106: Informal Mentorship and Mentoring Neurodiverse Students with Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, everyone. Welcome to the podcast! Today I have another really wonderful guest, who's going to be talking to us all about informal mentorship and mentoring neurodiverse students. Our guest is Stephanie Santos Youngblood and I'm gonna go ahead and get started by reading her bio. Stephanie is a doctoral student in the leadership and innovation EdD program at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and also holds an MA in teaching English as a second language from Columbia University, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Connecticut. She is passionate about supporting first generation college students and neurodiverse students through their college journeys. Yes. Welcome to the podcast, Stephanie.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Thank you so much for having me.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Of course. So I'm gonna ask you to do what I typically ask my guests, which is to share a little bit more about yourself, your background, backstory, and your educational trajectory?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Oh, my gosh, well, I grew up in Connecticut. So I'm an LA transplant now. I lived here for about 10 years. And, you know, growing up, I didn't really know what careers are out there. What jobs are out there, I always talk about them as like the playschool or the Lego careers. Because if there wasn't a Lego character for it, or Lego set for I didn't really know it existed. And so as I was going through college, you know, I set my sights on teaching. I didn't know the term first-generation college student, I don't think it was really in use and as widespread a way as it is now. And there certainly weren't, you know, centers for first gen students who are first to go or I'm the first or any of these slogans or centers. And so, navigating college just trying to reach that goal of becoming a teacher was very much like a trial and error type of experience. And I did teach K 12, ESL and bilingual ed for a little bit. And I took the craziest career journey with just so many twists and turns, which I think is more and more common these days, you know, to just kind of see where opportunities take you. And now I am getting my EdD, hoping to really use that to transform the higher ed landscape to be a place where first-gens don't accommodate the school, but the school accommodates and includes and welcomes and really takes full advantage of all the strengths of first-gens.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

That's a really great way for you to introduce yourself. I feel like that was really succinct too.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

I've been doing a lot of job interviews. So I think I'm getting good at it now.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I can tell. I was like you've done this before?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

A few times. Yeah.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So you mentioned you didn't really know what it was like being a first-gen student. And then you also mentioned your interest in teaching, your on experience with K through 12, and now wanting to be in higher education in general. And so I'm wondering, at what point did you start to consider the topic of informal mentorship? Well, first of all, like, what does informal mentorship mean? And then at one point, did you realize that that was a thing either for you? Or for the folks that you yourself mentor? Or femtor?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Yeah, I think informal mentorship, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's those connections that you have that weren't set up by anyone that weren't, that weren't made through any kind of formal program. It's just like being set up on a date to meet someone versus just like running into someone meeting them and deciding to hang out, right. So there are so many people in our lives that are even outside of a campus that serve as informal mentors to us by giving us some kind of life guidance, right? We all rely in some way shape or form on our elders. And I'm gonna use that term very loosely because sometimes people are younger than us, but they kind of serve as an elder because they have a certain experience. And so we really rely on a lot of those people in that network, which I think is really, really important for especially first-gen students to get through college.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

You know, those relationships are what keeps people going. And they're so important and they're not always recognized by a university. They're not always the documented, they don't always show up in metrics. And so a lot of times we see these reports, I know, I just use this, this citation and a paper I wrote, so I'm going to throw it out there. But you see put out University of California system put out a report, where they talked about first-gen graduation rates, and typically those are so much lower than continuing generation students. And so what we see at like UCLA, for example, and other UC schools is that they're almost on par with continuing gen students. And in my experience, working for a UC and knowing a lot of UCLA students is that that's not really necessarily because of anything that university formally did to support them and support their retention, it's usually in spite of the barriers that exist. And a lot of that mentorship that they received that really helped them actually graduate was from informal mentors.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And in my case, where my interest lies, is with the campus service workers. And so these might be custodians, housekeepers, food service staff, maintenance workers, and they tend to be the most diverse workforce on a campus. Yet, they're an invisible workforce. They're also people that students see probably more than anyone else, if you think about, you know, running into the custodian who might clean in your dorm room, for example, you might see them every day. And often, because they are such a diverse population, they provide a bridge back to the community, the culture, the family, that you kind of are in this struggle deciding how much of it you have to leave behind when you're in college, not because you want to. Because that's the expectation of this kind of dominant cultural set of norms that exists on a college campus. So what I saw was that sometimes that connection with someone who has not been the college who isn't from this country who doesn't speak English as their first language who can't help you write a paper necessarily, although sometimes they can, but can't necessarily help you write a paper or fill out your financial aid form, provide the most dense, meaningful and impactful types of mentorship. And I remember my experience in college just being terrified all my professors and just anyone I would have to talk to, if someone had an office, I was just like, I don't even know how to enter the office like, do I knock? How long do I wait after I knock? Like, what's, what's the system here, but there were people that worked in food service, or, you know, even worked in the school store that showed me that I belong there, much more than anyone else. And so when I talk about informal mentorship, those are the kinds of experiences that I'm I'm thinking about.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

That sense of belonging is so important. I know that when you're talking about informal mentorship, I wanted to ask if you wanted to share a little bit, just kind of like a shout out to like the book that is coming out too because I know this is informed by a book in which you're one of the co-editors. So can you just tell us a little bit more about that too, just because I can't help myself. I want folks to know about it, to buy it, read it.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Well, before I tell you a little about the book, I'm gonna give a little disclaimer. Our publisher is Routledge Press, the price that they set on the hardcover is like ridiculous.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

We can check it out from the library.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

But what I will tell y'all to do is encourage your school library, your local library or whatever to purchase a copy because that hardcover price is really set with that in mind. And in I don't know, like 18 months, they'll have the paper back out for the rest of us. But, but the book is about campus service workers supporting first-generation college students and that form of informal mentorship. And the way that I kind of got into this was through my role at UCLA where I was program director for a club, a campus organization called Project Spell. And essentially, we had mostly undergraduate students, a few grad students who volunteered and they work one on one with campus service staff who wanted to improve their English. And so through pairing all these students up we saw that most of them were first generation college students. And most of them shared a cultural background, or some kind of similarity and like family backstory or background or socio economic status as the person they were paired up with.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And so what ended up happening is yes, the volunteer is there to tutor the staff member, but the staff member is just providing this wealth of wisdom, support, all the great things about mentorship that they needed. And so I got together with a couple of my buddies and my own mentors. First is LaTonya Reese-Miles shout out. Hey, LT. Shout out. Everyone knows LT. I feel like everyone listening is like, "Oh, I know LT" because LT is like, I don't even know. She's up on a pedestal for a lot of us. But she's gonna be mad at me for saying that. But LT is the greatest and she was running the First Year Experience Program at UCLA. So we linked up, she was working with another friend colleague of hers named Georgina Guzman, hey Gina. And they were working on this because they have had their own experiences. I know LT is super close with with Walter, who I also know and he's one of the custodians at UCLA. And so they invited me to jump on as a co-editor. And so for the past 18 months, we've been working on this just collecting stories of, you know, some personal testimonies, some paradigm shift type of essays, some studies, just it's like, there's like 25 different chapters in this book. So it's a bunch of different stories, I contributed a story, my own personal experiences a first time professional. And so it's about to be published November 30, is the date. I will get you the link for that. It's from Routledge press. It's like I said, it's super expensive. But tell your library to get that because there's almost no literature specifically on this topic. And we did feel that it's a contributor to sense of belonging to institutional interconnectedness to student success, retention, all kinds of great things that help for students.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

You know, it's interesting, because well, one, from my own lived experience, I can totally attest to that to feeling seen, feeling heard, validated by campus service workers and informal mentors. And then also, I've had students when I worked, you know, at UCSB who did research and education, and we were, those were the stories that would come up in the interviews for the students, the students who were trying to identify better ways to support first-gen students and some of the students that the mentorship that they receive were from their colleagues, like my baby, they worked, you know, for like food services. And it was their colleagues that were giving them that kind of emotional support and validation to keep going. I think you're right, there's not enough literature on the topic. And it's really exciting that this is this book is coming out. By the time I publish this, actually, I believe I'm publishing this on the 26, or it's a Friday. Thanks-taking week. It'll be a week away from when it comes out. So it'll be really good timing. So folks can kind of pre-order or order depending on when they listen to the episode. So thank you for that. Thank you for sharing and for bringing that up.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I also, usually I try to segue into the other topic, but I think you're also here to talk about neurodiversity. And I, I do think that informal mentorship is necessary. And that a lot of the informal mentorship to kind of ties along with working with diverse students and working with students of different parts of the neurodiverse, or neurodiversity spectrum. So I would love for you to kind of share a little bit more about that about like, what does it mean to to mentor neurodiverse students? We probably have all been doing it and not even realizing it?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Yeah. And what comes with that is we like you said we've been doing it and not realizing it. And that means we've probably been developing certain strengths but also making certain mistakes just from lack of awareness. And so to kind of frame this I'm neurodiverse. I have ADHD I'm in the process of doing my assessment or evaluation for autism and so which I highly suspect that I have so this a lot of this comes from my own personal experiences, you know, I'm 36, actually my birthday is on Sunday, so I'm bout to be 37.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hi Scorpio!

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Scorpio season! We are not as toxic as y'all think we're just very honest. Okay. But

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

My son actually just had his birthday, a Scorpio, and on the spectrum, the autism spectrum and you mentioned Legos earlier. And that's like one of his things like that is his life. Special Interest. Yeah. But anyway, I just have to put it out there because as soon as you mentioned the Lego just the first thing, I thought it was my son, because the majority of his time he spends doing making amazing things.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Yeah, he probably just gets super hyper focused on it. And like the end result is amazing. But it's a good it's a good connection to what I was about to say, knowing that you're a parent of an autistic child, because a lot of times the, the lens for formal mentorship for neurodiverse students, and for first gens has to or comes from a deficit lens comes from a deficit mindset. And it's all about how do we make the normal people comfortable? What are the deficits that these neurodiverse students, these first-gens, I mean, whatever the population is, if they're non-dominant group, there's something that they're doing that doesn't fit in with the norms of the larger group or the dominant group. And most of this mentorship, most of this programming, is informed by what will make the dominant group comfortable.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And that's where you see a lot of the types of therapies they give autistic children and other neurodiverse children is, "Well, why don't you socialize like the rest of us?" And that's not really helpful. Like, I don't want to change myself, I'm okay with how I am. And I don't feel like I need to make anyone else comfortable just for the sake of doing it. And so that's, that's why I said, you know, we have been mentoring neurodiverse students and maybe doing some great things, but also maybe being harmful if we're kind of unknowingly taking that mindset, which I can also be guilty of, too. There's a really amazing essay by Judy Singer from like, 1990s, somewhere in there, where she really coined the term neurodiversity, and she talks about growing up, being, like disgusted and just humiliated by her mother, who she figures was autistic and are diverse. And then when she herself became a mother, she started realizing, Oh, I'm, I'm neurodiverse, too. And so we, members of this community are not exempt from causing harm to each other as well.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And so I think the key thing to know if you want to be more inclusive of neurodiverse students is that you what you think autism is, or what you think ADHD is, and there's a lot of overlap between them is probably wrong. I know, in my personal experience, I think people tend to get this image of like, you know, maybe a middle school white male, who is just kind of crazy, and like a class clown. And so if I talk about my ADHD in the workplace, that's the image that comes to mind. And that's, that's not, you know, how I am at all. But I do struggle with executive dysfunction, there's times that, you know, I get overwhelmed by the amount of tasks they do and get paralyzed is obviously focus issues. But ADHD is really like an excess of attention, rather than a deficit of attention. It's actually really needs a name change, I think, like, a, we need a new, we need to rebrand it. Because it doesn't represent, you know, the members of the community.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Okay. When are you writing that article?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

That's gonna be my next one.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Cuz you just, like lit up a light bulb for me with you saying that, because I suspect my son might also have ADHD or be diagnosed with ADHD. Because he's like, hyperfocused on some things and other things. Really, you know, it can be a struggle. Yeah. But yeah, thinking of, like, excess of attention is like, that's so true. That actually makes a lot more sense.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

It's like, where do you focus your attention? Sometimes, you know, for me, it's like, I have to do, let's say, I have to clean my apartment. And I could be one of those people that's like, well, let me just, you know, start here, and we'll kind of like, see how far I get. But in my mind, I have to have the time, the energy, the motivation, the plan to do all of it. And if I can't, then I kind of freeze up, I kind of get paralyzed. And that's, you know, my executive dysfunction. And there are strategies around that. But it's one of those things that people don't know a lot about. And so there are stereotypes or lot of I mean, I don't have to tell you, there are stereotypes that exist are on autism that are completely false. And that are harmful, that are hurtful. I mean, I've had the thought of probably every day of my life of like, why do people hate us, we're not hurting anyone, but people hate us, you know.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

I left a job recently because my boss, you know, told me that I wasn't normal. And this is someone who's on a school board for one of the largest school districts in the country, who has a child herself. And, you know, for me, I'm thinking, you don't have to tell me I'm not normal, because I've been reminded my whole life, but what you could do is get to know me a little bit and understand that maybe my brain just works differently, the same way that you as a Latina want people who aren't Latina to understand your cultural background, like, I'm just asking you for the same thing. And my experience has been that as soon as people get in their counterspace, they use that to be really exclusionary and, and cause harm to other people that don't fit into that counterspace. And so I guess one of my goals with this dissertation that I'm starting to work on in this conversation, and like any future work I do is to really get people to think about what neurodiversity means. And how to break down your ideas about ADHD, autism and kind of reset yourself and just be open to connecting with someone that doesn't follow all the rules the way you think they should be followed, but you can still get a lot out of the relationship.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other thing that comes to mind, what you're sharing about this is, I'm thinking about ableism. You know, I think about ableism all the time for myself for someone who has a chronic illness, but then I think about ableism all the time with my son, and also my husband is self-diagnosed autistic. And as soon as he made that connection from our son getting assessed and diagnosed so many things shifted in our relationship. And that helped strengthen our communication, which we've had issues for so long, where I'm like, "oh," you know, like a lot of things like, "Oh, that was that was you overstimulating having a meltdown? You need space?" Or "oh, like, you know, I kept asking you that, are you even talking to me, that's because you don't make eye contact." Just things that like, a lot of things started to make sense. And that has been my experience, not just with my own child, but also like friends who have children on the spectrum, nonverbal, just realizing actually, we all have our own ways of communicating, and we just had to learn their world, or their method of communication, or their method of doing things like my son who I homeschool, and like, I know, timers are great for him. So when he does work, he has his timer. I'm still trying to learn the strategies, and I'm still trying to learn to be more anti-ableist, because there's a lot of internalized ableism. So that's like, also kind of like I as someone who identifies as neurotypical, but disabled, it's like a common tension. And that I myself, I'm learning and I'm hoping kind of we can teach others like, and what ways can we continue to keep learning how to be, you know, anti-ableist? How can we, you know, embrace neurodiversity a little bit more in our mentoring, because, again, I don't get it right all the time. And sometimes I catch myself, and sometimes I don't. And so it's a learning process.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Yeah. And no one does, right. We all have internalized everything -ism. I mean, it's the society we live in, we've been conditioned, and we're all kind of trying to reprogram ourselves. I think, for me, one. One framework that has been very harmful, in some ways to me has been, or at least in the way that it's been operationalized. So no hate to the original authors of, you know, any of these theories. But I know a lot of the Chicana feminist literature has really been taken by people and used to be exclusionary, to people that don't fit into a very certain cultural mold. And so I've had experiences where, you know, people talked a lot about relationships, and how important that is to kind of have this cultural intuition and build relationships off of that, and these networks, and if you're neurodivergent or neurodiverse, you don't necessarily interact in those ways that are culturally acceptable. And so I think we need to remember that, you know, we can critique our own culture. We and we can use counterspaces to do that. So when we get in these safe spaces that are safe Spaces, where we're among our own, however you want to define that, we need to use that as a space to be self critical.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And there's another book I'm going to shout out. It's by Dr. Micere Keels, she wrote a book on campus counter spaces, and she talks about how we need to have brave spaces. We can't use these counter spaces to just be like, "Yeah, okay, now we're safe from all, you know, the evil, white people out there, or all the neurotypicals," or whatever the group is, right? Like, we have to be self critical. And see the things about our own cultures, that could be improved, because, you know, a better world is possible. We don't have to hang on to constructs that are harmful, just because it's the way it's always been done, or it's what we're comfortable with. And I think people who educate me on their lived experience because you're just helping me be more open, less ignorant, and see the ways that I'm harming people, which I don't want to do at the end of the day.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Wow. There's so much to unpack there. I think when I when I hear you, and I'm trying to listen and process what you're saying. At the end of the day, for me, like I felt like this is a conversation about social justice, you know, is learning and embracing mentoring neurodiverse students is about is another branch, another aspect of social justice. And it's also about being willing to continuously sit in discomfort. And that's basically how like you said, we become less ignorant, that's how we, we learn more, that's how we, hopefully, are less hurtful to others and make this world a better place. And I wish we could say a little bit more, but I don't want to kind of like push you to say even more, but I think there's so much there. When you mentioned about this idea of questioning your own culture, or being in a counterspace where it's you feel safe enough to be able to question it, because some cultural norms are actually hurting some of us. So I, I just that that is staying with me, I'm going to keep thinking about it about because I have, you know, like in again, if I'm coming to you from my own lived experience, and how much we have struggled because not only are we a neurodiverse family, but we're also a mixed family. We're also bicultural, biracial. And so there's a lot of tensions from like, culturally, there's that tension, and communication. There's the way that we kind of interact, and we kind of experience the world, there's a lot of tension. And I myself am still trying to learn, know, what are the kind of best practices to hopefully kind of both in my family and then with relationships with others, or what we teach others kind of the folks that I mentor, femtor, to hopefully kind of make a ripple effect.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

I think the biggest barrier to that is that most of us who are not white males are not diagnosed.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Yes! Oh my gosh. Women and people of color. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I just got really excited when you said that. Because I'm like, Yes.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

It's true. It's true. And so you think that you are lazy, you think that there's something wrong with you. You just internalize a lot of really self-hating messages, because you don't understand how your brain works. And as soon as you're like, "Oh, I got this diagnosis. And now I know why I do the things I do." All of a sudden, you understand yourself better. That's the first step to loving yourself more to, you know, kind of having some power over your life. You know, you I know, my brain is like this, and how do I hack my own brains, like, make it so that I'm not dysfunctional all the time. When I really need to get something done, right. And that also helps you communicate to others what your needs are. And I've talked to a lot of young women. I mean, I feel like I'm kind of like the ADHD whisperer, because I will talk to usually like young women that I've worked with at UCLA, and they tell me a couple things. And I'm like, "Oh, you have ADHD. I mean, don't take my word for it, and they'll talk to someone but I just feel like you are one of us." And I think that's like the secret superpower that neurodiverse people have is that we can't we just always know, we see someone kind of like being or like you're one of us.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

My husband, all the time he's like, "This person's probably this, this person is probably that." And I'm how do you know?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

No, we just, we just know it. Like, there's these little things. And they're not the common symptoms, but they're just these random things where I'm like you, you're one of us, please go get tested. And I'm thinking of someone in particular, I'm not going to say her name, but she went through a lot with her parents. You know, her parents thinking she's lazy, too. I mean, you get the, the message that you should be ashamed of yourself from, like every corner of the world, and including from yourself. And, you know, for her to go and get this diagnosis, I think it was that first step in being able to ask for what she needs, from her family from, you know, maybe a workplace, from school. But the reality is that that first step is a huge step. It's I mean, it's been everything for me. I only recently got diagnosed a few years ago; it's been huge for me.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

But it's kind of like you take this big first step, and then there's a huge barrier in your way, because your workplace will begrudgingly maybe accommodate you. If your accommodations, you know, are reasonable, which, like ...

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Whatever that means

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

... I'm like, can you treat me like a human being like, is that like, do I have to put that in writing that I want you all to just treat me normally like you treat everyone else? And they might do it? They might not? They might say it's unreasonable. Or they might say that things that are really typical people with ADHD or autism are unprofessional. And that's kind of like an out it's a plausible deniability. And so we kind of hit this barrier, again, where you don't know if you should even reveal it. Because people these days know how to discriminate against you without discriminating against you. They know how to get away with it. You know, I say it's kind of like people that get into the system, spend some time in prison and come out just knowing how to get away with a crime, right? Because it's not really like a rehabilitative process. And so that's what a lot of workplaces, supervisors, managers, do, they just know how to make sure that you know that you're different, that you're not part of the group that we don't like you and that you're not normal, while still technically meeting your accommodations. And so, yes, is a huge step.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Anyone that's listening, I strongly encourage you all, even if you have like a hint of doubt that some of this might apply to you, go get assessed. But this is where I like as a mentor struggle to give advice to people, because I haven't figured it out. And all I can say is like, just hope and pray that the job that you you take does end up being inclusive. But like you said, there's a lot of ableism it's not seen in the same way that people when people think of diversity, they usually think of cultural and racial diversity, I think maybe gender diversity. So this is kind of like another identity, that's part of who you are, when you're born. But it hasn't really kind of reached that level of legitimacy, I think, in most workplaces and schools. So you'll have professors that that, you know, accommodate you, but they think that you're scamming or they think that you're exploiting a system and that you're really just lazy or weird or something. And so like all I can say to anyone that's listening, that that has felt that, we all need to stick together because we are in for our own informal and peer mentors, and there might not be people within our systems that can do that for us. And so we need to create those little spaces for ourselves.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Usually I'm like oh, what are your final words. I feel like that was that was it right there. I'm really excited I'm glad that you came on the show and you know, offered your time sharing space with me, because this conversation is critical. But you know, when it comes to destigmatizing it, because I know that a lot of times there's so many barriers to getting assessed. Sometimes the barrier is lack of resources or lack of finances; it can be expensive to get assessed. I know that firsthand. You know, even just getting to the location, finding a place like all that is a barrier but then even more so there are like the societal barriers, cultural barriers, when my son was younger people telling me like "why are you getting him tested? You're trying to find something wrong with him" as if it was a bad thing. They're like "there's nothing wrong with your son." And even sometimes the assessment process in and of itself can can feel like it's very deficit-based you You know, like just getting asked, what is the problem? Like, the problem is society, it's not me.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Yeah, well, I mean disability like, I don't really consider myself disabled if I was like, you know, in a vacuum, but I feel that I am in the context of the society that we have right now. I feel like I'm the normal one. And I just don't understand anyone else. Because like, I'm in the minority, I can't really get away with that the way that like, you know, neurotypical people can as as a group, and so it is one of those things that you fight for every single day. And no matter just like being a first-gen, it's like, no matter how high you climb, or how much success you have, you're never really 100% accepted, you're always a little bit on the fringes.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna shout out bell hooks real quick, because I, when I said fringes, it brought to mind one of my most favorite things that's ever been written. That's about choosing the margins as a space of radical openness, and just knowing that it's okay to be on the margins, and that when you're on the margins, what you're doing is expanding that boundary, when you're fighting for anyone that's marginalized, as disenfranchised, and you're out there on that fringe, you're just pushing that boundary, and you're making it so that like, our circle of who we include is bigger and broader and wider. And so you're just doing that work, but you don't always see the results like, Y'all might die and need a couple more generations to really make it happen. And it's often the case with grassroots type of work, right, but just know that that resistance that you're putting up, those are tiny steps, right, but they all add up to like pushing that margin back. And like I said, creating a better world for everyone where we are more open and more accepting of everyone, you know, no matter how different they are, or no matter how disconnected you personally feel from them. Because I don't need everyone to be my best friend. I don't need everyone to be like, I met Stephanie. And she's the most amazing person I've ever met.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Wait, I can't say that?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

You can and you should. But I feel like that's what people think. Because a lot of these things are taken really personally, it's, it's seen as a personal attack, right? If I say we're ableist. And it's really not, it's just deconstructing like, all of these things that we've been conditioned to think. And so I, you know, when I want more acceptance of neurodiversity, it's not to make everyone my best friend. It's not because I need to manipulate people into giving me a job or publishing something I wrote or whatever. It's simply to, you know, pull the knife out of my back to really badly paraphrase Malcolm X, it's like, let's just get back to ground level right now the bar is in hell. And we are just fighting to get to ground level. And I think of I don't know how old your son is, but...

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

He's 8.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

...you know, I hope that when he is my age, things are different.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I hope so too.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

I hope if they're not, he can call me up. And, you know, let me know where to go who to talk to, but we have to keep pushing, we can't give into like this kind of normative expectation. You know, we have to fight for ourselves and for for our whole community and and for whoever's next, whoever that we don't even we haven't even realized we're being exclusive of yet.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Sometimes it feels really hard to advocate for yourself, and it feels like oh, it's, I don't know, selfish, I shouldn't be doing this. It's uncomfortable. But then if you think about as you're not, that's one of the reason I became really good at advocating for myself was after I had my child. In having him and having to learn to advocate for him. I learned to advocate for myself. And so if you think about as in advocating for myself, I'm advocating for my community. Yeah, that's gonna change a lot of things. So like, again, ripple effect, you know, one person does it more people do it, and then we're trying to like, push those boundaries, you know, because ableism gets veiled under professionalism and that's not okay.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

Yeah, it's not okay. But a lot of us have also internalized that professionalism is a facet of white supremacy. And we have all internalized that and a lot of us gain our value from feeling like we are kind of getting closer and closer to that ideal. And you know, I have a friend named Brittany. Hey, Brittany Corville. Shout out. She's also a first-gen. She's amazing. She's a "Free Britney Spears" advocate, a lawyer. And she talks a lot about like, what if I say no. And that's something that's just been so much on my mind. Since she said that to me a few weeks ago. It's just what if we say no? Yeah, this is the norm. But what if I say no to that, then what? Um, and seeing what happens when you say no. And, of course, you have to be strategic about this. Like, I'm not telling people to all go get fired or something. Like I understand the realities we all live in capitalist hell, it's 2021. We're all trying to ride, pay the bills, take care of our families and stuff.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

But thinking about what happens if you say no, instead of kind of tacitly accepting those things that harm you. And I'm picking your moment to say no, I think is one of the most empowering things that you can do for yourself. And it's something that a mentor can help you with, right? That's the person that's going to kind of gas you up to go do that, right and confirm, and kind of like, push down those doubts that you might have about yourself. And that's the other part of community that I think is so valuable is like, yes, you can give to others by speaking about these things. But when you have your own mentor, they can encourage you to speak up for yourself, and kind of push aside all those who excuse me, push aside all of those ideas about humility, right about being humble, and like never kind of putting yourself on center stage. The reality is when you do that you are speaking for yourself, but you're speaking for, like, who knows how many invisible people out there. And especially when you get in a position of power, if you don't do that. I mean, it's a waste. It's such a waste, and it's such a betrayal of everyone else who shares your identity and doesn't have that level of power to to affect change in those ways.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I think that's a great way for us. So we're getting close to time for us to get ready to wrap up. If there's any last words, or if someone listens to this episode resonates and wants to connect in any way, shape, or form, how can folks reach you?

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

How can folks reach me? Well, first of all, anyone listening to this needs to go on Facebook and join the "Empowering First-Generation College Students" group. It is lit. We have a lot of fun in there. I am on Twitter, but I literally just made a professional account and I'm not giving you all my s*** posting account. That needs to be private. So I am gonna figure out what my handle is. And I will send that to you, anyone's welcome to follow me. And yeah, I'll give you some contact info because I'm not really too used to engaging with people in this way...

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The Facebook group is good enough, you know? Yeah, you don't need to have a million ways to contact you. So I whatever link you want to share with me, I'll put it in the show notes. Definitely the Facebook group.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

And don't forget y'all tell your library to little get our book Campus Service Workers, Supporting First-Generation College Students, it is so emotional. If I have more time, I will tell you about like every single essay that's in there because some of these contributors just I mean, they have stories, they have stuff to say. And I'm so grateful that they chose to share those stories with us because they are honestly like, it was life changing. For me, it's just to read some of these stories. And so, um, you know, encourage your schools to maybe cut back on the econ textbooks and focus on something like this that can affect the positive change, like right there on their campus.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, thank you so much, Stephanie, for coming today and sharing so much wisdom, so much knowledge with us.

Stephanie Santos Youngblood

It was fun to chat. You know, pandemic life is kind of isolating and great to be in community with you and and hear your story too and hear about your son and your family. So thank you.