#006 - Adelina Longoria (36 years) on a Psych PhD, Grad School, and Singing for the President

Welcome to the hackiversity Podcast, where students learn how to achieve more by doing less in college. Learn the hacks from wildly successful recent college graduates as your host, Kyle Whiney explores the colleges, majors and paths that produce the biggest results in college using less effort. It's hacking time.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Hacking, where I, Kyle Whiney, interview recent college graduates who crushed it immediately after graduation and deconstruct their reasons for their success. Many people have asked me, kyle, what does it mean to be a recent college graduate? Where's the cutoff in age? That's a great question, and here's how I respond. I've intentionally chosen to interview recent college graduates because I believe that most older folks have no idea what what they are talking about when it comes to giving college advice. While many older people mean well, they simply played the college game under radically different times. You don't need me to tell you that the job market in 1987 looked much different than the job market in 2017, which means the college approaches of today's students need to look different too. So I set out to interview people who recently played under this new reality, but I also wanted to target people who worked in the job market long enough to experience the results of their college career. That's why, in general, I tend to interview people in their mid to late 20s. That said, by no means is Hackiversity limited to targeting college graduates in their mid to late twenties. What I care about is interviewing people who can offer upcoming and current college students practical advice from for college as it exists today. With that in mind, I am super excited to welcome Adelina Longoria to the show. At the age of 36, Adelina offers students amazing practical insight which she pieced together over her extraordinarily successful career in the field of psychology. Let me name a few things Adelina has accomplished. Adelina worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the premier consulting firms in the US where she won the Booz Allen Performance Award. Adelina also currently works for SAP SuccessFactors, which is a technology company with over 45 million subscribers, and Adelina has previously served as a psychology professor, making her an expert in how students should test take a subject which we covered during the show. Adelina built the foundations of her successful career by graduating from Oklahoma State university with a PhD in experimental psychology in 2008, where she immediately enrolled after graduating from the University of Houston with an undergraduate degree in psychology. In short, Adelina has used her wealth of experiences in a variety of fields to bring together utterly practical advice for college students in general and those pursuing a liberal arts degree in particular, including psychology students. Most interestingly, Adelina's success is not confined to her career. In 2014, Adelina sang for Barack Obama, the then current president of the United States. Ultimately, during this episode, Adelina and I discuss, first, how to maximize the marketability of a psychology degree. Second, the one question every student needs to ask themselves every semester. And third, how to leverage internships to gain a competitive advantage for graduate school admission. Without further ado, let's dig in. Addy, thanks so much for joining me today.

No problem. Thank you for having me.

So, Addie, I was thinking, and you know, we have known each other for around six years now. It doesn't even seem like that is possible. I remember when you were giving me Spanish lessons a few years ago in preparation for a trip to Guatemala, and that just seems like last week.

That's true, that's true. You were a really good student, by the way.

Wow. I give all the credit to my teacher. What can I say?

Wow. Thanks.

So, Addie, I'd love to jump into just your career right now and where you're at in life, but it's really hard to know where to start because you've accomplished so much in a variety of different fields and so much in a short time, frankly. So when someone asks, what do you do? How do you answer that question?

What do I do? Yeah. So usually when people say, what do you do? I usually say, well, right now I'm a senior UX researcher.

So when you say ux, you mean user experience and everything kind of related to the front end of a website or a software program.

That's right. That's right. So, yeah, mostly front end kinds of stuff, which, you know, has ramifications for back end things, but. Yeah, but mostly focused on the front end.

Cool. I just love to jump right in now to your college experience and kind of how you got on this track. And so you attended the University of Houston and majored in psychology.

Yeah.

What made you want to attend the University of Houston?

I have to admit, when I was in high school, I wasn't as serious about school, but it was in high school that I that I realized that I was going to major in psychology. And if I was going to do that, I needed to go to grad school. So I had that goal. I was very clear about that goal.

And what made you so clear about that goal?

Well, I went to the Debakey High School for the Health Professions in Houston. And what was great is that we had. We had a class that was specifically about health careers. And I remember they talked to us about different. Different health careers, but also, you know, graduate education, like what kinds of things you would have to do if you wanted to do X career. And I remember learning that, you know, if I was going to be a psychologist, that I needed to go and get a PhD. So that was always really clear in my mind that, you know, that getting a bachelor's was not. That was not it. That after, you know, getting a bachelor's degree, I was going to go to grad school. There was just never any question about it.

It seems like you had just this remarkably clear vision of what you wanted to do as soon as you hit campus day one. And a lot of students don't have as clear of a vision as you did. So were there any experiences or, you know, firsthand encounters from your high school that really clarified this vision for you?

Yeah, absolutely. So even though actually in middle school, I knew that I wanted to be a psychologist because I was just so interested in why people did things. And back then it was more of the abnormal psychology. I didn't know it at the time, but it was more of a. I saw psychology as being a therapist. And I think most people have the perception that that's the only route to go as a psychologist. I went into high school and in high school, again, I went to this high school for the health professions, and we were able to do rotations in the area of interest for you. So I got to do a rotation in a low level, kind of psychiatric, you know, community sort of place where, you know, people, you know, people stayed there for, you know, short bits at a time. And I just got to really get really familiar with what could potentially be my future. It was. It was a bit of an exaggeration, right? But I quickly realized that I couldn't do that, that I wasn't, you know, that that wasn't, you know, that wasn't where my. I couldn't see myself, you know, treating people or dealing with people's problems on a regular basis. So I was like, you know, this isn't for me. And so I guess it was then that I realized, okay, I'm not. I don't think that I'm made to be a therapist, but, you know, I'm still interested in psychology, so I'm going to go to college and kind of, you know, discover there what are the paths to go down. And so it was in college, through taking various psychology classes that I was able to discover. Oh, there's these other paths, There's IO psychology, there's developmental psychology. You know, there's research to be done. It's not just being a therapist.

Yeah, well, Addie, what I love about that story so much, and it's something I talk at length about in my book, is that it's really dangerous to sit behind a desk and just kind of speculate as to what you think you might like in college or what you think you might like in a career. What's really valuable is to actually go out like you did and test that hypothesis. Do you want to be a therapist? Well, maybe, but let's go out and actually test that. And that's exactly what you did. And through that interaction, through that experience, you learned that being a therapist, therapist wasn't necessarily for you. And that saved you a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of money in college going down that route to only later, maybe even after graduation, try to reverse course. So I just, I really love that story, how one experience can really dictate what you want to do or what you do not want to do in college. I think it's just so important for students to actually go out in the real world and test what they want to do.

Absolutely.

So, Addie, how do you recommend students maybe coming into college next year testing out whether or not they want to be a therapist or anything related to psychology field?

I think job shadowing, interview or just, I mean, if you can't job shadow someone who is a therapist, I think interview those people, do some informational interviewing, go and talk to therapists. It's interesting because there's so much more information at our fingertips now. I mean, you could literally probably go on YouTube and see an interview with a psychologist or a therapist and kind of gauge some of the things that they do. But I think that's super essential, is really informing yourself, educating yourself about what your future looks like and not just, you know, what they do on a day to day basis. I think that's super essential.

And that's exactly why we started out talking about your career and kind of where you're at in life and what students who are potentially interested in following the career path of Adelina Longoria can expect at the end of college, because that's really the end game. And students, you know, it's really important for students to know exactly what they should expect when they graduate. So, Addie, I know when you were an undergrad, you also had A business management minor. So were you always interested in business along with your interest in psychology?

The thing that maybe captivated me about the business world was that it was there was very clear application to business.

So, Addie, to be clear, would you recommend other students who are interested in pursuing psychology to also couple their psychology major with some kind of business experience or business minor?

I definitely encourage people to couple psychology with something, and that could be business, that could be technology, that could be. I think a strategic move is to couple psychology with something that has direct application to the real world. Something that, the way I think about it is what could merge well with my interest in psychology that at the end of the day allows me to do a job that I'm going to love or that I'm going to like and that has potential to impact the world around me.

I love it. Adi, that's what I love about you. You're very practical and very kind of clear with your focus. When I think a lot of college advisors who advise upcoming psychology students, their advice is, well, don't worry about what you're going to do with your psychology degree because that degree in and of itself is valuable. And what you're saying is, is it can be valuable, but you really need to add something else to it to be valuable, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think so. And a piece of advice I would give students now is at the, at least at the end of every semester, ask yourself, and I like to work backwards is ask yourself, okay, if I was graduating today, what kind of job would I be looking for?

I like it.

You know, what kind of job would I be looking for? What skills and experiences do I have right now that would make me marketable for that job? You could be an English major, you could be a psychology major, you could be a history major. At the end of the day, we're all going to be in the same place looking for jobs, right? And you can. The difference is that you can wait four or five years down the road and then say, okay, now I'm going to start looking for jobs. I have no idea what's out there. I have no idea how my skills match to what's going on. Or you can periodically ask yourself those things and be proactive about gaining those skills and experiences you need to prepare you for the job that you want to get, or at least having the knowledge of knowing, okay, I'm an English major. These are the kinds of jobs that I can do. But I think that if you wait till the end of your four or five years I think it's a little late and you may find yourself really struggling to find a position because I think there's a lot of things that go into play. But I think employers are definitely looking for people with, with experience and practical application to, you know, whatever it is that, you know, they're trying to find a person for. And so if all you have to show for it is four years of education, that doesn't give you a leg up from the thousands of other people who all they have to show for is an education.

Yeah, Addie, I love the self assessment. You know, one of the tags, well, the tagline in my book is achieve more by doing less. And a lot of people think that it's promoting laziness, and it's really not. The idea fits right in line with exactly what you said is kind of the first step in college, I think, is to really know what your end game is. And if you know what that end game is through, and that can be particularly refined through these periodic self assessment reflections that are done every semester, then you can run straight at that end game. And you don't need to bother yourself with doing things that just don't matter all that much in college. And frankly, there are the. Or there is the opportunity at college to do a bunch of different things that just don't matter at all to what a student is pursuing. So I love the idea of this self assessment every semester. I think that's gold.

Yeah.

So, Addie, I know that in psychology and for psychology majors, there is the opportunity to do research at college and in undergrad. So how important is it for students to develop kind of practical research skills in undergrad while they're pursuing the academic side in the classroom?

I think it's very important, depending on what you want to do. But I also think that as a psychology major, research experience and those skills are a big selling point in the job world right now. And so I think it's super essential, especially if you're going to go to grad school. It's a must.

And Addie, when should students look to start developing these research tools, these research abilities?

You know, I'd say it's never too early. It's never too early. But typically, you know, I would say get in there as soon as, you know your first year in college.

Final question for you, Addy, in regard to your undergraduate career, what are the two most important things that students in undergrad should know in applying to graduate school?

I think you have to ask yourself, am I really passionate about this? Because Grad school is a long journey, depending on what kind of program you're going to. But I. And I've always told people this. You have to be passionate about it to be able to make it through completely, because there are going to be some really rough times. Right. As my mom would say, if it was easy, everybody would do it. And so I think you have to be. You have to be certain about that. Am I passionate about this? And I think the other thing. Taking the mindset of a lifelong learner, I never thought about. I don't think I ever thought about that in college. Because you're already in a learning environment. I thought about that more when I left college. But there is a distinction, because sometimes in college, we're just kind of learning whatever is thrown at us in our classes. But I think you have to go beyond that. I think you have to go beyond the knowledge that's being thrown at you and really take. Take your education and your career by the horns, if I can use that.

It's very Texan of you.

Yeah, it's very, very Texan.

Yeah. I love it. So here you go. All you undergrads out there, be passionate about attending grad school and commit yourself to lifelong learning. Yeah, There you go. All right, Addie, so let's transition over to your days at Oklahoma State. You went there, got a Ph.D. you became doctor at Alina Longoria. Looking back, Addie, would you recommend students to graduate and then go get some practical work experience and then go to graduate school, or do you not regret your decision to immediately roll over into graduate school after college?

I don't necessarily think that there's one right way of doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Addie, we touched on this subject briefly a bit late or a bit earlier, but it's so important that I want to be very clear here, and that is, many students enter graduate school or they think about going to graduate school, but they're not exactly sure what they want to do, and they think that getting a PhD will make them more marketable. And I want to know from you, is that true?

Oh, man. I just flinched when you said that. Oh, man. I think that is definitely the wrong mindset. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that. It doesn't necessarily. It doesn't. I think in itself, having a PhD does not make you marketable. I think if I. All I had to show when I graduated, if. If all I had to show when I graduated was that I had a PhD that would have made zero difference.

And I know, zero difference after spending all that time and money. Is that right? Zero difference?

Yeah. I mean, well, I wouldn't. Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration. Maybe not zero, maybe not zero difference.

But it wouldn't have been worth it though, is what you're saying. It clearly would not have been worth your time and money.

No. Unless what, you know, unless what you want to do is be a professor, for instance, then I think, I think that would help you. And I say that because at least the graduate experience in psychology that I had was that most people all, you know, the thing that they were most preparing you for was to be a professor and a researcher and in academia. And I think if that is your goal, then potentially that's all you need. That might be. That I think is changing as well because it's so competitive right now to get an academic job. But I think if you are saying to yourself, I'm going to get a PhD and I'm going to go into the business world and you're just heads down on that and not sort of assessing the context in which you're in thinking about the future job, I think that's a mistake.

I love it. It goes back to the self assessment that we talked about earlier.

Yeah, yeah.

So, Addy, who are the companies that hire PhD graduates?

All the cool companies. No, I'm just kidding.

All the best ones that you've worked for.

All the best ones I've worked for.

No, but are they kind of Corporate America and the premier companies, all the way down to the startup companies? Do PhD graduates kind of have their pick if they do their PhD program? Right?

Yeah. I think there's an opportunity for you to be hired by pretty much anyone. But again, it's not going to be based on the fact that you have a PhD. I think there are certain companies out there who are, you know, who will say, hey, yeah, we're looking for someone who has a graduate degree, master's or PhD. That's good because that shows that they appreciate the experience and the education and the training that you come with. But I think they're really looking for much more than that. I mean, education in itself, having that degree in itself is not, I think, limits you. When I graduated from school and I had had these internship experiences, it was still a bit of a struggle when I interviewed with certain companies because they were, you know, it was like they were asking themselves, where, you know, what, where's your, you know, what kind of work experience do you have? This was going to be my first Full time job outside of school. And so I think there was some hesitation from certain companies about, about that experience, so.

Hesitation even though you've been in college for almost a decade?

Yes, exactly.

That's incredible. And I think counter to what a lot of people believe.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, part of that is because, you know, when you're applying to jobs, you know, employers are looking for different things. They're not just looking for your education. Like, okay, great, they graduated from college. That shows me you can complete something, but, you know, which is important.

It is, but it's not enough.

Right? You can finish something that you started, but can you speak the jargon? Can you show them that you know how to communicate, that you know how to present yourself? Those are important skills that aren't necessarily something that are required in college. Right? So they're looking for those kinds of things, but they're looking to see, okay, this person has research skills, but do they? Would they be able to communicate that to someone who's not a researcher?

So, Addie, let's transition to something closely related to your academic experience, and that is your academic experience as a professor. So what's really unique about your story is that not only have you been a student on the student side of the desk, but you've been on the other side of the desk as a professor. So for all the students out there listening, what are some tips or some hacks or some big takeaways that they can come away with because they know what a professor wants? So when you are grading their paper or their exam, what are some things that you're looking for that differentiate the bottom level students from the top level students?

Oh my gosh, that is such a good question. I think one thing that's kind of being lost is the importance of analysis, right? And I think it's because, you know, we live in the world of Google and we can easily type in a specific question and likely that answer will pop up somewhere. Right. Where it used to be that you had to take these two, three disparate pieces of information, of things that maybe are unrelated, and you sort of have to figure out how do they come together to doing the analysis that is that, that right there, what I'm describing is, distinguishes the A student from the C student is the ability to think critically. Think critically, evaluate and analyze. Those are so essential.

So it's not good enough to just recall what a fact is or what a figure is. You actually have to then take that fact or figure and show how it applies to a Specific circumstance and then arrive at a conclusion from that circumstance.

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Cool. I love it. There you go, students. Number one, studying hack of the day analysis.

Yes.

So, Addie, one final thing I want to talk about when it comes to your personal experience before we transition into my favorite section of the podcast, which is the rapid fire section. And that experience is your performance for the President of the United States of America.

That's so funny. Oh, my gosh.

So you performed for Barack Obama.

Yeah.

You sang for him. Tell me about that.

Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. We all have dreams. I'm grateful because I can think about the dreams, some of the dreams that I've had. There are dreams that I haven't been able to accomplish yet, but there are dreams that were in my heart. Being a psychologist was one of them. And I think about that sometimes, and I'm like, oh, man, I achieved that dream. But one of my dreams when Barack Obama went. It came into office, was, I wonder how I'll ever be able to meet him. Wow.

You thought that?

Yeah, I thought, that's a bold dream.

That's a bold question.

Yeah. You know, and I thought, man, I don't know, but, you know, I wonder how I'll ever be able to meet him. I'm so intrigued by the person that he is, and I live here in D.C. and so I thought, gosh, surely someone knows someone, you know? But I, you know, I just, you know, I just kept that sort of, like, hidden away, you know, that sort of thought. And then, you know, as, you know, I, you know, I play with some bands around town, and one of them is a band called Los Gallos Negros, which is like a mariachi band.

And what's a mariachi band?

Yeah, so mariachi band is, you know, Mexican folk music, basically. And so, you know, one of my friends was, you know, from the band, said, hey, you know, the President has their big, you know, Cinco de Mayo celebration at the White House. And, you know, you know, we've been invited to play. And so, you know, they asked me if I would, you know, I would be part of that band. And so I thought, oh, man, what an opportunity. You know, it just. I had this. I had this dream, but it never dawned on me how it would happen. And so my dad always says, and I'll never forget this, because my dad's a musician, too. And my dad says, you know, being a musician often opens the doors to places that you wouldn't otherwise get the door Open to, like the White House. Like the White House, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, I never imagined that. So, yeah, I got, you know, got to meet the President, you know, shake his hand and, you know, you know, and we, and we played there for the celebration and, you know. Yeah, it was just kind of. It was amazing.

Wow. A story of how dreams can come true.

That's right.

I love it. You heard it here first. So, Addy, let's transition to my favorite section of the podcast, which is what I like to call the rapid fire question section, which is where I offer up some quick hitting questions. But that doesn't mean your answer needs to be quick hitting.

Okay.

Okay. So here we go. Addie, what is one thing you believe about college that most people don't?

I don't know if most people don't believe this, but I think, you know, college is often seen as this place of preparation for specific career. And I think it is a time of preparation, but it's not. I don't think it's for a specific career. I think it's to take you down a journey that stops in many places, that doesn't necessarily have a finite end. Right. That doesn't have a specific end necessarily, but that sort of the beginning of what will take you down. A journey that has many roads you can go down. It's not like a one stop place.

I love it. There's a wisdom nugget for everyone. Life is about the journey, not about the destination. Just like college. Yeah, there you go. Addie, if you wish your sophomore self in high school knew something, what would that something be?

I think it would have been to take math more seriously. Yeah, I think it would have been to take math more seriously. Eventually I got more serious about math, but I think, you know, I often think, man, if I had taken. If I had really taken math more seriously, I'd be a monster mathematically. And that to me, like, you can't go wrong with math skills in every single career. Math is super essential. But I think to me, in my mind, math is such a selling point in the work world. And it is. And it's. I don't know, I find it intriguing.

A lot of people out there right now are cringing to themselves and a lot of people are smiling. Addie, if you can make a plug for your career track or your profession, what would it be?

I think about research, psychology, and I think about human centered knowledge. Human centered expertise is always going to be necessary in our world as long as we have humans living and walking and Breathing human centered knowledge is always going to be essential and there's always going to be a need for being able to translate human behavior and human understanding to all facets of what we do. If you can bring that to the table and you can intersect that with what's important at the time, whether it's technology, whether, you know, it's human performance, something else. Right. You're always gonna be money.

I like it, I like it. Always going to be money. Addie, if you could recommend something to a college student in the form of a tweet, what would it be?

Oh, man, don't stop working. And what I mean by working is taking action, exerting yourself in some way.

Last question for you, Addie. What is the one pop culture trend you remember Most from college?

MySpace.

Yeah, MySpace Throwback.

Yeah.

So, Addie, this has been really fun. I appreciate you coming on. Where can people learn more about you and the work you do?

Follow me on LinkedIn. Adelina Longoria. I'm also on Instagram under Adelina Sings. That's a D E L I n A S I n G S. You can follow me there.

I'll put that in the show notes. And where can people download your music or experience the music that got you into the White House?

The group that I play with, it's called Los Gallos Negros. L o s G A Y L L O s N e G R o S and we are on Facebook, also on Instagram, and so you can check that out. There's actually videos. The group went to the White House the year after as well. So there's some videos on there.

Great. I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. So if you guys want to know how to get into the White House, visit the show notes. Addy, thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Kyle.

Hey, guys, thanks for listening. I just want to emphasize three big takeaways from this episode because they are so important and I want to make sure that everyone walks away with them. The first is how to maximize the marketability of a liberal arts degree in general and of a psychology degree in particular. If you're majoring in liberal arts, you really need to couple the degree with another practical major, such as a business major or something in the STEM field. The second thing is that while graduate school can be a great strategic move for many students. And please listen to this. If your sole motivation for going to graduate school is to open up more career opportunities, do not go. There are so many more effective ways to open up career opportunities than spending $100,000 to go to graduate school. The third thing that I want to emphasize is a self awareness diagnostic question that Adelina suggested students ask themselves every semester. That diagnostic question is if I graduated today, what skills and experience do I have right now for the job I want? The reason why this is so key is because it keeps you focused on doing the things that matter most in college without getting bogged down in the variety and abundance of things in college that have absolutely no advantage to moving along your career.

If you want more hackaversity and achieving more by doing less in college, you can subscribe to the podcast on itunes or grab the book on Amazon. For the show notes and the latest on hackiversity, check out kyleweiny.com don't forget to follow Kyle on Twitter ynie and on facebook@facebook.com hackaversity Till next time, Happy hacking.