Lean In or Leaning Out: Thoughts on a recent Facebook rant that went viral. Ep 94

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode ninety four. We're talking about leaning in and leaning out, those wonderful phrases that seem to have a lot of currency for people in terms of their life choices. But Sarah, this is a very busy time for you as you are sort of leaning into your work life. Talk about your changing role and what you're up to now. Yeah, I guess I am leaning in right now a little bit. I spoke previously on an episode about trans or maybe it hasn't aired yet, so sorry for that if it's out of order. But I am transitioning to program director in June, and I'm still doing basically zero point five to five FDEs of clinical right now, and that doesn't really add up to one. That adds up to more than one. And I'm not formally doing the PD role yet, but I kind of am because the person that is leaving is starting to appropriately transfer things to me. So I'm in this weird double zone where I can't let go of clinical duties until June first because I've already been booked with patients. But I have more on my plate than I really should GMU wise for the amount of clinical that I'm doing. So yes, I'm in a little bit of a lean in phase. I know that it's going to be temporary. I'm not necessarily loving the double load that I have right now. So I was saying, if I could project a few months into the future, I probably would, as sad as that sounds, but I think the end result it's going to be totally worth it. And you know, they sometimes say, oh, there's no temporary busy phases, but sometimes there are. I mean, this is like I could just pretend like I'm an accountant and it's April, like it's gonna end. Yeah, it will end, And as of June first, your your clinical duties go down, so that's a pretty obvious and they're gonna go down even more in twenty twenty when my call goes down. So yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a little bit of a gradual but but yes, June will be better. Well that's pretty exciting, And so do you have big hopes and plans for what you're gonna do as program director? There's a ton to do there. I don't know about hopes and plans, but I feel like the program has been great. Our previous pds did a very nice job. There are a lot of little details that I think now that we are past the point of being brand new and just sort of in survival mode, because launching a new program is a lot of CEA to your pants kind of stuff. Now it's time to kind of clean things up, make it so that we can go on more of an autopilot in the future. I really one of the things I'm very excited to do is kind of template out all of the yearly tasks that go into running a program, as crazy as that sounds, so it really is the kind of thing where if you're ahead of what you need to be doing for example, setting up your candidate interviews. You need to book your faculty, you need to book rooms, you need to prepare presentations. You could certainly do that like three days prior. Well, you can't invite people three days prior, but you get what I'm saying. You can do that in a very last minute scrambling way that's extremely stressful. Or you can know that it's coming every year and in May kind of be pinged by your master to do list that it's time to start inviting people. That is much more the style of how I work. So I'm excited to bring kind of my style of leadership I guess to the role, and I think it will I think it'll be great. Yeah, now that sounds like a good approach. And so it's going to be a bay again. Yes, it's going to be bay again. It will be bay again. And so if you know something will happen in May, then it behooves you to put as much of it on autopilot, like you said, as you can. So what about your work life these days? Well, I guess I don't have anything too big on the horizon. I've been sort of thinking of my life as this three legs stool. In terms of my professional life, I have the books, my two podcasts, and my speaking and I am trying to sort of as I've adjusted to having the second podcast and getting in a rhythm of creating the content for that. So that's coming along and just you know, so none of this is new now, and I don't have any big new projects on the horizon, so I guess I'm just running with these right now. I suppose eventually I need to figure out what my next book is, and I'm spending some time writing fiction again. I'm revising my National Novel Writing Months book that I wrote in November, so hopefully that will turn into something reasonable. But you know, one thing I'm thinking about is how all these different things can support each other. That to you know, try and mention books on the podcast, and mention the podcasts and speeches, and you know, just to try to make some more connections, mutually beneficial interactions between these three things and get people into the Laura Vandercam world that they hear the podcast and then buy a book or hear you know, buy a book and then have me as a speaker. You know, we just all these things. It's it's good to have connections between the two. But we may have some changes for this podcast coming in the near future. As some of you who read our blogs now, we've been talking about how we would like to turn this into more of a legitimate side hustle. You know, people can go buy my books, but Sarah doesn't have something that's a product people can then purchase as a result of hearing her. So you know, it's it takes a lot of time. I mean, we'd like to make it more. I think in part it is to justify the work to myself, because I love doing the work, but I do recognize that it's work, and I recognize that both of our time is valuable, and I love putting this podcast out, and I do think that the most painless way to continue to put this product out in the exact same way that we've been doing so is to add some ads to our podcast, which does mean that we're taking a few seconds of your valuable ears, because that's really what it is. But we think that you know, at this day and age, most podcasts, unless they're sponsored or underwritten by some sort of public funding, do have them. We've become a bit of an outlier with time and we hope that people will support our decision to do that. We will also certainly take feedback in the way in which we do it, because we're hoping to make it the least intrusive. We've even heard from some people that they like ads in some podcasts and that they've enjoyed finding out about certain types of products. I certainly know that I've had ones that did resonate with me and ones that didn't on other shows. So yeah, we hope to be judicious in our choices, though, be judicious, but most likely it'll be something like two sixty second mid roll ads. So you know, you've heard us talk about our love of the week, so we'll be talking about other stuff. But yeah, this seemed like the most straightforward way to do this versus, you know, creating premium content like people do through Patreon or other such things. So that's coming up and we'll definitely keep everyone posted on that. So for the body of this episode, we wanted to talk about a post that kind of went viral on Facebook. It will have been a few weeks ago when this is this is out, so perhaps it's already super saturated at this point to these viral things only tend to last for a day or two, but I know, I hope they haven't. For I hope our listeners haven't forgotten about it by the time this day we actually it because it's either of us, like, this is the kind of thing we really want to put too much mental energy into thinking about. But a lot of people sent this to us, and we thought, you know, we'd like to do episodes on these sorts of things from time to time. So Sarah, yes, I will be happy, would you like me. I'm not going to read the entire rant, but maybe I could just give a little bit of highlights. So a little background. The person who posted this her name, I mean, she's public as well. Her name is Sarah Buckley Friedberg. I'm sure she's probably a very nice person. She works for some kind of medical device. Yeah, oh, that would be amazing, you know, And actually, I guess we could invite her to respond if she's interested. So she works, I believe as some kind of manager at a medical device company, and her husband is a pediatrician. A quick Google search revealed that he's a private practice pediatrician at a kind of small to medium sized practice outside of Boston and there's nothing. This post is a rant for really, in my opinion. She starts at Society to working moms, and this is sort of a to do list Number one. I'm not going to read the whole thing. I promise go back to work six to eight weeks after having the baby, the baby that's spent nine to ten months growing inside your body. And she goes on to mention that you still have to break the glass ceiling and excel at your job. She talks about the demands of breastfeeding for at least a year, about losing the weight and getting in shape, about keeping a very well run home, including recycle, be Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth Fairy, the birthday planner, the poop doula, the finder of lost things, the moderator of fights. She mentions maintaining the schedule for the family. She mentions getting presents for birthday parties. She talks about children's activities and going to kids classes. She has a segment saying, hey, kids need lots of doctor's appointments monthly as babies, which I'll get to I guess in a little bit. But that's not even typically true. Volunteering at school, using up all of your vacation time in the aforementioned things, providing your children with healthy meals, dating your spouse, having a hobby, and you time having friends, performing self care, and she goes into detail about that, getting off your phone, turning off the TV, and enjoying your life. These are the good times. Make sure to love every minute of it because before you know it, all of this will be in the past. That was clearly tongue in cheek, and then at the end she said, I don't know about you, but I'm ready to lean out. Thanks for coming to my ted talk. If you haven't read the whole thing, it is an interesting I think even just judge gauging your own reaction to it is an interesting exercise. And it's available in its full form if you don't have Facebook. If you google Romper and then Sarah Buckley Friedberg, I think you will find a post that links to it. Yeah. Fun from time to time, and these are the sorts of posts that always go like this is of course the issue. It's the rants that always go viral, or the complaints about something like she's been on Good Morning America. Now like she this, this this worked, This res and it's to me, I mean, I know, I'm ranting about a rant, so that's sort of unfair. But and I will let you speak because I just get the whole rant, and then I just interrupted your thoughts on it. But to me, it resonated wrong for three reasons. Number one, some of the things in it even felt sort of not factual or unfair. And I guess her point was that society's expectations are unfair. But you know, we all feel free to interpret those how we see fit. So, for example, you don't have to breastfeed for Lisa here if you don't want to. You. She mentions monthly doctor's appointments, when that's actually not I mean, the schedule is typically one, two, four, six, nine, and twelve, and typically most people are on attorney lead for those first six eight weeks, so that takes care of one or two of them. Her husband happens to be a pediatrician, so I'm not sure why getting our kids to doctor's appointments is such a hardship. She you know, talks about having a hobby, like, you know, does she really not have time for any kind of hobby? She has time to write a rant on Facebook and go and good morning America about it. That seems enough of a hobby to me. And her conclusion that she was ready to lean out as a result of all this, So even if I do, you'd feel like it had validity. Her conclusion is, doesn't lean out mean stop working or work less? Yeah? No, I guess that's what I interpret lean out to mean. Or I guess maybe just a general sense of frustration. But yeah, I mean leaning out solves none of these problems. You know, you will still have probably even more of a pressure if you have this internal pressure to have a pinterest worthy house. Well, if you're not working for pay, you might have even more of a pressure to have that, and you'll be in the house more because you're there, and so it'll be like, now it has to be pinterest worthy after breakfast or you know what. It would have been a hout of the house before, and so you would have had no sense of whether the house was pinterest worthy after breakfast, and you know, I think what happened. So rants are more likely to go viral because people are like, oh, yeah, I feel frustrated too, and this stuff gets spread around. It's like, oh, well, we've rediscovered the wheel here, like you know that, yes, sometimes life is challenging, and you know, then everyone taps into their own sense of frustration about X, Y or z, and it gets spread around and next thing you know, it's out there, whereas sort of the practical solutions are less likely to go viral, which is always a frustration of mine. But it's a different angle of frustration. That's my frustration of But I think what happens is people get to these places of feeling overwhelmed, and I collect these sort of rant pieces I guess, is how I would say. Because there are these that appear, you know, every couple months, that gets spread around and people are like, oh, yeah, there was one a couple of years ago. I mentioned in my book. I know how she does it from like a lawyer who was quitting and what happened. Yeah, people get overwhelmed, they have a really bad day or bad week or whatever, and then they're like, something has to change, right. That's the format of our stories is you have these points of evidence leading up to an epiphany, and the epiphany is that something must change. We must dial down, scale back, opt out. Join with this Greek chorus of the disillusioned chanting that no one can have it all right. This is the format of stories we understand. But the problem is that real life is not lived in epiphanies, and it is entirely possible to have a crappy day and have a crappy day and say that nothing needs to change. That it just is the reality of the human condition that there is bad stuff and tough stuff and difficult stuff. But when you talk yourself into the idea that something needs to change, well, if you've convinced yourself that work and your personal life are somehow in opposition, then you're like, well one of those has to change, and you can't get rid of the kid, and you probably don't want to, so that means work has to change. But there is almost no problem that will be solved by than not having the job. Not having the income you will completely change the household dynamic even more to be that you are doing the stuff at home if you don't have the if you are more focused on that. So it just isn't the solution. I think that you could acknowledge that we all have tough stuff in our life, and maybe there are some practical solutions that you can do that would make life easier. That would remove some of the pain points. And probably two people in professional jobs as this couple are have many of those opportunities available to them if they would wish to pursue them. And that was my other feeling about it. You know, some people readers of my blog said, yeah, you know, I this did resonate with me because I find many of the things that you mentioned frustrating, and I know that the best of both world's response is going to be, you know, to outsource and find solutions. And what we really need is a more supportive society and paid maternity leave and you know, better universal childcare. And I agree with that. But this Facebook rant came from someone that's already living at a level of privilege, like this is a too professional income family. So there is certainly a very significant demographic of our country in which having three and the world in which having three children is extremely challenging. Number One, most of them don't have the option of quote unquote leaning out. But number two, like, that's just not that doesn't apply to this particular rant. So I felt like, yes, maybe it does raise questions about what we have available in terms of universal things, But it was coming from the wrong person, Like how dare I get up on a soapbox and be like, oh my god, my life is so hard. I have three kids. All these expectations are on me, Like, no, my life is super super easy compared to like ninety nine percent of the world. And I made the choices that I made to have three kids, and so did this person. So I guess that's another Yeah. I mean we also have the question of like who is this society who puts pressure on some I think so much pressure is just internalized and we like to assign it to society. But if you like, who is this person, Like I don't care if her house is pinterest worthy, Like I can't remember anyone who told me I needed to breastfeed for a year, Like nobody said that to me, like or that I was somehow less of a woman if I didn't. You know that that never came up. I don't think even the pediatrician said anything like that. You know, they're just asked, are you breastfeeding? Oh? Great, awesome, moving on to the next question, you know, or like just yeah, So I wonder who this society is because I know that a lot of people have talked themselves into a whole lather about society thinks I should do X, Y and Z. She maybe comparing herself to maybe she lives in an affluent community where a lot of women stay at home and have help, and she's comparing herself to that. I mean, because the idea of having an immaculate house and a perfect body and doing everything at home, like that's kind of what I guess that would require. Not that anybody would suggest that she needed to do those things. Again, that's her Instagram feed or her social circles, which again is her choice. Yeah, I would say the one thing here that I feel like is an issue is it sounds like perhaps her job is not terribly flexible and that she did wind up using her vacation time or PTO for all, you know, these various appointments, which is a challenge if you only have a very limited number of days. Definitely something to think about as you are taking jobs. Again, if we have people who are looking for new jobs, who are looking for or who may be having kids in the future or have kids, but it's something that you're negotiating with a job, you know, that's something to definitely push for. Often it's easier to get more PTO than it is to get more money, So that's something you can definitely negotiate for. But there's also the question of why is it all her? And you know, maybe she's talked herself and her husbands doctor into the idea that will oh, I'm a doctor. Oh, doctors can't do anything right, which is total bs because as we've learned, as more women have become doctors, it turns out that doctors can do things. Who knew there's many male physicians who had convinced people over the years that like a doctor could never take time off work to deal with the child. Well guess what, as soon as fifty percent of the you know physicians out there are female, we learned that, Yes, imagine that you can take time off to deal with a kid thing. So it seems that perhaps he could have helped with that, and if he didn't, that's an internal dynamic thing between this couple that they need to sort out. But that's again not society. That's you and your husband needing to talk through. Why do you both believe that you know the physicician somehow all the responsible important job. Yes, And I find it particularly like funny in this in this case, just because he is a pediatrician, so really the sick kid stuff, he's got a nice fund of knowledge and probably good connections to colleagues that he probably should be the point person. Yeah, yeah, no, that does seem well, you know, you never know what was going on in any individual family, and you know that's uh. And sometimes these things are related to how people grew up that they've just internalized stories. There's a fascinating study that I just read this morning that is that married women actually do more housework than single women, including like moms. So married moms do more housework than single moms, which seems insane, right, Like if you're the only parent, of course you'd be doing more because there's not another person to be helping out. And yet that's not actually what happens. That perhaps single moms are more focused on what actually has to get done, needs to happen for the household of function, whereas married mothers have more of a story of what a married woman is supposed to be doing around the house, and and you know, a story that they are telling themselves of elaborate meals or you know, laundry done so frequently that there's never anything in the hamper or whatever it is that people have absorbed. But again, you know, single moms run amazing households, so I question whether all of it is necessary. I find it hard to believe that it's the husband in particular making more housework by his being there, Like I don't. I don't think that's it. It's well, if that's true, that's sad too. I mean, he can know it and it is not. They also compared people who had other additional family members living in the house, so it's not just if you have like your aunt living with you, that doesn't create the additional you know, incentive to do the housework. I guess that that people feel in that gendered sort of thing. But again it's like these are stories we tell ourselves and you don't have to do it right. There is no rule that because you are married, the dinners have to be any different than they would be if you were a single parent. So you know, again we never know what's going on in any household dynamic. But these are also question you know, things you can discuss with your partner and hopefully you know if you are feeling overwhelmed. I presume if you are listening to this podcast, that you have chosen a partner who is not a complete jerk, misogynistic whatever, like, because that's just not really our demographic. So probably you guys can work out a solution. And maybe it's that he should do more. But it may also be that you have expectations that aren't, you know, necessarily required, and that's good to hash that out and figure out where the stories come from. And I will give this writer a free pass, and that she did just post it on her Facebook page, so maybe she was really just trying to rant about a bad day to her friends and it blew up in a way in which she was not intending. Like this didn't get published as an Atlantic article. Yeah, so I always wonder about those because you know, like there was another New York Times recent article recently of like what good Dads get away with, and you know, talking about it was basically this writer complaining about what her husband doesn't do, and I'm like, you know, I I feel like, if I'd like to stay married, I would avoid writing articles for national publications that throw my spouse under the bus. That's maybe just me, but I haven't read that article, but now I want to sounds juesy. Well, because we all have things that we could complain about about ourselves. Think about you could complain about me, I'm sure, think about again. My favorite reference are prior to guess Jemma Hartley, That's what her book kind of was. Yeah, I know, and he sounds like a pretty great guy. But anyways seem to be doing okay. Yeah, I don't know if they have they must have a very very good marriage that it could go through that and uh and and probably be stronger as as a result. But you know, I yeah, I it's complicated. I mean, I guess more power to someone who wants to point out some of the inequalities that do still exist on it. Like I've pointed out before how I feel that women are sometimes or I feel judged for things that I find my husband wouldn't be judged for. So I guess if the article was more pointing out that kind of thing and they wanted to throw their husband under the bus for it, more power to them. But it's hard for me to comment more haven't not read the actual article. Yeah, so maybe that'd be a future epithy Yeah, but you know, there are practical solutions and particularly, we know that a lot of listeners of this are in again to professional income households. Think of money as tool and think about what are my pain points? Is it possible that I could remove some of them instead of telling myself a story that I need to do all of it? You know, it would be a really fun project to actually go through this entire rent and rant and calculate the cost of like all the band aids to fix everything in her rent, and then subtract that from her an estimated salary. Look, she didn't need to make this rant because actually she could have ordered dinners and hired a trainer and had a babysitter and blah blah blah blah blah. Exactly. Well, our question today is somewhat related to this, So why don't we because it's this question of how you do relinquish some of these things, which I think is more the question. It's not that all of it as society makes me do X. It's that I feel I'm supposed to do X, and I have trouble letting go of the story that I should do X, and it is making me miserable. So I think that leads to our question, Yeah, go ahead re write it. So this person writes in that she loves the best of both worlds podcasts Again, Yeah, it's been really enlightening for me as a new mom and definitely made me feel like I am not going completely crazy during a pretty overwhelming time, which of course is our whole mission. So yay, glad that's working. So she says she has a question for both of us. As a type A perfectionist upholder, I am struggling to balance mothering, working and relaxing. I went back to work when my son was three months old, but left when he was around eight months old because her agency got new leadership. They eliminated telework and she felt that made the job feel impossible. So during that time, I still found time to spend time with my son, breastfeed, train for a marathon, and work. So what's what the train? Why? Anyway? No, I did it. I get it and work, but I was completely exhausted, sick all the time, and so stressed out. I was having trouble sleeping. I'm about to start a new job and I know that to survive, I'm going to have to lower my standards in some areas of life. Therefore, I have two questions, How do you know when to be a perfectionist and when to let things go? And how do you get over the fear that if you let something small slow, everything will be completely out of control, which is somewhat of a more psychological question. I think, you know, some people have real tendencies this way. It might bleed into anxiety, which is something that maybe somebody might need professional help to address. And if that is the case, there's nothing wrong with seeking that out. Do you want to give your answer? I like your answer? Okay, Well, yeah, I hope that language translation. I think our listener needs to use different language than lowering her standards, because if she is this perfectionist type a person, then some part of her brain's going to be up. But I don't want to lower my standards. And the issue here is that she already did lower her standards. She quit her job at eight months, which means she completely lowered her career standards. She was doing nothing in terms of bringing in income during that time. Those standards went way way way down. But that's not the story she's telling herself. Like the standards she's looking at are that if I'm you know, within the context of doing this. I need to do everything perfectly within this and if I can't do it, I will just quit, right, So I mean I get the whole point of like if telework is eliminated, it makes life a lot more difficult. But so the point is she has lowered her standards and she survived, like you know, life continued, so clearly she is capable of doing it. It's just a matter of changing her perception of what it means to lower her standards. And I thought maybe she wouldn't want to use this language of lowering her standards. Instead, I think she should think of achieving a lot in the fields that matter, and that the other fields don't matter, and so they're really irrelevant. Like I'm not judging myself on my knowledge of Chinese because there's no reason for me to have knowledge of Chinese, so sure that there's no standards that I'm lowering, and that it's just completely irrelevant. So I think she needs to think that way as well about various aspects that are not all that important. So you know, figure out what matters to you and not to anyone else, really question the stories of what matters to you. I had wrote that personally, I doubt anyone cares what your house looks like. I don't care what your house looks like. You know, Sarah doesn't care what your house looks like. Probably your your neighbors, your friends, I don't know. I mean people randomly stopping by your house. No one's randomly stopping by my house, Like, I just don't understand what this idea of this is internal. But if it does matter to you, then you can either throw money at it, or you can build in time for it. You can make sure it's a group project that everyone in your family is contributing to. But these are all things same thing. At work, you know, figure out what matters to you, the actual parts of your job description, working out or above your pay grade. That's a great phrase I heard from one of our former guests, Laurence Smith Brady. Always work at or above your pay grade. Focus on those things, you know, if only be responding to email in an hour, if that is legitimately something you feel is like so much part of your identity that you cannot let it get, but hopefully you will realize can't let it go. I like all that. I mean, I think another word for it would just be to be very intentional about your priorities because you one hundred percent can't do everything all at once. Nobody can. You can do a lot. It may be, for example, I mean, I don't know how old the baby is now, but maybe breastfeeding it's done with so great that will give you more time for other things. Maybe it's not the best time to train for a marathon. Maybe that could wait until your baby's too and you could do other fitness endeavors that are just enough but not enough to be prioritized. Because you talk about basically making yourself feel stressed and sick, and to me, the combination of the work and the breastfeeding and the marathon, it's like, I agree with your dubiousness about the marathon in this particular context, even though as we both know, we enjoy long distance running ourselves. You know, there's a time and a place for everything. I do agree with you that it may be that this person needs some work on reframing what she's doing right and working on perhaps some anxiety or around letting things go and admitting that she can't do everything, but not exercising the nuclear option, which was I guess getting rid of the job automatically just because it was something that she was able to do, because long term she may find that that didn't make the most sense. I mean, if that's if that was her choice when her child was an infant and it worked for her, then great. But it didn't sound like it happened in a happy context. It sounded like it happened in a very desperate context and after being miserable for a while. So how could we maybe prevent that the next time around if there is going to be a next time for her with another child? Yeah, well, and just starting a new job. I mean, the truth is all jobs have challenges, and unfortunately people sometimes change jobs thinking everything will be different, and it can be. But if anything is about you, you are still the person doing the new job. And so sometimes I get, you know, letters from people that it goes on like this, Well I had this job and then that turned out, you know, there were no boundaries and I was working all the time, and so I had to leave and then I found this another job. It started out great, but then it turned out they had no boundaries and I was over Always like, hmm, interesting pattern pattern. I wonder what is the common denominator between all these positions, and so we have to do some soul searching and working on ourselves to achieve that. I think you know, she says, how do you get over the fear that if you let something small slide, everything will be completely out of control? Again, this may be a larger issue that you need to work on personally. I just keep saying, you know, one bad day means nothing, one bad week means nothing. If you think about do you have any knowledge? For most of people listening to this, what were you worried about and thinking about on today's date two years ago? And I am guessing you have no clue, and being human, there was something like you were definitely mad about something, you were upset about something, you were frustrated about something, and two years on you have absolutely no clue what it is. So probably in two years, whatever it is you're worrying about will not matter. Something's obviously they will, you know, if it's a major health issue or something that's driving your marriage a part or something, yes, that will play out in two years, but most things do not rise to that level. It sometimes helped to change our language from oh no to oh well, I love that, I love oh no, to well. In fact, I think we used that when we thought we lost an episode the other week, and I was like, oh no, and I think your response is more like, oh well, we can always r it's true, like you know. And I emailed our guest and she was very nice about it, and she had a rate. She put a time on her schedule to redo the interview with me because we couldn't get back on Stara's calendar. She was in clinic. But I could do it. And you know, it wouldn't be as good as if we had both of us, but it would be there. We would have the same episode. It was just be paced together from that. Unfortunately we recovered the files. We didn't have to do it. It wasn't worth getting upset about at all. It's definitely an O well, not an O well, not an oh no, all right, Well, I think this brings us to our Love of the Week, which is actually a follow up from a previous episode. We had a question about a year ago from a listener who was considering going to law school as like an adult. So she had three children, she sort of was intensely in the mother phase with them, and then she decided to go back to work when they were maybe starting school as a paralegal. She was excelling as a paralegal, did great starts looking around and says, huh, you know, I got a you know, four puot oh gpa in college. I could probably do this stuff that the lawyers I'm working with do. And so she was debating going to law school, and she wanted to know, well, was she too old for law school? And we answered, no, you're not. You know, just think it through. If your family's supportive, and you know, you have a pretty clear idea of what lawyers do with their days, and if that looks attractive to you, then sure, why not. I found this interesting because we, I think had the most negative feedback we've ever gotten on an answer to that question. And I don't know if there's a proportion of unhappy lawyers out there or what it is, but I got a lot of comments on my blog about this. I don't know if you heard from as many people, but no, I think it was mostly in your blog. Yeah, it was a lot of people like but yeah, they were. They were generally from women who had been in big law for maybe a decade saying like, no, don't do it. And cautioning her about not being able to pay back her loans. And I mean, I guess we don't have a long term answer of what's going to happen with this person, this listener. But Laura, do you want to give them the happy news? The happy update is she took the ELSAT, got an incredible score on it. Nailed it, nailed it, totally nailed it. She was accepted to a couple of really big, fancy law schools. However, she was also accepted to a state law school that was near extended family, and that gave her a full ride, and she wants to work in that and she has her goals in mind, and she knows that there certainly is a path from this law school to what she wants to do. She's not thinking about. She recognizes that law does sometimes depend on name recognition if you're thinking of working for a big firm, but that was never her aspiration. So she wants to practice in the state near extended family, so she and her husband are in the process of moving there. She will be enrolling in the fall, again, not taking on any debt because it's completely paid for. And also, I think what some of these lawyers were going through had such a negative response to this is they've sort of been through the early kid years with the whole billable hour expectations. But of course her kids are now in school right like, they're older, and you know, she said she focused intensely on that for the first part of their lives, and now she's ready to do something professionally herself that she's very excited about. And I think it's so wonderful that her family's like completely behind that. Her husband's like, yeah, I'm just going to find a new job in this new state and it's going to be great, presumably. You know, they've got a lot of extended family there, so a lot of connections that they're pretty positive about that. So yeah, it's super cool that she's not even going into any debt, you do. I mean, that is the most awesome part of this. And I'm sure she could be able to do internships during the summer, so she'll be earning something with that, And yeah, I think this is such a wonderful result and I'm thrilled for her and that she went for her goal, for her dream. So that's our love of the week. A people who make it happen all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about leaning in and leaning out and what that means. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.