My Crunchy Zen Era
Welcome to My Crunchy Zen Era — we're not exactly sure what it means, but we're figuring it out.
It started when I asked my friends: How do you create a life you love? Then it turned into a podcast full of a little fun, a little humor, and a whole lot of curiosity. Each week we dive into a fresh topic with a guest, exploring everything from everyday joys to life’s bigger questions. Whether we’re laughing, learning, or just letting things unfold, this show is your weekly dose of lighthearted inspiration.
Hosted by Nicole Swisher.
My Crunchy Zen Era
Mentorship, Gamified Learning, and Saying No with Dr. Stephanie Moore-Lotridge
What would happen if we all approached learning with more creativity, collaboration, and genuine curiosity? Dr. Stephanie Moore-Lotridge takes us inside her work as an educator where she's pioneering approaches that could transform how we train future doctors. On this episode, Nicole and Stephanie discuss:
- Learning to say "no".
- Blacking out during a marriage proposal.... unrelated to the above bullet point...
- Navigating a career in orthopedics with less than 10% female representation.
- Developing team mentorship models.
- Gamified learning strategies.
- Being the only woman in the room.
- The stress of hitting your reading goals.
Ready to rethink how we teach, learn, and mentor? We're just casually discussing changing the world, no biggie.
Subscribe now and join this exploration of what it means to live a happy life in an increasingly complicated world.
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Host: Nicole Swisher
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Steph.
Speaker 2:Hi Nicole.
Speaker 1:Hi, what's something crunchy or zen you've done lately.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've been really focusing on why I say yes to things. I feel like I've been really introspective.
Speaker 1:And do you want to share why you say yes?
Speaker 2:to things. I feel like you know growing up being like a girl that wanted to do science. You don't.
Speaker 2:You never want to turn down opportunities and you always want to like you know, say yes, not not to shy away from anything, and I feel like I got into the trend then, like all through schooling, it was always yes to this and yes to that, and I realized as I've gone on with my life and my career is that I can choose what I say yes to. Is that not every opportunity is what you need to do? Yeah, I like that, I, I like to. Is that not every opportunity is what?
Speaker 1:you need to do. Yeah, I like that. I. I like the phrase like not every opportunity is your opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:I have to say that to myself.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that. I feel like that was like my theme this last week of opportunity that presented itself of really looking at it and saying is this something I want to do? Or is this something that maybe isn't my thing?
Speaker 1:yeah, something I've been doing lately is like I made like a top five priorities for this year yeah, and so when something like more of like a bigger opportunity comes up, I'm like how does this align with these five priorities?
Speaker 2:and if not, no it gets cut, it's not worth the time then. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Welcome to my Crunchy Zen Era. This is a weekly podcast with a little fun, a little humor and a whole lot of curiosity. I'm your host, Nicole Swisher, and my guest this week is Stephanie Moore-Lottridge. Welcome, Steph. Thanks, so excited to be here and chat with you. I'm excited, too If you could relive any memory. What would it be and why?
Speaker 2:Oh, I know exactly what it would be so when I got engaged I was so surprised and I hate surprises. You guys know, you know me how much I'm such a control freak. I'm a scientist, I'm a control freak, I hate surprises and I had no idea it was coming.
Speaker 1:No idea, no idea, okay I feel like people usually know.
Speaker 2:One would have thought and I'm pretty observant to things no, had no idea. Nor is my husband all that sneaky, so like had no idea. Nor is my husband all that sneaky, so like I had no idea. I have zero memories of it. I like blacked out, completely blacked out and partially because. So not only do I like having control of life, I also don't like big crowds. And it was in the Chattanooga or the Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, in front of about 250 small children who were cheering for me, which probably caused the blackout.
Speaker 1:I have no memories of it because you can you imagine if you said no in front of those kids?
Speaker 2:and the kids are just like love is dead for them for forever. Um, no, apparently I did say yes, but I don't remember him asking. I don't like. I literally have zero memories of it. If there wasn't photos, I'm not sure I believe you. So there's photos. There's no video. There is a video on his phone, like an old cell phone, that I literally have zero memories of it. If there wasn't photos, I'm not sure I believe it would happen. So there's photos, there's no video. There is a video on his phone, like an old cell phone, that we have in a drawer, but before the era of being able to move that type of data around. But yeah, I have zero actual memory of this event happening to me, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm just imagining these kids, like their core memory, being like we saw this lady say no in front of the fish and there was like a scuba diver in the tank with a sign and everything. There was a sign. Yes, there was a sign there was. And like I have the sign and I know that this happened, and like we went and put in penguins afterwards also don't remember that experience. It's like there's like a solid chunk of time gone, amazing, yeah. So I wish I could go back and relive that and be like, oh, actually kind of put that as a core memory that is, that's great.
Speaker 1:I totally understand that now, thank you. Thank you, okay. So I have my random grab bag question for you. I'm excited with a cuter bag these days. If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
Speaker 2:oh, oh easy. Um, ability to control time. Yeah, I, I want to just like be able to freeze it, continue to do what I need to do and then unfreeze time. So, like all those like little tasks that take way too long, yeah, that you could just like do them and then they wouldn't like waste your day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Control time Hands down. That's great, because one of the things I was going to mention to you today is that I would I wish I was rich enough to have a personal assistant.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, like I've been having to return stuff which I might have ordered a bunch of stuff online.
Speaker 2:I'm full support of it For reasons.
Speaker 1:Full support of it and then like half of them needed to be returned and I was like I have to go to the post office and I have to print this and it just was taking up a lot of space in my head. I get that and I'm like I would have loved to just give it to someone else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I much prefer online shopping to in-person shopping.
Speaker 1:I do too. I'm usually not that far off, though, with like I don't know why like new brands. I'd never tried and I was like, okay, half of these have to go back yeah, but now I know, I feel like that's also just like women's sizing, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I can buy the same, like a different dress in the same size and like half of them fit and half of them don't. I'm like cool consistency. It's brand by brand, yeah don't.
Speaker 1:I'm like cool Consistency, it's brand by brand. Yeah, completely different. Yeah, I'm like great, great, especially professional clothing.
Speaker 2:Oh the worst Dress pants, completely off the chart, different than any other piece of clothing I own, and I'm like yeah, yep, steph, would you like to give a disclaimer? Today. Nicole, I would love to give you a disclaimer today. So I'm an employee of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Vanderbilt University, and so everything we're talking about today are not endorsed opinions of theirs. They are all my own opinions and my own reflections of my viewpoints.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing. I understand Thanks.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it. Steph, what do you do for a job? Oh man, nicole, what do I do for a job? I do a whole bunch of different things. I wear different hats.
Speaker 2:I am what I consider an educator, so I primarily teach in our school of medicine, and so what that means is, for my first year medical students, I see them in classrooms. We do small group learning together In my upper level third and fourth year medical students, I'm doing curriculum design and helping mentor them through research projects. Third and fourth year medical students, I'm doing curriculum design and helping mentor them through research projects. And in addition to those things, I also have roles in the medical center is that I'm part of the Department of Orthopedics, where I oversee part of our summer research program, and I also help our undergrad campus where I do mentorship for kids doing research projects. I do a little bit of mentorship for our first year students coming in, and also am thinking about taking a new opportunity, which I'm excited to tell you about that I'm going to be teaching a class in the fall that I just found out about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a little bit of everything. When was the last time you taught a class, or have you?
Speaker 2:I teach a ton in the medical school, but this will be my first time teaching 160 undergraduate students okay, I was like I thought you were a teacher, oh yeah. I Just it's going to be a different class than I'm used to teaching and just a slightly different population Cool.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, super excited. Um, do you want to know something kind of embarrassing? Always tell me. Um, I had to Google what orthopedics was because I was like I know she does more than something with feet.
Speaker 2:I do do more than feet. All of the bones and muscles, which apparently that's all I thought orthopedics were, and you know, and honestly fair, like feet are very important. Foot pain is a very much a limiting thing. But yeah, no, I've. I've been part of our department of orthopedics since 2013, when I started graduate school. I just always liked bones and muscles, but I'm not like the MD type of doctor, I'm like the PhD science type of doctor, so like I can't actually fix you.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, but.
Speaker 2:I can tell you about what's wrong with your body in very, very great detail, in minute details.
Speaker 1:And then I will take you with me to the doctor to explain to them.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm very good at that. I have all the connections and now I teach about all the things bones and muscles do.
Speaker 1:So nice, yeah, and what did you think you were going to do, like when you were in middle school or high school?
Speaker 2:it's so funny. I always loved science, but I actually thought I was going to work for coroner's office. I know crazy.
Speaker 1:I me too. Really no jokes love it. I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist.
Speaker 2:I wanted to be bones and I'm I'm convinced it was all the television influence I had around me at the time CSI bones, like all these great shows that were on um. I actually my when I went to college.
Speaker 1:My undergraduate degree was in forensics oh, and I was like this is gonna be great yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was like I did an internship at the coroner's office up in Cleveland, like I. I was like this is what I'm going to do, and I got through my first semester, loved all the science but had this experience where they took us off to this farm where they had buried animals and they were watching decomposition happen.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, okay, and this was up in Ohio, so like not as cool as like University of Tennessee has like a full body farm in Tennessee. We weren't that cool, we had like pigs. But I promptly realized that maggots and me are not friends and I was like, no, no, and I like had such a visceral reaction to hating maggots and I went to my advisor. I'm like, so I love science and I love the toxicology parts we're learning about and I love like the lab stuff, don't love dirt and I don't love maggots and he's like that's going to be a problem. And I was like, okay, so, and then so start talking with him and like talking about what I really wanted to do with my job and I realized it was more being a scientist than it was being a person that was working in like a forensics lab and more on the academic side. So I switched my major when I was like halfway through my freshman year to be molecular biology and biochem and then I just did science.
Speaker 1:And you've enjoyed it, love it, oh my gosh, I've always loved being a scientist.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things I think I found really early on, like even in high school and middle school. I loved science and I loved learning things about the body and about cells and I also, looking back on it, I think I've always loved teaching. You know, I was a TA in undergrad, I TA'd in grad school. I had all these different experiences. I don't think I realized how much I could enjoy that as a career in the future, because it's definitely one of those things in my field that's kind of downplayed. There's like this like undertone joke always of like people that can't do teach.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've heard that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like it's one of those things that's prevalent across professions and I did the hard science thing. I worked in a lab for many years after I got done with my PhD, co-running it and you know, writing grants and doing that and there was so much of it I love. But also mentorship was my main thing I enjoyed and teaching was the main thing I enjoyed, and so now I'm doing that full time and it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I love teaching and I love mentoring. Like the part of being at a big firm that I really enjoyed was that I got to train the younger associates. Oh, that's awesome, yeah, and just like see them like flourish and grow and a lot of them are doing like a really great job now.
Speaker 2:So all because of me, obviously, but you get to be part of their journey and you get to, like, see them grow and see them blossom and, you know, experience hard things and get through them and you get to celebrate that with them Like it's great. Yeah, I love it. What surprises you about where you're at now? You know I wish I would have made my transition earlier. Okay, I know.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I think there was this thing in my mind of that I needed to be in science and write all these papers and do all these scientific discoveries in the academic world and I always wanted to go teach.
Speaker 2:But I wasn't ready to stop that grind yet and I wasn't ready to kind of take my foot off the gas of the discovery phase of my career. And what I realize now, being out of that kind of discovery phase and more into the teaching phase, is I love all the creativity I get to have. You know, I get to think about how are we going to do this better, how are we going to teach this concept better? And I have so much flexibility and space with my colleagues that they're like oh yeah, that sounds great, you want to try? It Sounds good. I didn't realize how much I missed that creativity aspect and also just being able to do something sheerly for the love of wanting to teach something better. Not because it's going to get grant money, not because it's going to, you know, maybe change anything in the field or give more fame or give more glory to science, just for the sheer love of teaching something better.
Speaker 1:I mean, what do you think took you so long to get there?
Speaker 2:You know, I think it's you know, when I did a PhD, I so I was in school for five years and then I did two years as a postdoc. It's a lot of school, it's a lot of school, it's a lot of school. And I did four years or three years as an undergrad and it was just. You know, it was one of those things when you spend that much time in school, I think we all are like, oh, I have to grind and I have to get the up that time and like make it worthwhile. And I look back and I know like that was silly.
Speaker 2:Why did I do that? Like I think I knew when I got done with my PhD that I wanted to teach and I could have made that transition. But I will say because I was in the lab, because I spent more time in clinical research, I spent more time with my physician colleagues. I have a much better understanding, I think, of what I need to teach to my medical students, not being an MD, than I would have if I would come directly out of PhD. I would have had no context. I would have had no real world experience of being in the hospital and doing clinical research and seeing patients and rounding and having all these experiences that I had in those five years, I wouldn't have had that. So, pros and cons, it's hindsight right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I had some law school professors who had never practiced. Yep, exactly, and then we had some who were adjuncts and it was like the adjuncts. Some of them were good at teaching, some weren't, but the people who had practiced and then shifted and were now focused on teaching, they were the best teachers in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and I think it's especially with professional school. You need real world experience so I can look at my students say this is why this matters I know you're for a lot of my med students is. I know you're licensing exams like the back of my hand. Now I know exactly the content you need to know. This is why this matters. I've helped 80 students go through the lab. I was in helping mentor them, helping them match into orthopedic residency programs. I feel like I know the equation of what's going to help you be successful in that type of program and without having that, I don't think I could mentor students how I am now or even work in a medical school like I am now without that context.
Speaker 1:So how many women are in your field, would you say?
Speaker 2:Ortho is less than 10% female. It is a little bit higher in the research side. There's a little bit more women over on my side, but across we hover under 10%. Every year it's going up, they're trying.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that less women go into that field?
Speaker 2:I think there was a years and years and years ago, there was this philosophy that you had to be strong to be an orthopedic surgeon, and in there there is some truth to that is that there's a lot of things in OR, when you're replacing a total hip, or you're replacing a total knee, or you're moving a bone, you're taking a piece of bone out that you need some strength to do it. I will say, though, I have seen plenty of colleagues who are smaller than I am by margins, and they do just fine, because you just do it differently. You know you leverage yourself and you use the tools a little bit differently, and so you know all of those things can be worked around. I think the other challenge is that there weren't a lot of female mentors, and so if you're going into a field and you never see anyone that looks like you, how do you get mentorship? And I will tell you this until I'm blue in the face I am so lucky I had such great mentors that were males, that were able to see that I had different experiences and different challenges.
Speaker 2:Being a woman in the field Is that they could step aside and say, oh, this is something I've never experienced personally, but you're going to experience this. You're going to want to be a mom maybe one day. How are you going to deal with your career? How are you going to be a scientist and run a lab and do that? And so when I had my son he'll be two in September I had great people around me that were mentoring me. They weren't female, but they knew and they understood what kind of those challenges were. That is not. That's very rare, I think, is that somebody can step outside of their own personal experiences and understand that. So I think it's one of those things is like by us bringing more women into the field over the last 10 years, it now is there's attendings that can now mentor females that are coming into the field. So it only gets better is that the pipeline continues to grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I feel so.
Speaker 1:mentorship is, I think, extremely important in the profession like any profession really, and as a lawyer, there were not as many women ahead of me. As a lawyer, there were not as many women ahead of me. There was also, one might say, the class ahead of my generation was difficult. The women can be very difficult to work with Same and part of what I faced is well, we went through it, so you should do it too, and I strongly believe that each generation part of our goal should be to make it easier for the people behind us and to look back and say, hey, I've got you. I went through this. I'm going to make sure you get to do it better.
Speaker 1:Yep and I look at, like my niece even and. I'm like, please don't be a lawyer. But I look at her and like her confidence and she's only seven or eight now and I never want her to lose that. I never want her to think like you can't speak up, and that's what I think each generation should do. For the next is to say, like I went through this so you don't have to. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I, you know, I totally agree with you, Nicole, and I definitely have seen. We always joke we call Queen bee syndrome. Is that in ortho for so many years you would have like one female? And they were like the token female of the department or of the group, and sometimes they were lovely people that could invite others in and make space for them, and sometimes that's not always true.
Speaker 2:When you get used to being the token person is that they don't want other people around them that are going to take that spotlight and take that shiny thing away from them, and sometimes that's not always true. When you get used to being the token person is that they don't want other people around them that are going to take that spotlight and take that shiny thing away from them, and so it's always interesting. I am definitely in the camp like the whole hazing culture thing of like you have to go through this hard thing because I did. That's silly, that is absolutely ridiculous when you think about it. Right Is that my job is to make it better for you in the future and get rid of those barriers. There should not be that barrier Now.
Speaker 2:Is training in a profession, no matter what you're doing hard? Yes, 100%. I'm not going to let you cakewalk into this. I'm going to make sure you are really well prepared and really well trained, but at the same time, it's not going to make you better. It's not going to make you better, it's not going to make. I don't want you to have to deal with the BS I dealt with Like you should be able to be who you are and grow, and medical school is hard enough. Residency is hard enough without those extra factors and so, if I can get rid of them, spectacular going to do that. But yeah, I don't feel like that was always. What was done for us going through training and I think I definitely lucked out is that I had really great mentors at all stages training, um, and I think I definitely lucked out is that I had really great mentors at all stages, from strong women as an undergrad and then really awesome mentors for my PhD training and my postdoctoral training.
Speaker 1:Like I just got lucky, and now I think it's becoming more, more of a norm, if that, that is the expectation yeah, and I would say like probably I mean I probably am midway through my career, but midway through my midway part of my career is like I can think of two women who were, you know, older than me and they really took an interest and really helped me and gave me encouragement and confidence I needed. Then I can also think of two to three women who, I think, tried to crush me. Yeah, oh, for sure, for sure, okay, and they almost succeeded. Yeah, um, but it is really important. And then I've had lots of male mentors as well and it is really important, for it's just, it's important to have like allies and people who are like.
Speaker 1:I understand you're going through something different. I might not understand what it is exactly, but I'm willing to like, learn and try as well. Exactly so it's. It's a. Well, you need a team. Yeah, which brings us to. I wanted to talk to you about the paper that you've been working on about mentorship teams. Yes, can you tell us a little bit about that? Oh my gosh, I would love to.
Speaker 2:So it's under review right now, so we'll cross our fingers. So what that means is some big fancy people out there in the ether are reading it right now and deciding if they want to publish it. Nice, love it. So now we're in this waiting game.
Speaker 2:One of the things that me and some people I've been working.
Speaker 2:What they're really passionate about is how do we optimize mentorship for students that are doing research, particularly medical students doing research, and one thing we've been talking about is, you know, a lot of mentorship, no matter what field you're in, is normally like a one-on-one relationship.
Speaker 2:You have one person and one student that you're mentoring through either a task or a process, or like a career advancement, like that, right. What we're learning, though, is that that model may not be the most effective in every environment, especially so right now. You're aware science world is a little bit of chaos right now. We'll leave it at that, but with chaos comes opportunity for change and opportunity for growth, and one thing we've been thinking a lot about is saying okay, if research resources are maybe changing, how can we still give students really good opportunities and lower the burden on the mentor to make that a possibility? And so one thing we're proposing in this work is to use what we call team mentorship, where it's a team of faculty members that maybe have different expertise that are working together to mentor one or a small group of students. And why we're trying to, you know, think about this model is it lightens the load on the mentor, because a lot of times I've talked to people like why don't you want to mentor something like I just don't have time?
Speaker 2:Yeah or I don't know how, I don't know what skills they need and I don't have all the skills they need. So by working as a team it kind of fixes those problems, right Is that? You're not the only faculty member they're reporting to. Your time is one of many people's times, so maybe you don't have time right now, but maybe your colleague does.
Speaker 1:And so I was curious when I read your paper like so you're definitely like different expertise as in in the medical field and what they've been researching? Would you also be looking at different strengths and weaknesses, like as a person?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think that. I think it's really important. It's not something I dove into here, because I think some of those things are hard to quantify, right? Is somebody maybe a little bit more compassionate versus maybe somebody is a little bit more analytical and better at writing and having an analytical mind to describe an idea? I think there's a lot of personality traits, especially in medicine, that making our students and making our future doctors more well-rounded is a great problem, right.
Speaker 2:I love that for them. I love them to work with somebody that's maybe super analytical, super to the point. I want them to work with somebody that's maybe super analytical, super to the point. I want them to work with somebody that maybe is more creative and thoughtful in that realm and maybe takes a little bit more time to work through a problem, because, let's be honest, working with patients in the future, not every patient is the exact same patient, right, and I think they can learn a lot from faculty who approach problems different ways and my hope is that if we can use this mentorship model so this is the reason we started talking about this is.
Speaker 2:This is the model that I trained people under, so myself, along with a orthopedic surgeon I used to work with and still work with is, we would mentor students together and we had similarities and we had some overlap, but we also had differences that I was a PhD by training, he's an MD-PhD by training.
Speaker 2:I have a different skill set than he had.
Speaker 2:He had a clinical skill set, I had an educational skill set, and so, by us working together, it allowed us to pull all the positives in and give them more than just one person could have given them and it also allowed us to balance our schedules is that when he was in the OR, I could be with the student if they needed help. When I was teaching and wasn't available, he could be there to help them, and so it's, I think, a very helpful model. But definitely not the norm in our field right now and actually it's dissuaded against almost is that there's this kind of lone wolf syndrome in science is that you need to be running your lab on your own and you need to be doing things on your own, and collaboration is important, but leadership is like a solo event a lot of the time yeah, and so a few like words that kind of jumped out with me that I feel like maybe go along with this, or like it helps with emotional intelligence, curiosity, hope, resilience, communication, collegiality love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all, especially the collegiality part, like, here's the thing Everyone's working as teams. Now, all of medicine is a team sport, true? Yes, team sport, right, you would hope we could work on that, I think. Always room for improvement.
Speaker 1:Always room for improvement. We're always improving.
Speaker 2:We're improving Growth mindset right, we like growth mindset, but, yeah, it's one of those things that I think we actually have an opportunity right now, with the changes that are happening to science, is to redefine what the norm is. We get to take a step back and be creative and be thoughtful and, instead of reacting, taking a second and say, okay, what is the best structure, how can we do this? But that both financially makes sense, but also for people's time and energy and effort and burnout, which is a very real thing across professions. How can we do this in a better way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think one thing that kept coming to mind as I read it was how important solid communication is in it, and one thing I have experienced in the last few years with something I've been going through medically is that my doctors struggle to talk to each other and I felt like I didn't understand why they weren't working as a team as much and why the person who didn't have as much cognitive ability was having to like.
Speaker 2:Why are you the one that's controlling? Me yeah why me lots of questions?
Speaker 1:um. So I'm just curious if that is part of what it could foster and help fix?
Speaker 2:yeah, for sure, and I think it's also. That is something I think across our medical system here in the states. There's a flaw in it. You know, we talk, we have electronic health records, right. We write all these notes and we write all these things. Not everything makes it in there and not every piece of data makes it in there and and then they don't all have access to the same.
Speaker 1:It's like it's going somewhere, but this clinic doesn't talk to this clinic. But they know you're going there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. So then it's like is your information being sent? How do we get your information there? And I'm honestly, I feel like one of the things I've learned about the medical field more than anything is that there is such an advantage to having somebody in your court that knows the system. Yeah, and so, like when my parents have had medical issues, I know the system, I know enough people, I know who to call and all of a sudden, access to care is so much easier because you know the questions to ask, you know the people to talk to, you know the pipelines you're supposed to follow to get X, y, z appointment. When you're going at that and you don't have an advocate, it is incredibly challenging. And I do think that's one thing systems like Vanderbilt Systems other medical systems are doing this is that they have patient advocates built into the system to help navigate that. Howard, there's never enough of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's one of those things that I think communication is such a foundational thing we teach in the medical school. How do you communicate not only amongst your peers, but also across disciplines? How do you, as a doctor, talk with the pharmacist? How does the pharmacist talk to your physical trainer or your physical therapist, and your OTs and your PTs and all the other people that are part of your care? Right, communication is super important, but also being able to listen. Just because you can talk doesn't mean you're listening to the person on the other side, and so you know. I hope that, like this mentorship model we're talking about, where it would break down is if people can't communicate, if part of that mentorship team, if they're not talking, it's just going to be confusing for the student. So we wrote in there. It's like it is a very real need that you need to be able to talk to each other and understand what the goals are at the faculty level before you bring in a student. It is not their job to read your mind.
Speaker 1:It's just not, and I feel like that is such a problem as the mentee of, like the people who are supposed to be mentoring you and like teaching you how to communicate.
Speaker 2:If they don't communicate well.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and they're like you should just kind of know. And it's like, well, no, that's the whole point.
Speaker 2:That's actually the whole point of communication. Yeah, yeah, no, and I think that that's a very if this is something that we're going to do, we need to also do faculty development to go along with it. Yeah, is that some people are just naturally good communicators? Is that they've been trained, but not everyone is. Even people that have undergone training still aren't great communicators sometimes, and so not only do we need to continually train our students to be better, right, but faculty development you never stop learning right, and you should continue to learn even when you're done with your career yeah, and so you're also doing this um gamification.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's called, is that right? Gamified learning, yeah, gamified learning, and so are you. Is that going to be um connected with them teaching? That I love that idea.
Speaker 2:It could be. I hadn't thought about in that space yet. Um, it totally could be. Thank you, nicole, you gave me a new project.
Speaker 2:I love it, yes I love it um, yeah, so we, I am huge into what they call quote-unquote active learning. Um, I loved it when I was a student when it was just hitting okay, aging myself, like so I'm 33. I was in college from 10 to 13. It was just kind of hitting the scenes then of you know, people starting to do games in class and jeopardy and all these other things that were like built into education right, and I loved it then and I was like I loved learning like that. Having a little bit of a competitive thread throughout really helped me apply information. When I got to a place where I'm teaching now, one of the things I like to do is saying okay, topics, a lot of topics. I teach in the first year of medical school, so I teach biochemistry and what that means. It's fancy, really intricate details about what's happening inside of your cells.
Speaker 1:Things that Nicole doesn't know.
Speaker 2:Things that most people don't know, and I would argue, things that you need to know as a doctor, but you need to know them in application, maybe not in the granular detail that I did as a scientist.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I care a lot more if you know about physiology and how the body is working than I do if you can tell me about this metabolism pathway, but yet I need you to know that so you know how drugs work as a doctor Fair.
Speaker 2:So a lot of what we've been trying to do then is saying, okay, I know this material maybe isn't the most exciting, but how can we make it exciting for you? How can we take this material and say, okay, we've taught you it, now let's apply it in a real world scenario? And so one of the things when I took over part of our teaching for the first year, I asked my faculty. I was like, hey, can I make an escape game? And they looked at me like I had three heads because they're like why would we do that? And I was like here's all the literature that shows. There's tons of work that people have done out there about giving escape games to students in health professions education and showing that it not only enhances their enjoyment of learning the material, but it does help with retention of that information. So I.
Speaker 1:I think that I see our background folks summer. Do you know what an escape game is on the computer? I do not.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's let's say, because I didn't know what that was game is on the computer. I do not. Okay, let's say what that was either.
Speaker 1:And when. So I played your escape. No, but it's sort of like it's on the computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Escape room on the computer I played the game you sent played in the sense that I wouldn't have been able to get it correct, except you gave me the answers. But I walked through it. Science was my worst in school it's okay, you know it's okay.
Speaker 2:Um, english was my worst, which was probably one of your stronger which was my major.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, so no, it's for whatever that was.
Speaker 2:This is why we're friends, nicole this is why we're friends okay, so explain what an escape yeah so have you ever like done an escape room? Like you go to a place I'm?
Speaker 1:terrified of an escape because you get locked inside. Yes, I'll never get out. I won't be clever enough to get out, in fairness my deepest fear.
Speaker 2:Totally get that um. Do you? You're a big reader. Do you read abby jimenez's book?
Speaker 1:no, but I might need to okay, you need to so say.
Speaker 2:You'll remember me. Just came out. Lovely there. To not spoiler pause if you're reading this right now, there is an element of it where they get trapped in an escape room overnight. Because it could happen a hundred times and, honestly, the way they tell it in the story. I'm like, yeah, that could happen. That could definitely happen. But you need to read the book. It's lovely. I just love her writing.
Speaker 1:It's just great.
Speaker 2:I love puzzles. I think puzzles are great. I love a good board game. I think a good game is great. And so what we wanted to do is take some of those elements and bring them into education and bring them into a science-y context. So what we wanted to do is so some of the lectures I had to teach is what's called self-signaling, ie how do signals from the outside of your cell transfer to the inside of your cell and tell it what to do? Okay, the answer is there's a lot of different pathways and a lot of different intermediate and a lot of different things that the meta students need to know. Okay, and they need to know, like, how does it get in the cell and what's the cell made of, and all those fun things.
Speaker 2:And so we took this material and my goal was to set up puzzles that tested said material. That's what you saw online. Yes, so first year we did this. We actually printed it and I had them work in like small groups at tables and do it. But then I realized I killed like so many trees, having to print this thing because everyone needed a different packet. It was a whole thing and I was like, so I didn't want to kill the trees this year, so the one you've played is the new and improved version.
Speaker 1:It was very fancy, I like that. Oh, thank you. Thank you, it looked good.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to take all the credit for that and I'm going to tell you how I made it. Ok, I was wondering. I was like, did Steph do this? Thank you for thinking.
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:She's really good at software stuff. No, no, no. There are so many amazing online tools now, so the platform I was using completely free to use to plop things into. It's based for educators. It's great, um, can you do links in your podcast? Yeah, great, I'm gonna give you the link for it. It's great. Every educator should have access to this thing. Um, but all the material that went into it. I actually had ChatGPT help me make it.
Speaker 1:We love ChatGPT.
Speaker 2:Because we love ChatGPT. I love ChatGPT.
Speaker 1:It's been mentioned in like the last three or four episodes. I love that. I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, and actually I'm working on a um paper right now with one of my friends that's up in Michigan about how can we use ChatGPT to make games in education, and they have to do a series of puzzles that use all that knowledge that they learned in class to collect keys as they go throughout an abandoned hospital. And when they get to this abandoned hospital, in the basement there's this chest that they have to use their four keys to get a code.
Speaker 2:And then the chest opens and gives them like a science prize. So that was the last code.
Speaker 1:Yes, that I forgot to give you. I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 2:It's okay. I hope they'll be able to. Last year they did. We'll see. We'll see. I'm sure they can. But I'm glad at least you got to that point because that means my, my like building of it went right. Yeah so that's a solid check mark. So they're going to get to do this next week Cool, and it's going to be all the first year med students get to hang excited.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have them work in little teams, um, and I think you you probably saw this, one thing I built into it this year that we didn't used to have was characters yes, characters so each character gets their own like special hint if they're part of the team, so kind of to help you solve the puzzles or know like is the password all capitals or you know, just clues, clues, to make it a little bit easier. Then you get a little clue to go with your person, um, but yeah. So we're gonna get to do this next week, but yeah. So our whole goal was to take this like science concepts and test it, what we call like a formative assessment, meaning they're not getting graded on it. In a way that's fun, that they can apply the knowledge and then use it to ultimately escape.
Speaker 1:Escape yeah, the room I. I think that would be really beneficial because I feel like I learn in a mysterious way, like I haven't quite figured it out, like I have to like read background stuff and then kind of apply it and then like talk about it again. Yeah, totally, and it like that is not how you learn in law school or in undergrad, like any of it and so.
Speaker 1:I've always kind of like struggled with that and whenever I've been in charge of like training people, I always want to know, like how do you learn, yeah, and like can we adjust for that learning style, because often people get written off because they don't learn oh, for sure traditional way and that is not fair and it's completely gatekeeping.
Speaker 2:So I feel like, yeah, I feel like it's love, that good to be exploring new ideas and options yeah, and especially like when you're in educate, like when you're in training, still there's, I think you get forced to learn a certain way, whether you're in medical school, you're an undergraduate, you're in law school. There there's structure and there's certain ways that you have to learn to be successful, right, and it's not always aligned for everyone. I talk with a lot of first years about retraining their learning strategies, because what works to be a really good science major as an undergrad does not work in medical school especially. Our curriculum is what we call integrated, where it builds on each other throughout the year. So in college I'm sure you did this, I did this. You learn something and then you throw it out of your brain to make room for the next thing Terrible habits, right. As an educator now I'm like don't do that. But in medical school it's really like in our curriculum, you can't do that because you need that knowledge for the next thing.
Speaker 2:And when they start, sometimes they're not used to learning like that. It's a different style of learning. But definitely in the workforce that is one thing. When I had staff in the lab, I always loved talking with them. I'm like okay, how do you learn, how do you want to receive information, and what ways do you want to tell me information back? Do you want to meet in person? Do you want to meet in person? Do you want to have this written down? Do you want to have this video recorded? I'm like I don't care what it is, but I want you to make sure that you feel like you're taking in the things we're talking about.
Speaker 1:And I feel very strongly about that, that it's the teacher, the trainer, the mentor's responsibility to initiate that conversation and to adjust for the person that's learning, because you're there to serve that person.
Speaker 2:They're not there to serve you yeah, and I I think that gets mixed up quite a bit oh, for sure, and I think people forget, like, and it's also those things can change, I think that's the other thing is that people think that that, like, your learning style is static, which is, like, totally not the case.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't know that. I fully knew that. Yeah, oh my gosh, you can totally A learn new ways to learn. You can train yourself, and this is what I have my students do. I was like you're used to studying XYZ way. Let's talk about other study strategies that are maybe better for this type of integrative learning. What works for you?
Speaker 2:And I always tell them like you have to be okay. Knowing something is failing you Is that you don't want to keep like digging your hole and your hole gets deeper and it's not working for you. You need to be able to stop, reflect, kind of step away from the moment and say this is not working. I either need help or I need to redefine. And what I've talked to a lot of when I've worked with staff over the years is saying, okay, what maybe works for you right now, as you grow and as you learn, maybe something else might be better. So that was always part of my like yearly reviews with people of like, okay, is this still the same way that you still want to do information? Do we want to make changes? Do we want to adjust any of this? Because you just grow and you learn. But I see it all the time in students. It's amazing watching like a day one medical student and like when they get done with their first year before they like go off to the wards and like are like clinical people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whole different people like whole different learning strategies, whole different learners, whole different people, and it's great they have so much growth that first year.
Speaker 2:So kind of taking us back a little bit from a moment, so kind of taking us back a little bit from a moment, if you were speaking to a girl in middle school, high school, who had some interest in science or anything related. What advice would you give to her? I think and this comes back to what we were talking to about knowing when to say yes I think one of the biggest things I would advise on is try everything at least once. If you're interested in it and you want to go try it, go do it. Don't let the fear of it oh, only the boys are doing that, or my friends aren't doing that.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, you need to go try it for yourself and see if you like it, Because you may find that, oh, I love that. Or you may experience it and be like actually don't love that, how I thought I did. And so I think, when you're young and you're learning and you're experiencing, I think it's really important to put yourself out there and say, OK, I'm going to try these different things, even if me and my friends aren't doing it, with me, Solo life journeys. And then I think later on and saying, once you start to know what you like and what you don't like, you can start making more informed choices. And I feel like that's how I got to say, okay, I wanted to be a science major and I wanted to go to graduate school and I wanted to stay in academia and work in a lab is because I had experiences where I could purposefully close some doors and say that's not my path but, also have experience to say I'm informed to make the next decision because then you feel empowered to do it.
Speaker 2:yeah, um, thinking about me also just as like a young scientist and like a young female in a over overly male dominated workplace where I've always been, I have never found that as a negative in my world. A I've. I've had good mentors, and so I think I come from a place of privilege, knowing that I've had good mentors who have also supported me and protected me and given me space to grow that I needed as a young female scientist. But I would never I would always want to tell other women is that just because you're the only girl in the room should not stop you.
Speaker 2:It doesn't change anything for you, but it maybe changes how much you have to speak up. It maybe changes how you need to advocate for yourself and finding mentors, but it shouldn't change the fact that you want to try and you want to be there. You shouldn't give up because of that factor. Right, if you try it and you hate it, it is also okay to say no, I'm not going to do that, even if you are the only female in the room, because you're doing the right thing for you and you got to, I think, also question yourself saying do I not like this because I actually don't like it and it's like truly not my journey, or do I not like this because of some external influence? I'm seeing that maybe shouldn't be part of my decision process Right.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's the environment, not the actual thing that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know I've done that in my career is that maybe the environment's a little toxic and you're like I'm going to say no to XYZ thing because of that, and in reality, it maybe would have been a good thing if you could have changed those factors. And I think there are some factors and some barriers like that that are changeable, and then also there's some that aren't. And that's where I think your mentors come into play. Is being able to talk with them saying is this a modifiable barrier or is this like a? This is set in stone, this is not changing, right, and are you okay with that?
Speaker 1:And that can be really hard to discern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sometimes you don't know, and sometimes you get in and you're like, oh wait, that's a non-movable barrier, that's a non-starter and it's never going to change. And then you get to decide and saying, okay with that. How do you want to respond? I?
Speaker 1:how do you want to respond? I think that's great advice. I'm going to ask you another question now.
Speaker 2:Please tell me everything. What are you obsessing over? Lately, I feel like my current obsession. Well, my year, my. So my goal for this year was to read, or read, listen to a hundred audiobooks. Yes, how are we doing? We're okay, we're a a little behind schedule.
Speaker 1:I think I'm at like 49 right now. We're uh, we're in August okay, we're at August.
Speaker 2:we're at August 2nd now, so I'm behind. I'm behind, okay, and so, knowing I'm behind, the question is is do I just pick up a bunch of small books and get back on track? That's what I was thinking, I'm like. Is that cheating? I don't think that's cheating, but then my average page count is going to plummet. And also, I have a son and we read a lot of books at home. Do I get to add Crinkle Crinkle Little Car to the list?
Speaker 2:Maybe it's like, depending on how long they are, you combine them to be one book To one book, yes, but like I have read crinkle, crinkle little car every night twice at least for six months. So that is like at least 500 pages of crinkle, crinkle little car at this point um that is what he is obsessing, and that is what he is obsessing over um bedtime books with mom is what we're obsessing over um.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so you know, I think it's one of those things like when you set goals like that for yourself, like I knew it was gonna be a reach yeah but also I'm okay if I don't meet that goal because I know I'm like I've read a lot of books this year and I've learned a lot of things and I've enjoyed it and I don't want to not enjoy my audiobook time. So I think I'm just gonna keep on keeping on and see where I end up because, like, fall's coming, yeah, cozy fall, with like a nice warm drink, it's time to watch Gilmore Girls. Time to watch Gilmore Girls. Time to like sip my audiobook and read a little bit. Like my my time is coming.
Speaker 1:Yes, summer's a little less it's like the fall into winter, is hibernation mode so like that's when you read a lot anyway, it's cozy season and I love being cozy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is my favorite thing in the world. Yeah, so I, you know, I think that's what I've been sussing over of like, does the number matter and like, do the metrics along with that number actually matter? Because, also, like you, are obsessing, oh my god. But also here's the thing, nicole, who sees this? But, like my three friends that are on my goodreads with me, like yeah, nobody sees this. Nobody's judging me, nobody would care. But in my mind I had set a goal and I have not achieved.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, well, I am obsessing over escape to the country. Oh no, tell me all about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's on the BBC watch it with the uh, my mom and I watch it together, and so when I'm like kind of stressed and I just want something like very calm in the background, that's what I put on. It's a bunch of like british people being like I can't stand the city anymore, I need to escape to the country, yes, and then they go very like calmly, like through it's not house hunters, like it is very calm, and in the end, most of the time they don't buy any of the houses. It's just like we're just perusing, yeah, and they're like we hope that they find something in the future yeah, I just I'm like I love it that's so funny.
Speaker 2:That's also so different, I feel like, than americanized television, like all those house shows, like somebody told me once that they're all staged yeah, they are. It's like they've actually already bought the house and one of the houses is their actual house.
Speaker 1:I know two people who were on House Hunters, one international and one in Minneapolis, and it is staged.
Speaker 2:That is so disappointing to me, but also for practicality purposes, totally get it yeah totally get it, totally get for practicality, purposes.
Speaker 1:Totally get it. Yeah, totally get it, totally get it.
Speaker 2:Um. So did you bring a recommendation for our audience? So, because I've been on this audiobook kick. Yes, I think we've talked about this in the past we definitely have. My favorite app in the world is libby, okay. So if you don't already have it, everyone should have libby, which I do.
Speaker 2:We figured out, I do have great, good good so it connects your local library card and not only can you get ebooks on it for freeze, you can get audiobooks on it for freeze, yes, which is great for somebody like me because, like I used to be like an exclusive audible person. Or, and also, did you know, you have audiobooks on your Spotify if you, yes, I did okay. So nobody failed.
Speaker 1:Nobody told me this till recently this is where I listened to my really bad rom-com. Oh, I love that, yes.
Speaker 2:I'm all about a bad rom-com. It's great. Um, and also I love it on Spotify because you don't like Libby. The one downside is that, much like the library, you have to wait for a hold. If it's not available, it's fine. Um, onify, you have what is like 15 hours a month or something yes, something like that, and I have hit that before.
Speaker 1:Oh, I hit it frequently.
Speaker 2:Um, but I because I listen to my audiobooks.
Speaker 1:Now I listen at like 2.2, 2.3 or 5x, so it's like you can listen to more love that for myself, but I just love libby.
Speaker 2:I think it's such a great app to like make books more accessible to people and take them with you, versus paying 15 20 bucks a month to have one book. Yeah, um, that is not like that would be unsustainable for a hundred audiobooks a year, but libby is making my dreams a reality. That's's great. Yes, so that's my rec for you.
Speaker 1:I love that. My recommendation Ooh, tell me, tell me, I had to write it down. It's the Resetter podcast. Ooh, it's the July 28th episode, called Four Simple Lifestyle Tweaks for Deeper Sleep in Parametopause. And I almost didn't say the parametopause part because I actually think this is just like good for anybody. I'm not in perimenopause, in case you're wondering um, but it's really good. There's like this summer I'm just like laughing. Okay, I love it. Um, but it has really good recommendations for sleep and like how important sleep is to like refresh your brain, which for the longest time, I thought there was just something wrong with me, where I'm like I just can't think anymore. I'm going to sleep and I'll wake up feeling better and I'll know the answer.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I was like that's a me problem?
Speaker 1:No, that's just like a human problem. Oh, cool yeah. So something I learned from this podcast Very good. Big fan of sleep um stuff. If someone wants to learn more about what you've talked about or reach out to you, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:so this is going to be like such a science thing. So everything that we've talked about, we're working on putting into like a shareable format. Cool, so like. If you google me, it should come up once it's published, so give it three to six months. But I also there are websites that cover a lot of what we do and also just reaching out. A lot of how we make connections in our field is literally just by our emails. Is that if people want access to things and they want to hear about the work we're doing, especially in the education space, we just email each other. Like. It's very much a like if we, for example, I have a biochemistry escape game, if my friend who maybe listens to this lovely podcast or like, knows that they teach biochemistry and they want it, great, I will gladly send you the link. It is a very open and friendly environment for educators.
Speaker 1:I will link to like your Instagram or whatever we decide after. Perfect, so thank you so much for being here, steph.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, nicole, thanks for listening. If you guys could subscribe to the YouTube, that'd be super helpful, and maybe even leave a review and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to my Crunchy Zen Era. Please subscribe and leave a review and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to my crunchy zen era. Please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. This podcast is produced by me, nicole Swisher and my good friends Summer Harkup and Liz Colter. Editing is by Drew Harrison Media and recording is done by Lagos Creative in Nashville, tennessee. Thanks for hanging out. We'll be back next week.
