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 Dr. Robinson, the President of Lansing Community College. Welcome.

Well, thanks a lot, Jim. I'm very happy to be here.

I'm glad you're here. And this is gonna be a two parter. So today right now is part one.

Great. Well, I've heard the show on the radio and I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah, no, you're one of the first people I thought of when I thought about, who do I want to have on the show? Because you've been so open to talking about mental health ever since you came here.

Well, that's flattering. I'm glad that you noticed and I'm happy to have that conversation.

Three questions in this first segment. One about your early life, just so people can get to know you a little bit. Then we'll talk a little bit about your college journey, what was difficult in that. And then just tips that you've picked up for your own mental health that you want to share. Things that have worked for you, things you've discovered about yourself.

Well, that sounds great. Well, go ahead.

Okay, so first thing is take us back to when you were a little kid. Where did you grow up and what did you do for fun?

So I tell people I grew up in metro Detroit, which it's not a specific place because when I was young, my folks split up and my dad lived in downtown Detroit and my mom lived out in the suburbs. And I had a great childhood. My folks were together until I was about 10 or so. But my growing up days were in that metro suburban Detroit on the weekends, downtown. But I went to suburban Detroit High School. I had a great childhood. I won one sibling who's two years younger than me. She currently lives in Sweden. But we grew up in kind of a split household where our parents had remarried and we went, you know, back and forth between two households. I was really active in theater in high school, and I loved music and never played a musical instrument. When I went away to college, I started playing music. You know, I will say, based on the topic of your program, you know, I did grow up in a family where we were very aware of the need for mental health. Services. We had folks in our immediate family who struggled with mental health issues. And, you know, I'm pretty open about the fact that I was in therapy as a child, both. Not just because of my parents divorce and things like that, but, you know, the normal things that adolescents would go through. You know, it's starting about the age of 11 or so, and so I'm glad you noticed that I've talked about it because I almost don't want to say destigmatize, because I'd like to like, normalize or just make it part of our regular conversation that humans need help. And our mental and emotional hygiene is just as important as everything else.

We're not just bodies carrying around brains to gather data and share it.

No, it's all. It's all together, you know, and you know, that's not my field of research, but I certainly know that what happens in your brain, in your psyche, influences your body and vice versa. So, you know, I'm here to talk and learn, and I appreciate asking the questions.

Cool. Thanks for bringing that up and sharing that. Even as a kid. Yeah. What you experience, you use the word normal, which we use all the time, like, what you're experiencing is normal. But actually instead of normal, sometimes we say common because we don't want to draw this dichotomy to abnormal and normal.

I appreciate that kind of light correction because common is better. I mean, I do have friends who struggle with, say, OCD or intrusive thoughts, and a lot of times they're seeking reassurance and they'll say, that's normal. That's okay. Right. So common. So is that better than normal?

It's funny, I've said this in other podcasts, but I'll tell you, you like in my textbooks that I use in my courses, because I teach counseling graduate students, I have them scratch out the counseling skill normalizing and. Right. Commonizing instead. Because my field still calls it normalizing. But I don't like it.

I love it. And I love being taught stuff. You just entered my learning log. I'm going to start using that. I'll say. You know, my colleague Jim talks about commonalizing. I'm going to commonizing.

It really is. Yeah. And yeah. So I appreciate that. So what about what did you do for fun as a kid? Tell us one thing that was like your thing to do when you were young.

Well, I'll actually do two and cheat. I mean, the one, I was really an introvert, very shy. My sister, you know, is really, really surprised that I went in the direction that I did, where I do have a job that requires me to be outgoing and everything she tells folks, you know, you were so shy, you couldn't even pick up the phone and order a pizza. I would send her into stores and I'd say, like, there's this thing I want to buy. Here's my money. I don't want to interact with the person behind the counter. So for me, it was music. I was a music fanatic. I mean, so I, you know, listened to the radio. I collected records. I was an audio nerd. I still have a lot of the hi fi. All my lawn mowing money I spent on cassettes and speakers and stuff like that. I still have all that stuff. Still passionate about it. That's cool. But in high school, as a group activity, I was very involved in theater. First as a technician.

Okay.

I really wasn't in any shows as a performer until I was almost done with high school. I was president of the theater troupe and actually went away to college as a theater major.

Oh, interesting. Did not know that about it. I'm gonna learn things today too. Yeah. It's funny you bring up musician as you know, I'm a musician as well.

Yes, you are. Yeah. We have yet to play with each other.

Yeah. We really want to happen at some point. But part of the reason I called this podcast Headroom, it's a play on words. Right. We all need a little more mental health space in our heads.

Correct.

But also, as musicians, when you and I go see somebody who's a phenom, who's just an incredible musician, and they're not playing at the edge of their. They're playing below it, but they are playing so smooth and so well.

Right.

You know, they got a lot of Headroom they can move into.

Exactly.

If you really wanted to.

Well, and it's actually a really technical term in audio for how you. How you set up amplifiers, like so, making sure that there's enough extra capacity having Headroom in an amplifier. You know, as a bassist, I always wanted to have, you know, more power than you needed. So that's always there in reserve.

Yeah, that's good. That's. That's the other reason I brought it up. You know, 500 watt amp, you're never going to run it at all. 500 watts? No, it just sounds better at 250.

But it's got that headroom. You're not pushing it. Yeah.

Which is what we all need. We sometimes are running at capacity.

Don't I know.

Guilty. Guilty.

Yeah, exactly. We all are. I mean. Yeah, we all are.

I know it's for you, and I know a lot of that is because we're very passionate about what we are interested in, and we're willing to run it right up to the edge. To 11, as they say.

Yep. Yep. This one goes to 11.

So let's talk about college a little bit.

Sure.

How did you decide to go to college? Was it a foregone conclusion or.

This is really interesting. So my family, even though both sides of my family grew up in the same town in East Grand Rapids, they were a huge study in contrast. So my dad was a first generation college student. His dad was a labor leader who never went to college and was part of progressive politics and the labor movement in West Michigan. And my mom was the daughter of two very conservative physicians.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. My mom's mom graduated from medical school as a female, extremely rare, in 1939. Right. So. But they were extremely conservative. My dad's parents are really progressive. So both of my mom's parents were not just college grads, but doctors. And my dad was the first person in his family to go to college. So it was this really interesting thing. Now for me, there was this sort of middle class expectation, like, you will go to college. And now that I am where I am, I don't mind telling you I had really mediocre grades in high school. Actually. Mediocre is kind.

It's being generous.

It is, it is. In fact, I think I went away to Michigan State. I got accepted on academic probation. And I think the reason I got accepted is I was so active in theater. I was actually working as a theater technician in high school. We had like a vocational technical program at our high school. So ran lights, ran sound, did all that stuff. And it was like an apprenticeship program. I was getting paid. I actually was paying into the public school pension system when I was like 16, 15 to 16 and actually called them. And they have that. I mean, like, I'm still in it. They have that record of that. But. So I don't think I would have gotten into Michigan State. And now that I'm so passionate about community colleges, I probably should have stayed in Oakland county and went to occ. Oakland Community College. Great place. But I got into MSU by the skin of my teeth going theater. And in the first semester, I didn't like it.

I didn't know.

I mean, it was not the same thing as high school theater, but I loved my English classes, quickly changed my major to English, ended up staying there forever. And earning three degrees in English, Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD.

Yeah, that's really interesting, I think, and I'm glad you shared that, because I'm sure if people just met you, Dr. Robinson, president of Lansing Community College, you probably were valedictorian of your high school. You were probably at the honors college at msu, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

People make assumptions like that. Well, when you tell. First when you tell them that you have a PhD in English, they say, oh, we got to be careful about my grammar. Right. Yeah, they do make.

Oh, that's funny.

Well, but you know what's interesting? You're right. You're right about that. But what I will say is, you know, I liked school. I wasn't great at some of it. I didn't apply myself in high school. Once I got. Once I got to college and I was studying stuff that I was really passionate about and I really liked, and it kind of took off. And that happens to our students all the time. But what's interesting to me is both my experience in high school, at Troy Hyde Ginormous High School, there were probably, like, 50 kids from my graduating class that went to Michigan State. And like I said, I should have stayed home and gone to OCC or moved here and gone to LCC, because education was fine when I was at Troy High or at Michigan State, even halfway through my master's degree. But it was halfway through my master's degree that I came here to LCC. A buddy was teaching freshman comp, and it was like a lightning bolt hit me. I was like, oh, my gosh. This classroom has students who are older than my parents, students who are still in high school, students who are from all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds, different racial backgrounds. Like, this is exciting. This is where I literally went back to Michigan State and said, I know what I want to do with my life. I want to go work at a community college just because of that experience. Heterogeneous diversity. It really changed my life.

Yeah. I want to. In part two, I'm going to ask you about what you learned and what your experience was with mental health with students, from the position of a professor.

So I want to get to that. Yeah. And I have a lot to say.

Yeah. Good. So when you're going off to college, it's probably fair to say you weren't exactly prepared. And that's one of the things I want people to hear from. Leaders in our community is. And myself, too. I've gone through graduate school. You might have assumed I was all ready and prepared to go. I had serious doubts if I could get the grades to get into graduate school. I had doubts if I could sustain them. Because I learned in graduate school you have to maintain not a C, a B, or you get kicked out.

And doubts are common. Right. We should commonize highly. See, I'm learning. I'm teachable.

I'm teachable.

No, very highly effective people. And we have this imposter syndrome. You know, the farther you go in college, you're just waiting for that moment where somebody. You're just sure somebody's gonna come through the door and say, excuse me, Mr. Owens, we've made a mistake. Right.

Yeah. Now that we got a closer look at you.

Right.

Yeah. So I think that's important for people to hear. I want people to have hope. That's one of my jobs as a counselor. It's probably if scientifically, about 15% of the therapeutic effect in counseling is sharing hope.

Hope's important.

And I want people to see, like you may be looking and doing an assessment of your skills right now and thinking, I don't think I have what it takes to get to the thing I want to get to. I want you to throw that idea away. If you're listening to this.

Yes. I want you to do that too, you know, and realize that it'.

Yeah, it's common to have that thought and that doubt. Yeah, exactly. And we'll come help you get through that. So what about what almost stopped you from college? Almost everybody has something where it's like they almost dropped out, stopped out, really doubted themselves to the point where they thought, I don't know if I can do it.

Well, a couple things. One is, like I said, the only thing I really cared about in that late high school period was theater. I did it all the time. And I used to joke, both my biological parents are deceased. I'm real, real tight with my stepmom. I guess I'm not going to hurt anybody's feelings that I selected theater as an after school activity because you could stay in the building the longest. Right. And I didn't come from a tortured childhood. I was not abused, but home with my mom and my stepdad was just not anywhere I wanted to be. I did not want to be there. And so theater let me stay there until 10.

Having fun.

Having fun building stuff, wiring stuff up, you know, making, you know, putting on a show. And that was a ton of fun. So that's what I was passionate about. But when I did get to Michigan State, and what's interesting Is my memory of being an early theater major is I was able to work on shows that the upper division undergrads were working on because I already had the skills, like, oh, yeah, you can do sound design, you know, how to run the board and all that stuff. But there was a social component to it that it was not the same. And you probably talk about this in your graduate classes and on this program, but developmentally, that's a rough time in life. Say, you know, like so much your brain is still being built and, you know, so that Those ages from 18 to 22 are really tumultuous times in your brain development, endocrinology, everything, you know, I didn't miss home. I actually, actually petitioned to move into the dorm early. I wanted to get out of Troy. Yeah, I really did. And I fell in love with Lansing, stayed here for a long time. So that was. That was one of the struggles. The other struggle is I always thought it would be, but I didn't have the courage to do this. I was like, I love this theater thing. Why don't I just move to New York? Yeah, do it.

It's either that or Chicago.

Right, Right. And I. I just. Like I told you about the pizza thing. I really didn't have the social skills. I was not the person who was going to go so confident about my dream. I'm gonna go couch surf, you know, and. And try to make it. Yeah. So I found my classes to be great places to kind of grow, and I got that first bachelor's degree in English, and by that time I had started playing music, and I used that degree to work here at Elderly Instruments and sell guitars and play in a band. So I really wasn't doing something that you would do traditionally with a college degree.

Yeah. Well, there's something else I learned about. You worked at Elderly.

I did.

Man, that actually moves you up a notch.

Well, you know, I gotta tell you a story about that. So when I got my first academic job at Mott Community College, I think the fact that I had elderly instruments on my resume helped me get that job.

I believe you.

No. And it was a former colleague that I'm connected with on social media told me that she had gone to Michigan State, she played the banjo. It's like, oh, if this kid got a job at Elderly, he must be.

He makes some cut.

Serious. Yeah. There is a cool person factor to elderly and. But big shout out to elderly instruments. It was just now named the number one small business in the country. Wow. This year.

That's amazing.

They've just celebrated their 50 year anniversary. I mean, and the funny thing is I only worked there for three years, but they still treat me like family.

Oh, I love it.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah. I've had a lot of friends who worked there over the years. I always wanted to work there. But they don't sell drums. Except a boron maybe once.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. The traditional stuff.

But if you like stringed instruments, that is the place to go.

Indeed.

Three blocks from here. Okay, so you stuck with it. You got through college.

I did.

Graduated and it was a little touch and go. Maybe especially as you changed majors, which again, a common. You'd be surprised. Maybe not surprised. A lot of conversations I have with students, they're thinking like they're really embarrassed and ashamed about having changed their major. Thinking about changing their major.

Right.

Because they've gone to college and they've told everybody I'm going to be this thing.

Exactly.

And everybody's rallied around it. Okay. Yeah. Steve, he's going to be a theater. He's going to do this, this, this or whatever. Jim, he's going to do this because I went to school to be an architect.

Oh yeah. Wow.

Really?

Okay.

But everybody rallies around it. Then you got to find a way to like make peace with your identity's changing. Your values are coming clearer to you and the tasks. You're right. The tasks that we have to engage in between 18 and 24 are really, really tough.

They are.

We are the most ill prepared to deal with those in our life because it's new to us.

Exactly.

And actually the stats bear this out. If you look. And we'll get to stats a little bit later too. But just for everyone. Roughly 25% of the US population struggles with mental health. But if you're 18 to 24, it's

45 to 50% unreal. That does not surprise me because there's so much going on that's the hardest

time of your life.

Not just in social development, but from what I understand. A few years ago I read a great book about adolescent and the adolescent brain called Brainstorm. I forget the author's name, but yeah, it is a cool title that is based on what happens in your brain while that is happening. But the thought I was gonn add to this about the changing major thing is there's excellent research on changing majors. Changing your major early in your career actually has a positive correlation to completion in college. This blows my mind. If you change your major late, obviously there's credit Loss, there's loss of momentum, and it adds years. But students who change their major in their first year are more likely to graduate on time than those who don't. So if you're listening out there, you know, there's an old adage in Silicon Valley, you know, fail small, fail fast. Right. And that's very similar to changing your major. If you make an early change, though, the numbers are behind you. You are more likely to meet your goals and meet them on time if you change early.

Wow, that's good to know. I'm going to add that to my psycho education quiver. That's good to know. So let's talk about mental health. Maybe a little more personally for yourself. How do you take care of yourself? What have you learned?

Well, there's so many things and you know, I would love to listen as much as I talk about this, but I know you're asking me for me. If I had to distill it to one word, it's hobbies.

Okay.

I'm a hobby guy.

Yeah.

So, you know, my wife calls it Steve stuff. I've got Steve stuff that I do. So it started with music in college. I always wanted to play. I had a very brief, brief time that I played the saxophone and band gave up on it. And then I just thought, well, that ship has sailed. I'll never, you know, learn to play an instrument. And when I was a freshman at Michigan State, I kind of told my RA that and he said, oh, well, what would you want to play? I said, oh, I really want to play the bass.

Really?

And he said, we got a new bass professor here at msu. You should talk to him. So I went and talked to the newish bass professor at Michigan State. He took me on as a beginner and. And so four years of lessons, I ended up playing upright. Playing electric bass was good enough to get in a band. When I graduated and played the whole college circuit thing, you and I have talked about that, but picking up different instruments, the hobbies. I love photography. I love audio recording. Right now, a huge extra outside of work hobby for me is recording chamber music. I have a son who's a senior at the school of Music at Michigan State. And starting with the lockdown and Covid, I turned it into my hobby to make really high quality professional recordings of his performances of his saxophone quartet. You know, right now they're all applying to graduate school. So I'm doing all their graduate pre screen recordings and anything that involves like wires and stuff, you know, it's something to really focus On. So electronic gadgets, hobbies. Electronic gadgets. Yeah, definitely. So I'm a gadget person and a hobby person.

And that's a thread that stayed with you. You discovered that passion as a kid, and it's still here today.

I did. I can close my eyes and see the meters bouncing up and down on my cassette deck when I was recording stuff off the radio or even earlier than that. You know, my mom's dad was. Both of my grandfathers were gadget freaks. So the late 60s, early 70s was also an explosion of home electronics and people were getting into photography. So those things have been passionate for me, but something to get your head out of, particularly when you have an immersive career like you do, or like I do. You know, college, it's a 247 job. But being able to step out into something that involves a lot of learning, you know, progression, those kinds of things.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's really important. Some people listening to this might say, I haven't got any time for a hobby. But I'll often say, you know, get out of your head and get into your body. Go do something different. Because, Ken, we're talking to students, at least I am every day. I know you're talking to other leaders and stuff too, but you spend so much time up in your head at the left side, learning, memorizing, getting ready and planning for the next thing that's coming. Get out into the right side. And for me, music for sure, that's what it was. When I got behind a drum set there. There became a point at which I really wanted to learn how to play it in the left brain, logical, read music, understand the craft. But that wasn't the hook. The hook for me was I kind of had a natural ability to play beats. I kind of picked up limb independence. And then I could just get into a trance and zone. And I was away on a trip, so no drugs.

So, you know, musicians call that flow. So do other artists. Right. And so getting your head into that flow, space is important. And then I will. I will say, you know, I think a lot of people think they don't have time.

Right.

I guess what I would say is, you make time, you don't have it, you know, and then. And then the other thing about that is, and I'm trying to think of the best way to. To say this, I have about as demanding a job as you could have.

It's okay, you can say it. Yeah.

And this doesn't mean it works out perfectly. I give an example from Today. So this far in, I've decided, I talked to the chair of the board and my team and everything. I said, you know, I wanted to get established here, you know, first few years. Right. I said, but, you know, I'd like to start taking formal bass lessons again. And so I'm actually signed up as a student, as an LCC student. But try fitting a one hour lesson into my schedule. Right. I mean, it's really, really tough. It gets shoehorned in there. I, I'm feeling like I'm so guilty, like I didn't have enough time to practice, you know, got, you know, between this lesson and the lesson before, we had a board meeting and you know, you know, all the work stuff is. Yeah, it's going to come first, but you know, you find a way.

Yeah.

And it's hard, but it's worth it.

It is worth it. And I'll just plug one more thing. It's a great way to meet people.

Yes.

Having an affinity to some hobby and then you find other people and then you and I again, musicians, if anybody's a musician, it's automatic in. We're friends, right?

Yeah. You got stuff you can talk about.

Exactly.

And even socially, like, I know what's interesting, I was opining the other day, you know, coming back to Lansing after all these years and I just did this last week, you know, so they've started at Moriarty's, an open blues jam. And so I did, I wasn't even planning on it. You know, we ended the evening a little early. It starts at 9. Goes like, like 9 to 11. Yeah, I'm just gonna grab my base and go down there.

Cool.

What a cool thing to just be able to go sit in, meet people, talk and, and I would encourage folks to find whatever that is for them. Chess, books, gardening. I mean, they're, they're. And you're right about the social component

to it, you know, super important. We've had a lot of guests on the show that have talked about what they're hearing from students. Like they're, they're feeling the lack of social connection.

Yeah.

And we all are feeling that.

Yeah, we should talk about that.

And I'm just talking, I'm just saying, like, like, what are you into? Find something, try something.

Yeah.

Even if you think, well, I don't know if I would like that. Well, you don't know until you've tried it.

You don't, you don't.

I'm encouraging people to do that.

Good.

All right, well, we got a couple minutes left. In this. In this segment. So any other tips, things you've picked up for, like, here's how I take care of my mental and emotional health.

Yeah. So I'm so glad you asked, because I went down the hobby rabbit hole. Right. So that's just one to me, I think, you know, connection with other people. And I'm gonna. Maybe it's just my academic training with the three degrees in English, but I think communication is a really important part of being healthy and being able to, like, articulate how you feel to other people and also to empathetically listen and understand where other people. I think empathy is super important in communication and just being healthy and realizing that when somebody ticks you off or does something that rubs you the wrong way, to really reframe that and say, you know, well, what's. What's going on for them? Right. And to get out of your head a little bit. I mean, there's something from some of the literature from the Harvard Negotiation Project about where they encourage folks to, what they say, go to the balcony. If you're involved in a conflict, imagine it's happening on a stage, hit pause and go all the way up to the balcony and look down at yourself and the person that you're having conflict with. And it reframes the whole thing. That other person is coming from a different perspective, too. So, you know, communicating. And that's not easy. Sometimes it's hard to articulate your feelings. And it's also kind of a privileged thing. Like, you know, some people, if you articulate your feelings, could be, you know, harshly judged or even hurt or exposed to abuse or violence. But that, I think is important.

Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Emotional expression, communication. Taking a moment to hit pause and go back and look at the situation objectively.

Right.

There's one of my favorite researchers. I'll give a shout out to him, Robert Keegan at Harvard. Counseling professor. His stages of psychological development are marked. Each stage is marked this way. This is very academic, but hang with me a second.

Yeah.

That the. The stage that you're in, the subjective experience you're having, you know, you're in the next stage of psychological development when that subjective stage becomes objective to you. Oh. So I'll give you an example. Like, there's the person who's, like, has a really quick temper and they yell and they shout, but they're not aware they do that. That's just how they do it. But the person is one step ahead who can go, hang on a minute. I see. I'm just shouting and yelling. Let me just step back. I'm aware of this about myself.

Self awareness is so key. This is not Harvard. It's very pop psych. But you probably know about the Johari window, right? Okay. So Johari window is a great way of explaining to people about that blind area. Shrinking the blind area so that our listeners. This is a two by two box. What you know about yourself and what other people know about you.

But if you do, there's stuff in that box.

There is, but there's one box that is like the unknown. But the interesting box in the Johari window is the stuff that other people know about you that you don't know about yourself. Me too, because. And this is where a good teammate or a good friend is somebody who can like lovingly and empathetically help you shrink that blind area. Right. Like, you know, you might not realize. And that's to me, that's emotional intelligence. I didn't get get into it that deeply, but just published an article in the community college journal about how presidents use the power they have. I'm very opinionated about this because I see people abuse their power all the time. Like I'm gonna call you at 9 o' clock at night because I can or because I'm the most, the highest ranked person in the room. I'm gonna chew up all the time. Right? And that's what my article is about, is sometimes you have to be self aware and limit yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Great. Thank you for sharing all that. I'm gonna wrap this segment.

Great. This is a fun conversation.

No, thanks for coming on the show. Stay tuned. There'll be a part two. So I want to thank Dr. Robinson for coming on the show. I'd also like to thank our producer, Daedalian Lowry, the entire team here at LCC Connect.

LCC Connect Show.

Yeah. They make the show possible and we really appreciate them. And then lastly, I want to let everybody listening know, if you're experiencing any mental health challenges, you know, please ask for help. LCC offers mental health counseling to currently enrolled students. And of course, anyone in the community can contact 988 or your local 911. If you really need emergency mental health services, please reach out and get those things. Okay? So thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll catch you next time in the headroom.