2. From food stamps to full professor in 12 years – Andy Galpin
Andy is a professor of exercise
science at California State University, Fullerton.
Where I grew up, people don’t go to college. They build roads, hang gutters, raise livestock, become cops or firefighters. Not because they aren't capable of doing other things. It just doesn’t really come up.
I never knew anybody famous. I never even knew anybody who’d met anybody famous.
In high school, I spent 75 percent of my senior year on a tractor or in a weight room. I didn’t know much about college. If you’d asked me what a Ph.D. was, I couldn’t have told you.
Then I got a chance to play football at Linfield College, a powerhouse Division III program in Oregon, not far from where I grew up. (We won a national championship my junior year.)
I couldn’t believe my luck.
Money was always a struggle. I was on the free lunch program through
high school. I was on food stamps until I was 24.
At Linfield I was excited to get a work-study job cleaning dorm bathrooms. Most people would be embarrassed to clean the toilets and showers of their teammates and the girls they were trying to attract. But the job kept me alive financially, and I felt lucky to have it.
I had massively kind mentors who encouraged me to get my master’s and Ph.D. in muscle physiology, and helped me launch my career as a scientist. I became tenured at 32 and was promoted to full professor at 36.
Almost every day I talk to a famous athlete or someone affiliated with a pro sports team. I’ve even worked with several dudes who’re so rich and famous I’ll never be allowed to even talk about it.
I make enough money to give my family a life I thought was only for rich people.
If there was one thing that set
me apart, it was the way I looked at things.
My circumstances forced me to be creative. Everyone in my life—parents, teachers, coaches, professors—encouraged me to ask questions, and to see if there was another way to solve a problem.
And then I caught every break.
I can’t tell you how to do what I did, because I’m not entirely sure how I did it. It was like the cosmos dealt me blackjack on every hand.
But you can ask questions. You can find new solutions. You can reject simple answers to complicated problems, and accept evidence that undermines things you want to believe.
Then, with a little luck and a lot of effort, things should work out.
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