When does it make sense for a small town high school student to take the less travel? What makes that risk worthwhile? For me, it was a chance to express my independence, navigate in a world I'd not... Experienced, and no 1 around me had either and set myself on a path toward financial freedom. Choosing to go to university turned out to be the first step, but not the last toward those goals.

That's the short story. Hi. I'm Beki Fraser, an award winning coach, author an entrepreneur. I'm also a leader shaped by decades of experience, inviting others on a journey towards adaptable leadership and fulfilled potential. Welcome to Short Story Long.

In this podcast, I share stories of inflection points in my life that changed who I am, what I do and how I do it. Striving for independence and freedom from parents, isn't a particularly unique condition for a high school graduate. A quote from French explorer Andre Represents how I felt at that time. You can't discover new lands without the courage to lose sight of the shore. At that time, I had great grades and truly awful study habits.

I enjoyed the farm life in many ways, but knew it wasn't my forever. My family knew that too. My siblings had different journeys they'd started by then, and those weren't for me. Earlier, I told you the short story, and this is the long version. I knew I needed to play on a different stage than what my town offered.

Today, it's a relief to return to that small town in that farm. I recognize it, and I refer to it as home even today. When I was in high school, it was about moving forward beyond that existing shore, so I could discover new lands and depths of myself. For many people that step off the shore would be a scary 1. For me, I felt excited and didn't recognize or acknowledge the fear.

I felt propelled toward a new direction. And as I often do? Yeah. Well, I I did it my way. Much would change in those first few years heading to university, transitioning and finding my place, and ultimately choosing and completing a degree.

It all needed to start with the idea that university, was the next best step for me. And in some ways that might have been a really strange decision. Right? Like, no 1 in my life, no 1 in my family had ever gone to university before. So why me?

I was 1 of the top few in my high school class. Now let's put that into perspective. My class was like, a hundred and 10 people, so let's and I get crazy about how smart I was. It's just that I was a big fish in a small pond, if you will. And frankly, many of my classmates would go on to college and into university just like I did.

My family also seemed to assume that I would actually go on to university. There was never really a whole lot of conversation about that. And so I was actually able to take what ultimately would have been called Ap Ke. It wasn't called that. Nothing that fancy back then and I was considered to be a smart kid, though I studied little, and I just tested well.

That testing was kind of important because I also had to navigate that application process. Anyone who's ever gone through the application process for university knows that there are challenges and hurdles that are untold. If you have not experienced that or don't have someone to guide you, that's challenging. Look, my parents were supportive. Yet, they were not aware of the steps or the process or anything along that line.

And my career office or whatever they called it back then. They wanted to be helpful, but they didn't have a lot of resources either. And then my funding also took a hit when my savings was actually stolen. To this day, I actually don't know entirely what happened but apparently, my savings account just got drained 1 day. Somebody walked off with it.

And I many years later, don't have any idea whatever happened to those hundreds of dollars that I had, worked hard to achieve. During that time, I had done things like painting, external houses and even some set and some of it, like commercial painting inside. So I'd worked hard. I'd put my life at risk. I was hanging off from ladders, and all of that money was gone.

And then I needed to prep what they call the Fa. Yeah. The fa, the free application for federal student aid. Isn't that a nice name? It's not a nice form.

It's a lot of information, and it required getting tax forms from my parents, and my parents weren't always all that willing to share the financial information of the family. That's not where I learned how to manage money. They they weren't against me knowing, how to manage money anyway, but they were not extremely thrilled with me knowing the financial situation of the family itself. Many ways, I can understand that more later in life, but back then, I was like, what? I need to know this.

You need to give me this information. And ultimately, yeah, they gave it to me. It was just they kinda gave me the side I first a little bit. And as I think back on that, I really think about this as as truly that inflection point for me about going to university. Many people feel more comfortable, relying on others to help guide through a situation like this.

I had a choice to rely on others who didn't have experience to guide me. Or rely on myself and sort out all by myself. I was born independent. So naturally, I chose to do it my way. And looking back on that, it might have been actually a little beneficial to get a little help from somebody, but I'd still don't know looking back who I might have asked about that.

There were a couple of things that I could have frankly done a little bit better. Like I don't know, apply to more than 1 school. And so I didn't do a campus visit. My criteria was really based on geography and cost. So the geography, the Minnesota in Wisconsin actually had what they called Agreement, I would imagine they probably still have that.

So if I had gone to a state school in Minnesota, I would have paid the same about as if I had gone to a state school in Wisconsin. A And the farm was maybe an hour drive from the twin cities. That was a little too close. In terms of geography. I needed to spread my wings.

I was looking for a place to be that wasn't an hour away. And so I looked for universities that were a little bit farther away, but not the most distant. And also could get in there for reasonable cost. Right? So I needed to make sure that I was still paying like University of Wisconsin, tuition instead of private school tuition.

Private school tuition was just way out of reach. And so I was trying to manage both of those things, and I ended up with the university of Wisconsin Madison, Why would I apply anywhere, but the school I wanted to go to? It was not a good choice. But I got lucky and they let me in. So I guess it turned out okay, but honestly, probably not the best thing for me to do.

Like I say, it turned out well. It didn't end up that way because I designed it so well. There were were a lot of things that could have gone wrong. So 1 is, of course, the university of Wisconsin Mattis and might have rejected my application to go to school. The other really obvious 1 is that when I completed all of that financial paperwork, there were couple of things that were missing in terms of that financial package coming back to me.

I was eligible for all of the, you know, subsidized and un subsidized loans that were out there, but I really wasn't eligible for a lot of the kind of extra funding, like different grants and things like that. 1 of the key things was that, you know, there wasn't an internet for me to rely on while I was looking. And so I didn't have access to know and understand, what kinds of grants I might have been eligible for. There was no way for me to find that out in any kind of easy way. And I truly believe there was a lot of money that I left on the table.

And so to make up that difference, they gave me what they call work study. I don't actually remember what minimum wage was back there. But if my pay was at or below minimum wage, I would not be surprised. That work study job, while I was grateful to have it, was definitely not something that was going to pay my rent. And I ended up needing to work 40 hours a week in addition to carrying a full load of credit hours during my entire university time, because I needed to be able to pay the bills even with roommates.

So there weren't all the structures that were in place when I left to go to my first day and kind of my orientation going into the university. I do remember that drop off day. And we had brought my few belongings down. My roommate at the time was actually someone I knew, And so that was helpful for that first semester because I had at least someone I could recognize and had some basic relationship with. There was nice little combination there of independence, but also familiarity in terms of those first days.

That doesn't mean that I wasn't a little out of my element. I mean, I wasn't completely new to a, a kind of a city kind of environment. The twin cities is significantly larger than Madison, Wisconsin. I believe they're population might have been about a hundred thousand and then then students came in and more than doubled that population. If you go to a major university city that's going to be the answer in most of those situations, it was definitely true in Madison.

But still, I was trying to adapt and understand that now this is where I live. And I think my dad picked up on that a little bit because my dad wasn't the guy who was... Mister emotional showing all of his feelings all of the time, and this was a standout moment for me for the remainder of of his life, where I remembered this as a pivotal time when he was way more sentimental, than he normally was. There was hugging. There was telling me love me, all of that kind of stuff.

And I'd gotten hugs. He told me loved me. It's just it really stood out in my mind as he's standing there, watching his youngest leaving and, staying out for university, and then he had to drive what 3 and a half 4 hour drive hours home in order to kinda leave his little girl behind. I can't imagine how hard that might have been for him. And yet he was showing me how much he cared in that moment and stayed strong for me.

That transition into that college experience was actually somewhat complicated in not necessarily bad ways. Like, there were a lot of different things that really happened. And I did have some of those federal loans, and I did have a a work study kind of role and actually, that work study role turned out to be a really positive kind of thing. I ended up working at the law library. And I learned a lot of different skills during that time that I was able to transfer into...

Getting my homework done, getting things done, knowing how things worked within the university, and there were a lot of really handy things that came from taking on that that role. It's just it took 40 hours a week out of my life, and that was a lot for a student to be kinda donating to the non university experience, if you will. I also had that huge gap of not having knowledge about other grants, and I kept on hearing about other students who got this grant and that grant because they knew about those. I'd gotten a couple because of my academic achievement, but it turns out, and I never bothered to look because sometimes you don't want to know how much money you left on the table. And so I just know that there was room for more support for me that I never had the chance to take advantage of.

1 of the other transitions that I went through was really on that social front. This is a big university. And I I knew that, but I didn't really understand that when I was going through the application process. This was truly 1 of my first introductions to any kind of relationship with people of color. I did have a couple of people who were people of color when I was in high school, but it wasn't a majority of the people that I was interacting with.

And I had to learn a lot about some of the phrases, some of the language that I had grown up using that it turns out was really offensive. And I really didn't want to offend people. I didn't want to hurt people's feelings. And so when people were courageous enough to say, hey, back. Really?

Like, what are you doing? I needed to look into myself and say, that's on me. Right? Like, I have to make sure that I am not hurting people with the words that I use, even if I just didn't even recognize that they were hurtful, I needed to educate myself, and I needed to understand that these were people who had a different life experience than me, and they were being pretty forgiving of my stepping on my own tongue to be honest. And so I wanted to make sure that I was giving back to them, all of what the richness that they were giving to me at that particular point in time.

While at that time, I was a cigarette smoker, I have since quit, I applaud myself, but I was a cigarette smoker when I was in university and there were others that were in, let's say drugs beyond tobacco and alcohol at that point in time. And I did get some pretty shocking exposure to that as well. I do remember someone who was really having a bad trip, and had contacted me, and I went down and I sat with her. And I will tell you that was an educational experience for me. Where watching her go through what an awful experience gave me the strength that when there was any kind of peer pressure about that kind of thing.

She would come to mind in that instance, and I'd be like, yeah. No. It's all good. I'm fine. I don't need that.

And to this day, never tried anything that was particularly hard in terms of drugs because I just frankly might have been more afraid than anything else if I'm honest, but it also kept me out of trouble in some ways. Naturally, it wasn't just about the financial and the social aspects of being at the university. I also was supposed to be studying. I wasn't very good at that. And I had never developed those study habits.

Throughout my life. And I wasn't really recognizing fully the importance of even if I had taken a class or taken a course that was somewhat related to the topic I didn't know it yet. I didn't know it at that level at that exam. When I started in university, my chosen degree was applied mathematics, engineering and physics. I loved math.

To this day, I love math. I love puzzles. I love a good spreadsheet. I love all of those things, and it's very true that I probably could have been successful in getting that degree. Except I didn't have the focus.

I didn't have the drive. And in reality, I don't believe I had the passion to complete that degree. It showed in my grades. And so my Gpa was embarrassing. It was just flat out embarrassing.

And I recognize recognized that I wasn't going to do well going forward with that degree, and I tried to get into the business school, and my Gpa was so bad that they said, becky. No. I mean, you're cute, but no. And so I needed to find a place where I could complete my degree. Funding wasn't going to be something that was going to keep going so that I could do a 5 or 6 year plan.

I needed to get a degree and get done so that I could start paying off the debt. That I was acc. And so I did find a program that was called agricultural economics. And used all of my math and in fact, mathematics ties very nicely into economics. Once you kind of know all of the calculus.

It's really magical, how that transfers over into economics. So it was actually a pretty easy transition in some respects for me to be able to move into that agricultural econ. Base. And I was able to expand into getting out sooner, but not losing so many of the credits that I had needed before I had spent some time thinking about that applied mathematics engineering and physics and where that degree could turn into a profession after I finished at university. As soon as I switched, from that program over into agricultural economics, my focus turned to 100 percent toward get this done and far less on what will I do when I'm done?

I had really no clarity about what was going to be the career path in front of me when I finished that degree, and that really didn't turn out so great for me. When I wasn't thinking that second step forward, 1 of the things that ended up happening was that the only real career choice viable, that I had was to go into some of these agricultural organization that were available at the time, but the level of my education wasn't going to get me into those places at that time, I didn't have a network for that. I wasn't able to do internships because I needed to work full time to get myself through school, and I was missing a lot of the necessary pieces for me to move from college graduate to first employment. It was not easy to find a role after I graduated. I cobb together a couple of part time things, I think I got fired once, but they were really nice about it.

They said, we don't really need a receptionist anymore. I may have been the worst receptionist ever, but it's also true that they didn't really need 1. So, you know, it's... 6 1 half dozen of another whether I got fired or they just didn't need me anymore. Either way, I no longer had that part time job.

Later, I did find a limited term employment position with the university before 6 really finding a full time role with benefits. Limited term employment at that time meant that I was temporary. I had no benefits, and I had a bonus of... I was also on soft funding. And that means that it was based on grant funding from organizations like Usa id and World bank places like that.

So there wasn't a lot of future for me in that role unless that funding continued. You can hear in the Novel in the next episode how I was actually accused of staging a coup with that employer. I went to University. So what? Now what?

I don't know, doesn't need to be a long term condition. That's 1 of the key learnings that I had by going to university. I started with what I knew. Or I thought I knew. And I built from that foundation.

Later I learned that I could build from that, and then I could build from that, and it got me to a variety of different places within my career and within my life, It wasn't the strongest foundation to start my career in the way that I graduated from university, but it was a different launch point than where I was when I graduated from high school. Is really at the core of why I truly believe that going to university isn't just about getting the education. Unfortunately, especially toward the end that was my critical focus. But in time since I was in school, I'd really realize how many other things were benefiting me all of the time. 1 of the key elements of that, was really the broader and deeper exposure to people of color.

I had... My first roommate was that known person who I kinda knew, kind of had a relationship with, and then we kinda moved apart after that first semester. So my second semester, I actually moved in with a friend that I had made who had a bit of a mixed background in terms of heritage and her experience and her life. And she educated me in ways that, honestly, I couldn't even articulate all the ways because they just became ingrained. I started off university, not knowing anything, really about people of color.

I had interacted with a couple that didn't know mean and I knew anything about them or anything about their background. I looked at them as a reflection of me. I wasn't thinking about them as the experiences that they brought to the table. And that roommate was the beginning of me understanding how deeply different other people's experiences were from mine. And how my language was downright ignorant, in some respects, not because I was stupid, but because I didn't know, and I didn't appreciate how my words might have an effect on other people.

And 1 of the things you hear from me all of the time even now is words matter. And she was definitely 1 of the beginning pieces of me creating these building blocks to understand just how much those words matter. I also believe now, and I didn't understand then, as much anyway, that you can be an ally without living the same experience. When you say that there's something about your life and your experience and how you grew up, and it's different for mine Let's just be honest. It doesn't make mind right or yours right, it just means it's different.

And as an opportunity for us to learn and engage in things, and maybe even change my perspective. It is absolutely true that my perspective on the world when I was 18 going into university is vastly different from where I am. Let's just call it an older age today. I really had to recognize people of color. People in the Lgbtq plus community, naturally, it wasn't called that then, but I...

It is what it's called now, so I'm gonna run with it then. I remember 1 instance when a class made of mine made the difficult decision. To come out to me as a gay man. And I remember how afraid he was to tell me. And that actually made me a little bit sad, and I remember asking him, did you really think that would be a problem for me And I got educated again because his answer to me was you never really know.

Sometimes you think people will be okay and they're not. And other people you think Oh is going to be a hard conversation, and it goes just fine. We could find those areas that were common even though there were also areas that we just had a different life experience and different desires in our life. And that really stands out to me not only, in terms of people of color or sexual orientation or lifestyle choices or anything like that. It's actually we can get curious about how people live their lives and expand from that.

And I really do believe that my foundation for that started at that point in time. It's also a time that I recognized that some of the things that I said or did, I could do it my way. I could make my choices. I had started off in a very technical program and, look, economics is still very technical, but it's not engineering, and it's not physics. And so making that decision to shift and to pursue the path that would get me out of university faster, now I have the knowledge that, of course, it didn't set me up the best for finding that first role.

But I didn't have anyone to blame for that. It was my choice. It was my decision, and that was another element that I have taken into my life into my career going forward. I'm not going to make a choice because someone else tells me it's the right thing for me. Now my parents would say that that was true at birth for me, But it turns out it's something that can get a little bit developed over time as well.

And during this period of my life, it became very foundational for me that... If I made a decision because someone else told me to do it, then it didn't work, then I wanted to blame them. And ultimately, I had still made that choice. So if it doesn't feel right for me, I no longer go along to get along. I can be perceived as difficult.

I get it, but I'm also not going to make a decision that doesn't work out for me when it's someone else's choice. I have to be on board or I don't go forward and really it comes from recognizing the responsibility of making decisions and the accountability that comes, from whatever the consequences are coming after that. I don't choose to order from someone else's menu, I like to find my choices in my own space and time. And Basically what that means is I look in the refrigerator see the ingredients and make my own meal sometimes. The other key thing that I think is really important about this particular time in my life that I had no recognition of at the time.

Was how much I was a bit of maybe what I would call a trail blazer. My family members, including my sister actually have gone on to go get their university degrees since then. Now my sister didn't do it because I did it, My sister did it because she wanted to do it. And it turns out that when we were making those life choices at the beginning. I went to university first, she got married.

And then later, She went to university, and I got married. So in some ways, we ended up walking parts of the same path just in a different order. And again, there's no right or wrong in terms of making those choices. What I love about the trail blades part of it is that it opened it up to be a possibility within my family, where before then, it was this big challenge that felt like this big mountain to climb, and now it's just the foot hills, and that worked out just fine for us. Others have expanded their horizons by other means.

So my brother took over the family farm, and he's been very successful with that. Now, we're both entrepreneurs, and who would have ever predicted back when I had graduated from high school that we would at this time in our life have things like that that are in common. I think that's exciting, and it's an opportunity where I could see those possibilities because I'm seeing him do things. I even remember when I told my dad that I was going to start my coaching practice. He started to laugh and said, so you finally figured out that you don't do very well working for other people, and you have to design your own life going forward.

He's like, I've known that. For a long time. I don't know why you were so slow coming to that conclusion. It's not that I'm completely une unemployment, but I do understand his point when it comes to that. I do celebrate The journeys, my siblings have taken without following them myself.

None of us took an easy path. We simply took the path that made the most sense to us. There is no easy path available when you reach for growth and knowledge. We learn from our mistakes and our trials in life. You have a chance to meet interesting people that add to your view of the world, It gives you ownership of the path you've taken in life, the lows and the highs, and stepping off the shore absolutely takes courage.

The reward is perspective and self awareness found in those land Thank you for listening to my story. My hope is that you will get insights for leading is you. If you know someone who would benefit from this episode, be sure to share it. Interested in connecting with me on Linkedin? Drop me a note telling me where you found me.

The link will be in the show no us. Okay. Bye.