learn about poetry. I took a class on writing short stories. That kind of stuff. Just really stuff that interested me more than the core business stuff that I was really learning.

Yeah. Wow. I'm just grateful to hear that somebody had a college experience where they were like, you know what? I'm going to kind of make this my own. I wish more students recognized that they have some ability to do that, some freedom to do that. Now, truly, you do not have complete liberty. You can't just take a bunch of classes and then say, I'm ready for my diploma.

Good disclaimer. We should probably mention that

it's not how Gabe's describing it. They don't give diplomas away that way. But you can get a college education and a college experience that way.

There you go.

If you're looking for a diploma, there's a little bit more rules involved. So how did. Yeah. How stressful was it for you emotionally? Was there this kind of weight that you noticed or this amount of stress that was unique about college versus high school?

So it was a little different. You know, I think when I started, there was a lot of expectation on myself because I was kind of such a fish out of water. You know, I really wanted to make sure it didn't seem like I was falling behind. I was a little bit more self conscious about my personal progress. So the first few semesters, I think the stress level was a little bit higher than it probably needed to be. And it was probably after that where, you know, I kind of started taking a little bit more liberty with my education and started making a few more choices that were more reflective of what I wanted, where it really started to kind of ease up for me a little bit. Even when I had, like, you know, other classes that were required, you know, I tried to take them in a certain way where it gave me a little bit more leeway, and that really changed a lot of the experience for me. It was kind of giving myself a break with some of the harder classes, which, you know, not everybody recommends, but it's finding out what is a good pace for you and then Just kind of sticking along that and really trying to, I guess, take advantage of the educational opportunities that you have while you're out here. What I tell students when they come by is really try to take the opportunity to make connections with the people that you're in class with. I still think that some classes that I took, I learned more from the people who were around me than from the actual content of the class. I can believe that. Especially when you're out here somewhere like LCC or msu. So many international students, so many people from different walks of life, and it's really enriching to be able to kind of learn the basic lessons that you would get from the class, but then have them filtered through different worldviews. We had one gentleman in a business class that I was in who was from Cuba, and every now and then we would just kind of take a small break, and he would say, you know, back in Cuba, this is how that works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it would always really change our perspective. And it gave us a little bit more of a, I guess, appreciation for the different things we were learning and how it could kind of be, like, understood, really cool experience. I made so many good friends while I was here and really got to learn more about different cultures, beliefs, and just how to work with people in general. And I think that's probably the most growth that I made, like, on a personal level.

Yeah, you really took advantage of every opportunity, not just what was coming to you from the front of the classroom, from the.

Prof. Yeah.

You know, but like, wow, there's people with life experience around me that I can learn from. Did you contribute? Did you share some of your own life experience and perspectives, too?

You know, I'd like to think I did. I tried to be vocal when I could, especially to give that sort of perspective of somebody who didn't have that college background or who, you know, whose family didn't have that college background. And it was always great to kind of have that opportunity to speak up and be heard and have other people kind of say, like, oh, you know, I've never really seen it from that perspective before. Also very valuable kind of getting that experience, you know, sharing your own, you know, life with others.

Yeah. So overall, you made college. You kind of customized it for yourself.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

Right. You were gonna say, like, look, there's. I know there's a script here that I could follow. And it looks like this. I go full time college, don't change my major, you know, drive straight through to get my diploma. Da da da da da. Like there's this program you could follow and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna kind of do it or I'm gonna enjoy the process a little bit more.

So it is funny that you put it like that because that was originally the plan. So much of it was really drilled us into us in high school that, you know, graduate in four years. That'll help you kind of set yourself up for your, you know, career and kind of go from there. And things really changed for me because I got a job out here as a student employee and that just gave me so much more exposure to campus and the different resources and the people who are out here. It really changed the kind of connections I was making and sort of, you know, really altered the experience the longer I worked here. Also just, you know, opportunities came up. I was eventually part time and now I'm a full time employee. And the big benefit to that is some of your credits get covered. So it was becoming cheaper for me to work here at the college and kind of take things at my own pace. It was a really good experience. Everybody, I think, has different experiences with LCC as a whole, but it's nice to say that mine has been really positive and I like to be able to share that with students as they come through.

So now I want to know, is this a transferable skill? So the way that you kind of adapted the expectations of you as a student and you said, I'm going to kind of modify this and adapt it, do you do that in your own life? Do you say, here's all the things in my life that I have, commitments to people, responsibilities, Let me kind of temper it in a way that is sustainable and that I can actually do. And here I'm speaking of mental health and work life balance and stuff.

It's hard not to kind of step away with at least a few life lessons from the experience. I don't think I compartmentalize my life just as well as I did my education, but it's a work in progress, slowly kind of getting there, especially now that I'm a full time employee out here and I've switched from that student role to more of the academic side of things. I've gained a little bit more of an appreciation for what that looks like.

Yeah, yeah. Work life balance is. We have that phrase like work life balance, as if it's like something we get to and then we just are like on a. I don't remember teeter totters in Playgrounds and you'll put one person on the other and one on the other. What you don't want is balance there, because that's no fun, right? You want it to go up and down on the teeter totter. But in our own life, it feels like sometimes you want to straddle that teeter totter in a way that we just have balance where nothing can upset us too much one way or the other. And we sometimes conflate that kind of an idea with that's what mental health is. Which I don't think that's the case. I think what you did and what I believe is that it's about being able to respond to the ups and downs and the weights. Because people are putting stuff on either end of your teeter totter, messing with you, walking by, dragging it down, whether it's your boss throwing a project on your desk that's like, this is due Friday, or a counselor who calls in sick because they got the flu and you have to reschedule all our appointments or whatever. So your ability to respond to that kind of stuff, not only in work, but in your own personal life, I mean, I don't know, how do you see, what does it mean for you balancing mental health and work life balance and just responding to all the demands in your life, how do you view that? How do you think about that?

Yeah, of course, I've definitely had some time to think of that whole work life balance tenet. I think it's one of LCC's core five pillars. So I try to think about it at least a little bit. And it's been interesting the longer that I've worked here in a full time role. Working at LCC is first full time job that I've actually had. So I transferred out of like a part time student situation to a full time adult, responsible job, if you want to put it like that. So it was definitely a big learning curve for me, sort of a situation where I kind of saw it as I should work in this job at least as hard as I worked in school. But for me, school was partly fun. So it was hard to kind of hold myself to that same standard. So I really was like, you know, stay here, kind of feel it out a little bit, see kind of what the expectation is in terms of work life balance. I've definitely had to learn a lot in my time here about that and I've really tried to take lessons from other employees that I see. It's actually funny that the topic of the conversation that we're having is work, life, separation. I was recently in a hiring committee where one of the people that we were speaking with said, how do you guys manage that? What does that mean to you? So I got to hear a few different other opinions and I had never really had anyone ask me the question before. And of course it's kind of like a formal environment, an interview. And I kind of stopped for a second and I said, I see a lot of my co workers kind of implementing it and sometimes it's on a small level, sometimes you walk by someone's desk and you see pictures of home or poster up for local sports teams, something like that. Just little reflections, little reminders of your life outside of work. And that separation, I think really kind of helps you keep things in perspective. My parents always tell me that, you know, at the end of your life or when you get older, you're not going to be thinking about work. You're going to be thinking about the time that you spent with your family, you know, your personal interests, things like that. And I do try to, you know, get home and switch out of that work mode and, you know, try not to have those things cross over too often. But that separation part is hard. I've told my boss before, shout out to Felipe, by the way, you know, I'll come in Tuesday or Wednesday randomly and be like, hey, I was up last night thinking about a few different changes we can make in the office. I wrote down some ideas. I'd like to get your perspective.

Yeah.

And once or twice he's told me, you know, why are you doing this at home? Which is always a good reminder. It's hard to switch out of that work mode, especially if you're, if you like your job, if you're dedicated to it, if you're helping people, it's hard to kind of be able to kind of put that all in a box when you get home and set it to the side. But it's a skill and like any other, it's something that you have to practice.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can relate to that in terms of my own identity as a counselor isn't a 9 to 5 identity. You know, I'll be dealing with something, maybe with a client throughout the week that I feel like I really need to touch base with them again before the weekend because it can be a long weekend for people away from mental health support. I don't think. Wow, at six o' clock on a Friday. This is, you know, definitely outside of work hours. And I'm going to call Because I'm a healthcare provider. I'm going to call on Friday, but I'm not going to allow myself to call on Sunday, let's say, and check in on my clients. But I definitely feel that tension of like it's a vocation, it's more than a job, it's a career. And it's the same thing for you. Like you care about the shop and the way it runs and that it's a living, breathing organism. That's the way I see you thinking about our area. It's an ecological system that in many ways you're kind of responsible for making sure everything's still fed and watered and working well. So I can see how you would bring that home. But then do you give yourself permission to say, I'm not gonna work on that right now. I'm gonna spend time with this person instead of that. That's tough, right?

Yeah, yeah. And it's like I said, it's nothing that I was able to do right out of the box during the first few months. It was something I really struggled with, especially since it was during the pandemic. So working from home, how do I divide that separation? I'm still home the whole time. It doesn't necessarily feel like I'm at work. Am I putting in the right amount of effort it of second guessing yourself? I think when you're first getting into it. And the only thing that I could recommend for people in a similar position who are really struggling with that work life separation is just to try to give yourself the slack that you deserve. It helps me to think of a coworker and be like, would I want them to be at home worrying about this right now? Sometimes contextualizing it like that can give you a little bit more insight.

I love how you and I know you do this because I do the same thing because we work around so many people that are just amazing. And I think you and I observe how they're living, how they're working and the balance that they put that we can see them putting in their lives. And just trying to learn, just like you were describing, trying to learn from your classmates as much as from the professor. You're learning how to do your job and maintain work life balance, not only from your boss, but from the people you work with, because they're showing you.

Exactly.

You're telling me. And here I'm putting it into different words, but you're telling me you have teachers everywhere and you're trying to learn from them. I think you're in a Very rich place to learn that because I think the people we work with are special. I really do. I don't think this is a normal workplace. I think we work in a really special place and it's not just because of the services that we provide. I think it's really. It's the whole campus, the community. P.S. if you're looking for a great place to work, go to Jobs LCC Edu. This is truly a wonderful place to work, but it's a great place to be a student. It's a great place to learn what it means to be an employee with a full time job and responsibilities and maintaining work life balance. This is your first job, your first full time job and you had to do it during pandemic remote. That's tough.

I've done a lot of learning at LCC, not even just in the academic sense, just growing as a person. Working here has really given me the opportunity to be more empathetic, to be more humble. Like you say, we're surrounded by teachers, but it's helpful to give them that opportunity, go to them and ask questions and be that person who back in college you were afraid to say, like, hey, you know, I've never done this before and I'm definitely more willing to do that now with coworkers. And it's definitely helped me just grow tremendously. So much more so than I think I would have been able to do just by myself.

Yeah, I'm encouraged. This conversation has been fun for me because you're reminding me of what it was like when I was a student in college and how much I really looked forward to showing up and not just collaborating on projects with students because I always liked that, which is what I feel like I do now. I either work independently or collaboratively. But you're reminding me what it's like to learn by proxy. We have this term in educational psychology, learning by proxy. I learned by watching somebody else do it. And hard life lessons are. If you can learn them by proxy, learn them by proxy. Right. Like, ooh, that person did that and they fell down and hurt themselves. I'm not going to do it that way. But there's so many other things you could learn, like how to enrich your life and how to maintain balance and wellness in your life just by watching how other people do it. By being an observer.

Yep. Seeing good role models and kind of gravitating towards that. Just helping you make those choices as you go along.

Yeah. Well, cool. Well, I'm going to wrap it up there. Thanks for coming on the show. I got my outro. I want to give here to people who are listening. So I want to thank Gabe for coming on the show. So I appreciate you coming here. And I want to thank the producers of LCC Connect, the entire team who make the show possible. And just let everybody know you can access show notes and previous episodes and explore all the other amazing podcasts that LCC Connect is producing if you go to LCC.edu/Connect. And lastly, I want to let everyone who's listening know that if you're experiencing a mental health challenge, do that thing Gabe and I talked about. Ask for help. And if you're an LCC student, you can schedule an appointment with a mental health counselor like myself. If you don't like me or the sound of me, there's three others for you to choose from. You can learn more at LCC.edu/Counseling, and anyone in the community can access free mental health care through the crisis text or call line 988. So, okay, that's it. Thanks everybody for tuning in. I hope to see you all next time in the Headroom.