Intro

[00:00:00] Jill Waddell: I actually, even myself, can't believe that I am capable of doing this stuff. But it really is a matter of just going for it and knowing that if it's something that really matters to you, like this program matters to me, you will find a way. When it really comes down to it, it is your mindset. If you're not willing to do it and not, keep driving for it, then it, you know, it's easy to give up on it.

[00:00:31] Vanessa Vakharia: Longtime listeners may recognize that voice as Jill Waddell, who I interviewed way back in 2020. If you wanna hear her whole story, you can scroll back in your podcast feed to season two, episode four, or just click the link in this episode's description. But briefly, Jill's inspiring story is that when she turned 40, she decided that after spending years as a stay-at-home mom, raising kids and working from home in the nutrition and fitness field, she wanted to do a full out career change and go back to school for power engineering, and that meant overcoming some hardcore math trauma. 

I mean, to give you an idea of where she started, Jill used to work at a busy Tim Horton's drive-through window when she was 16, and management pressured her to quickly calculate change in her head as all these cars were piling up. And as we all know, math plus timed tests equals major math trauma. So to cope with the pressure, she would just like randomly throw change at customers and hope it was close. So her story of changing career paths later in life and also of facing her fears head on was such an inspiration. 

And humble brag, the reason she was on the podcast in the first place was that she reached out to us to say that the first season of Math Therapy was a huge factor in giving her the confidence to think she really could be a math person after all. Fast forward to December 2021, when we actually caught up with Jill while recording Season Four to find out how school was going for her. We never got around to sharing it with you, so as we gear up for Season Five which starts very soon, we wanted to share the triumphant conclusion to Jill's incredible story. Here it is. 

Interview

Hi, Jill. Welcome back to the podcast!

[00:02:04] Jill Waddell: Hi, Vanessa. 

[00:02:05] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, okay, so when we last had you on, you were just starting out your engineering degree, your power engineering degree, and you were really, really stressed about the math, let's say. Let's put that lightly. But I mean, it was such an incredible story because you had decided to go back to school at the age of 40 and you were in your power engineering program and you were kind of struggling and we did a little bit of math therapy. 

And now fast forward to 2021 when you have not only successfully graduated, but you were, this is like Saved By The Bell, you were valedictorian! 

[00:02:42] Jill Waddell: Yes. 

[00:02:43] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. 

[00:02:43] Jill Waddell: Yeah!

[00:02:44] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. So the last time we spoke, you were talking about how you went to the bathroom in the middle of class to cry because you were so stressed about the math. So 

[00:02:52] Jill Waddell: Yes. 

[00:02:52] Vanessa Vakharia: How did you, how did you rebuild that relationship with math? Like, how did you manage that math anxiety? I mean, can, can we take any credit for it? Can our podcast take any credit? I would, you know, obviously the answer is probably no, but I'm just trying to get myself in there. You know? Tell us how it happened. 

[00:03:06] Jill Waddell: No, no. It really, it did Vanessa. Because being exposed, listening to Math Therapy, kind of following you through your social media outlets and listening to your podcast, it did kind of give me, I shouldn't say kind of, it really did give me insight that I wasn't alone. 

[00:03:24] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, stop. 

[00:03:25] Jill Waddell: No, really I wasn't, I didn't feel, I, it didn't feel so alone that I was struggling with math because I really did have this preconceived notion that, you know, I'm in my forties now, you should be getting over this math complex that you seem to think you have, kind of suck it up and move on. But I really did struggle with it. 

And of course, going back to school, I'm a mature student, I'm, you know, in this class with a bunch of kids that have just graduated high school or have only been out of high school for so many years, math is fresh in their minds and I had not only struggled with math, but also had been removed from it for so long.

So by the time I entered into this, playing field of needing and requiring to do math every single day, I really felt like I just wasn't capable of handling the pressure of it. But because of Math Therapy, because of seeing and being exposed to it as I was with you, it gave me confidence to feel like it's time to actually just really buckle down and learn this. And, and it, I was able to overcome the confidence factor. 

[00:04:38] Vanessa Vakharia: How, so, how? How would you tell, if you were telling listeners who want to, you know, who are like so inspired by your story, cause I know people were even inspired by your story the first time you were on the podcast, if they were like, what's one thing I can do? Like how do I start? What would you say to them? 

[00:04:53] Jill Waddell: I honestly, I don't have anything super inspiring to say except for you just have to do it. You just have to, 

[00:04:58] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. Well it's like exposure therapy almost. Like you just have to do math every day.

[00:05:02] Jill Waddell: Yes. You just, you have to do it. And accept the fact that it sucks, like there are, 

[00:05:07] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:05:08] Jill Waddell: It's going to suck. 

[00:05:09] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:05:09] Jill Waddell: It's very uncomfortable. You know, it wasn't like I had the opportunity to sit back and go, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna. Will myself through this or psych myself through this or, or have this, you know, aha moment that, okay, I'm just going to attempt this. 

Like I said in the first podcast, I recall telling you that I had a lot to lose, to do this program and to, to put myself in this position of vulnerability, I had a lot to lose. I had to finish this program. I had to complete it. And so, you know, getting the marks back, like I had mentioned to you, there's a lot of younger people in my class that were boohooing because they only got a 96 on their physics. And I was like jumping for freaking joy that I had gotten a 79, you know, 

[00:06:02] Vanessa Vakharia: Which you should be! 

[00:06:04] Jill Waddell: And I, yeah, 

[00:06:05] Vanessa Vakharia: Coming from a place where you're crying over math, that's like a massive accomplishment! 

[00:06:09] Jill Waddell: It was, it was huge. Just to, just to get a 61, to pass it, like, I was so happy. So, that was part of it. I just really had to jump in feet first and just, and just do it. 

[00:06:24] Vanessa Vakharia: And how, you know, at one point you were talking to us about how, you know, part of this was inspired by your daughter who was seeing you have these math meltdowns. Like how did, how do you think all of this affected her in the end? Um, like do you think she's like so inspired by you and is like, fuck, I can never, like, I should never say I can't do math. Like, what's the vibe?

[00:06:42] Jill Waddell: I think it's the, not only the math, but just doing the things that are hard. 

[00:06:47] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:06:47] Jill Waddell: And doing the things that are really uncomfortable. The math part of it is definitely the, I mean, obviously it's the bigger reason why we're talking right now, but you know, when you really look at the reasons for why I had to do it and had to keep going was largely because of knowing that I had to be brave about it, I had to stick it out, I had to do it even when it was so, so uncomfortable.

I sometimes don't spend a lot of time thinking about those two years in school, because even when my husband and I talk about it, we're like, oh, like a shiver, cause it was, it was so difficult for our family, for me to overcome like the nightly, or I shouldn't say nightly, but like weekly, like every Sunday night, the crying spells of like, what have I done, why am why am I doing this? 

And that wasn't something that I think my kids saw a ton of. 

[00:07:42] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. 

[00:07:42] Jill Waddell: But they did, they did know how uncomfortable it was for me and how much I had to, to overcome. So if it's not affected them now, I am very confident that when they are in their thirties or forties, that they'll remember like, holy crap, my mom did that when she was my age, and I can't believe that she completed the task that she had set out to do. 

[00:08:08] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, I think it's so inspiring because, you know, often I give talks to parents about how to raise kids who aren't afraid of math. And one of the pieces of advice I give them is, you need to, you know, drill that lesson down, that hard things are not bad things or like, hard things aren't things to be avoided.

And I always say to parents, find instances in your own life where you can model that, right? It doesn't have to be math, it doesn't have to be school, but like, you know, the idea of like, even like raising a kid is really hard, or doing those things you don't wanna do. But I think in your situation it's like the perfect storm because A, it was around school and it was around math, and also like it was visible. It's not like you had to sit down with your kids and be like, back in my day we used to like da da da. And they're like, okay, mom, like whatever, like I don't even, this is so unrelatable. They actually were able to see you do that, and to keep going through with it, and not give up and come out on the other side.

So it's like the most perfect lesson, right? It's like organic, you didn't have to tell a story, you didn't have to be preachy, they just got to witness it. So it's such an incredible opportunity and a lesson they'll never forget. So, Yeah, you're amazing. 

And I guess I, I have one last question before we wrap up, which is, if you had to give, you know, people always ask this, like what advice would you give to your younger self, but I wanna know what advice you would give to yourself when starting your degree. Like if you were giving advice to yourself who was interviewed on the previous season of the podcast, what would you say? 

[00:09:37] Jill Waddell: I would probably, I mean, for the practicality of it, I would probably tell myself to do a couple of refresher courses. I barely passed high school math you know, way back in the late nineties, you only had to have 50% to pass a class, not 60%. I passed math with a 51, so that was what I had to go on. By the time I went to college, they were like, well, you can come into the program, absolutely, you've got math. "You've got math", I'm air quoting, and I'm, I was like, okay. So I go in and, I mean, that was probably a portion of why I was stealing myself away to the bathroom to cry because I was so out of it.

Like I, I remember one of the math teachers, I went to this one week math bootcamp before the class started. I'm so glad I did it. But I remember going and being like, what's a coefficient? They were talking about coefficients, right? And I didn't, that was something that I just, whether they mentioned it in high school and I didn't like take it in, I just had no sweet clue what a coefficient was. So there was little fundamental terms that I was still trying to catch up on. So I wish that I had known better to just do some refresher stuff. 

And I also would tell myself it's gonna be okay. Like, I stressed out, I worried so much about entering this program. I wasted so much energy stressing about, am I gonna get a job? Is this, if I don't succeed at this, I've basically failed everything? I would tell myself it's gonna be okay. It's going to work out well in the end. Math isn't the only thing that's going to get you through this, but certainly for the sake of what the basis of the program was and how math heavy it was, I would definitely have taken the time to prepare a little bit beforehand. 

[00:11:36] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Very good advice. And you know what, I wasn't gonna ask you this because I've already asked it to you, but I feel like I should ask it to you a second time. So it's the question we always ask our guests on the podcast, and now I feel like, I don't know, I don't even remember what your answer was before, but I feel like we're gonna do a back to back. 

[00:11:54] Jill Waddell: Yeah. 

[00:11:54] Vanessa Vakharia: What would you say to someone if they were like, but Jill, I'm just not a math person. 

[00:11:59] Jill Waddell: Yeah. You'll surprise yourself.

[00:12:00] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh!

[00:12:00] Jill Waddell: You really will. 

[00:12:01] Vanessa Vakharia: Bam! Bam!

[00:12:02] Jill Waddell: Yeah. 

[00:12:02] Vanessa Vakharia: Bam! 

Thank you so much for coming on again. You are a hero. Also, I don't know if you remember this, but last interview you promised you would send us a picture of you in your power engineering uniform. 

[00:12:15] Jill Waddell: Yes!

[00:12:15] Vanessa Vakharia: So we better get that. And I want a valedictorian picture, like I want them both. Like, okay, is there a picture of that? Did you give a speech? You must have. 

[00:12:24] Jill Waddell: Well, cuz of good old Covid, I had to do it online, so it's a video that I did. 

[00:12:28] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my god, please send.

[00:12:30] Jill Waddell: I'll see if I can find it, 

[00:12:32] Vanessa Vakharia: Jill, you know you can find it. I know you know exactly where it is. Okay. Fine. 

All right. Thank you so much. 

[00:12:38] Jill Waddell: Yeah, it was great to see you. 

[00:12:40] Vanessa Vakharia: Bye.

[00:12:40] Jill Waddell: Okay, bye-bye.

Outro

[00:12:43] Vanessa Vakharia: Isn't she the coolest? I mean, what an inspiration. However, it's been over a year and she still hasn't sent that valedictorian video to me. Jill, I'm onto you! I'm not giving up though. 

If you are someone you know has overcome math trauma like Jill has and done a full 180 career reset, please let us know. We're on Twitter @maththerapy and I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @themathguru. I could not be more excited to announce that Season Five is launching next week, and guys, you have no idea what a mathematical rollercoaster you're in for. I'm coming at your podcast feeds with literally some of my biggest math heroes.

So I'm gonna ask you a favor. If Math Therapy has helped you in any way, I'd love for you to share the podcast with someone this week, anyone. Tweet your favorite quote, share your favorite episode with a friend, do a TikTok dance, about how the show has like helped you overcome math trauma, I mean, I know that doesn't make sense, but whatever.

Bottom line, thank you for listening and supporting the show, and get pumped for Season Five.