How We Got Here - Ep 6

Rachel: Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Rachel Lupien

Steph: and I’m Dr. Stephanie Spera.

Rachel: Our climate is in crisis and we all want to help, but we might not know how

Steph: we're talking to people who have figured out how to use their talents to combat climate change and the hopes that their journey might inspire your own.

Rachel: This is how we got here: because the earth needs professional help.

INTRO

Rachel: Hey Steph.

Steph: Hey Rachel.

Rachel: How are you?

Steph: I'm good. I'm good. It feels like fall here.

Rachel: Same with up here. It, the leaves are changing and they're falling to the ground

Steph: It is late this year. Nothing here is changing. It's actually really bonkers. There's a Gingko tree that we follow that I follow. I go to the botanical garden every Sunday with Theodore look at the ginkgo tree.

Uh, but last year it was already yellow.

I haven't talked to you all week.

Rachel: So what, what happened in the past week? Did anything like really awesome happened? Um,

Steph: I think I had a good week.

Two things we theater did not have daycare Thursday or Friday. Is it a holiday? You ask? No just arbitrary days off. Um, but we took him to a, uh, farm and he interacted with goats for the first time and it was, and he wasn't scared and it was all kind of watched him interact with goats all weekend.

 And. A weather station that my students that up on campus got hooked up to the internet. Oo type internet, you Richmond, whether that's not what it is. I don't actually remember the URL

Rachel: -in, in internet type in you go to-

Steph: Google and you say internet, and then hopefully something else pops up, but it's online.

And that was a small miracle. That's awesome. Yeah. How about. What was your week like?

Rachel: Um, I had a pretty good week. Remember all those, that paper that I was having trouble kind of getting into. I got into it a little bit out there. I wrote an introduction. Okay. No, I didn't submit it or anything, but I, I, you know, I, I broke the, broke the seal kinda.

Steph: Did you do the trick or,

Rachel: We're talking about the change, the font to, to white and just type and type into. And deal with editing later. And no, I did not do that. And maybe I should have though, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I have some, I have some running. I don't know.

It was my tip.

Steph: You should follow it. Yeah. Report back.

Rachel: Yeah. Then I'll talk about what went wrong next week. Um, yeah. So this past weekend, uh, PIs are principal investigators in our lab group , uh, had us up to his family's house in the Catskills. It was like a whole lab retreat that we didn't get to do last year because of COVID.

And we have a lot of new people in our lab group. And so it was really nice to get to know everyone

Steph: What a nice thing to do. It's perfect weather. Perfect season for the Catskills.

Rachel: The leaves are beautiful up there. Some of us went out bike ride around the reservoir there, and it was great.

We did get caught in a thunderstorm.

 Do you have, like, did anything go wrong this past week? I mean, it's always good to talk about the bad things, just to sure. Vent a little, maybe

Steph: I, I won't talk about the colleague who I saw this weekend and looked at my son and then looked at me and says, how's your research coming with him?

And I said, I said, what did I even say? I don't know. Exploding, but instead I was like, it doesn't get done. I cry a lot. Like what, who askshomethat question? I haven't seen you in a year and a half, so that was, we won't talk about that, but yeah. We'll talk about it a little bit, but I will talk. I mean, I guess this is like Theodore week.

He is not great because he's home these two days from daycare because we got a, we got our notes yesterday from our daycare and a lot of graphic imagery that was like, you need to pick up your son. Cause he had, I shit you not. Oh, well yeah. And diarrhea. And they sent, they sent pictures. I was like,

Rachel: no, no, I know what you mean.

Steph: He's home for two days and he's perfectly fine. COVID negative. Just once you have a child- rachel, I will say you talk about poop more than most people, but it increases exponentially when you have a kid.

Rachel: Do you and, and your partner need to like report his poops to each other.

Steph: So initially when they're, when they're really, really young, he's one, it's fine. He's a 4:30 PM pooper we know that when that, when he's off that.

 I am very grateful for their COVID protocols and how they're erring on the side of safety versus not. But inconvenient. Yeah, we had, we had meetings scheduled

.How about you? Do you have anything bad happen in your week?

Rachel: I had a pretty good week actually, but I, there was one thing that I had been nominated for that I found out from other people, of course, that did not get it. I found out from other people because they told me that they did get on it and I was like, oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. But that's okay. It was just, you know, it's, it's just like an extra curricular kind of thing. And it was something I was interested in.

Happy for my pals.

But I needed to report it here. Cause it's always good to talk about the things you don't get. Because it might seem like a lot of people have it all figured out, but that's not true.

Steph: I'm so excited to talk to our guest today. Let me tell you. Her name's Sarah, Sarah Vogelsong is an award-winning reporter and editor. She's the environment and energy reporter for the Virginia Mercury.

So that means she covers everything from state utility regulation to pipelines and environmental justice to sea level rise. And I actually think one of the best ways I've seen her work described is from a guy on Twitter who said, I don't know what her actual beat is, but I enjoy how every piece I read of hers teaches me about a fun, new way climate change is ruining our planet.

INTERVIEW

Steph: Sarah, what do you do? What's your, what's your job title? What do you have a business card? I don't know if that's a thing anymore. So what does it say? What's your LinkedIn profile say? That's the new business card.

Sarah: I have business cards and in non COVID times, I, I do use them quite a lot.

I am the environment and energy journalist at the Virginia Mercury. Which is a policy focused state news site that's been around her a little more than three years, um, and was basically founded with the thought that newspapers were being gutted. And so a lot of these beats that had traditionally been covered, like environment and like utilities were not really getting covered very thoroughly anymore, just because newsrooms were shrinking and they're still really, really important areas. And I think in the case of the environment, I think arguably is getting more and more important as time goes by. And yet at the same time, you do have this shrinking pool of people who are covering it.

So I know it was really important to my editor who was a former environmental reporter at the Times dispatch in Richmond, it was really important to him to have somebody covering that beat.

Steph: I didn't realize the mercury was so new. I think I thought they were around a while.

Rachel: If, if you're talking to somebody behind you at CVS, like what do you actually do as, as, um, a journalist?

Sarah: I do a lot of different things and, and I'm going to talk about this sort of in the context of non COVID.

Steph: Totally.

Rachel: Absolutely. Let's just pretend it didn't happen.

Sarah: I think that for me, like one of the really attractive things about journalism is that you're not sitting behind a desk all the time. You get to go out and about and meet people, whether that's like going to a public meeting or going out to somebody's business or their farm or. I'm trying to think of places that I got recently, you know, when you're covering environment, maybe you're going out on a boat or into a mountain, or like a nature preserve or something.

And it sort of adds this like energizing component to work.

Steph: What do you actually actually do on a day to day basis? It sounds like it's never the same.

Sarah: Yeah. It's not ever the same. So there's that component to it? I mean, having said that. There is, I definitely do like spend a lot of time at my computer as well.

At the end of the day, you like have to write something. I also just spend a lot, a lot of time reading. I think that's true of pretty much every journalist, you know, whether that's a matter of reading, like reports that have come out or legal filings or, you know, coverage from other areas, so that you can get broader context or just you're reading something that sort of generally relates to your beat and then you start to make connections between different things.

Rachel: What's a beat?

Sarah: A beat is like the specific area that you work in. So for me, my beat is environment and energy. They are still more specialized than like a general assignment reporter - somebody who can just kind of go out and cover anything, any, anywhere.

Steph: But I think I was thinking you'd have like a different beat day-to-day we're taking, you're like, I'm thinking sea level rise and Norfolk .

Rachel: Are people you talk to or interview, are they ever surprised about how, like, how informed you are in, in the topic that you're asking about?

Sarah: Um, that's an interesting question.

I would say sometimes. It depends what I'm working on. And I do think that.

So one of these issues, you know, become these fields become so narrow that you end up talking to the same people over and over again. That's not necessarily because you're not trying to talk to other people. It's that there's only, it's like just a small pool who's working in that lane at the state corporation commission and all of these cases where.

Litigation that goes on, which is most of them, you have the same attorneys representing the same organizations. Um, and I think some of that is because, well, like not all organizations can like afford to hire an attorney. And also just for utility regulation, there's like this very high bar. Yeah. Of like understanding that you have to have to be able to be making these like legal arguments in court. .

Steph: It sounds like such a niche law field. Like, I don't know many people who are like, I'm going to be a lawyer and go into utility regulation law.

Sarah: I like, you know, I've never surveyed the ones that I talked to, but I asked them for us with confidence. Yeah. That they probably did not plan to.

Rachel: So let's take a step back and sort of get into your, to your journey of how you got to where you are. But I first want to ask if you could just tell us a bit about how your work contributes to combating the climate crisis.

Sarah: I think that I see a lot of my role as an environmental reporter where it overlaps with climate change as just sort of informing people that not only is this a thing that is happening.

But here are the myriad different ways that this is at this very moment at present, impacting our lives and our economy and our decision-making like all of these different sort of slices. There is still a huge amount of doubt out there among the general public that climate change is actually occurring.

 I know one of the decisions that we made at the mercury was that we were not going to portray climate change. And an issue to be debated, right? You can debate policy about how to deal with climate change. You know, that's totally legitimate. That's the correct thing to do. It has all of the answers to this, but there really isn't any credible, widespread doubt that this is occurring.

 Part of that decision-making came out of a workshop that I was at a couple of years ago.

 A few years ago I attended climate Central's climate and the newsroom group. At the science museum and that that was a really also clarifying for me. And that we had previously, prior to that, you know, talked in my newsroom about how we were going to handle climate change, how we were going to frame it. And so I, we were already on that path, but I think going through that experience and just having really a couple of days to focus in on that subject.

We're really kind of solidified us and being like, yes, this is the correct course on this and words matter, you know, there's a lot of word selection. You sometimes don't even think when you're writing quickly about the words that you choose. So saying somebody believes in climate change is we try to avoid that kind of language.

And that was just something that I wasn't as attuned to prior to going.

Steph: I think that's great that that came out of that three-day workshop.

 Do you get a lot of people who comment on your stories? Like, oh, there's Sarah, again, talking about this hoax or a comments turned off or do you find the readership people like self-selected and they're like, I'm here at this. I read this online newspaper because these are the stories I'm interested. Or is it all of the above?

Sarah: We definitely get comments every time I write about specifically climate change from people saying that it's not real. I do not think that we get as many comments about that as probably like the times dispatch does or, you know, certainly as these much, much larger publications do. So I think that there probably is. Self-selecting and because we are a policy focused, you know, site, um, our commentary absolutely does have a progressive tilt to it.

Although our news reporting is, oh, yes does not. I mean, we have the traditional newsroom .

Steph: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. The op-eds maybe. . Well, let's take it back. Did you did 15 year old Sarah know that she was going to be a journalist? What was your first job?

Did you have an awful haircut? I talked about my many episodes of go. Or did you have to wear a uniform? Did you, what, how did, what was your first job? Where did you start?

Sarah: I definitely came to journalism through like a very circuitous. Um, so I initially I have no idea what I wanted to do after college. I knew I probably wanted to do something with writing, but because I always felt like that was my,

Steph: what did you major in, in college?

Sarah: English. I went to William and Mary and they don't even have a journalism degree. And I would also say like I had zero interest in working on the newspaper. I was like not super involved in college. I think it was like an era of quitting for me.

Rachel: We love to hear about circuitous routes because a lot of people have them and it's good to talk about it so that people know that it's okay. And you can land in a job that you really liked someday. That's doing good for the world.

Sarah: Yeah, and I am sort of glad that I didn't just immediately come out of college and, and get on a path really, that led me here really fast.

Um, so I actually went into editing and I worked on academic journals. Hmm.

Steph: Oh boy. Which was field.

Rachel: Was it not the field of climatology or

Sarah: So I first started out working at this like small company called Hildreth publications that doesn't exist anymore in DC. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it was like a great place to start.

I can tell you that the two journals that I managed to, and then I think I did all the copy editing for a medical journal, but I don't remember the name of, uh, but I managed one, two education ones, and one was called the clearing.

And one was called arts education policy review.

Steph: Oh, oh, those are niche journals.

Sarah: Yeah. I feel like there were some even way nichier ones, but I can't remember what their names were. Um, but I graduated in 2008 and so I was there for about a year, and we lost everybody except like six people got laid off.

Steph: Sure.

Sarah: So I moved to New York for a while and then I started just doing like a lot of freelancing. So, um, just for different publishing companies for editing started doing textbooks. Yeah. Doing just copy editing.

Steph: Did you find it stressful to be a freelancer? My husband is a consultant. And I just, I felt like having to get your own work that terrifies me and I think I'm always I'm.

So I think people are so brave when they're freelancers. I'm like, oh my God, you guys are doing it. Yeah. It's true. I don't know. You're gonna have to like, figure it out and get your own work. And I don't know if you ever felt stressed about it or you just say yeah, yeah, yeah,

Sarah: There were times that I look back and I just cannot comprehend how I was doing the volume of work that I was doing at the time. I think especially once I started sort of combining learning with editing, so like at a certain point I started thinking, you know, I'm tired of just fixing other people's. Work or, you know, cleaning it up or streamlining it, you know, I want to do some of this myself.

So I initially started then like writing book reviews and kind of went from there, you know, wrote some for some really, really small publications. Just kind of like did anything that I could, and, and at some point in here, I moved to Richmond, which gave me a lot more freedom to experiment.

Steph: Richmond is a lot cheaper than New York to live in.

Sarah: You know, I had gone back to DC for a while after leaving New York, New York was definitely not for me. Um, but Richmond was way cheaper than both DC.

Rachel: I mean, I lived in New York city after was that after college? Yeah. I thought I really liked it. And then I left it and I was like, wow. I was stressed for two years.

Sarah: Yeah, no, it's, it's great to visit. And I, you know, I would have loved to have been a person, I think who did really thrive in New York city.

Rachel: My sisters lived. Yeah. People love it,

Steph: but it sounds like you also had a lot on your plate in New York while you were in New York, you decided to move back to DC when you started writing more.

Sarah: I think that's sort of loosely overlapped. I think I mostly just left New York because I didn't like it. Sure.

Steph: That's fair. Yeah.

Rachel: I have chosen many, a job based on geographic location.

Steph: So you're writing book reviews first. And then were you picking up stuff at like small article?

I don't know how you make the leap from book review to beatwriter.

Sarah: So I started out with book reviews and then started writing like a column on like the publishing industry for the same publication, which was just like run by some guy who had a dream .

I'm not sure I can even remember sort of how these things fell in order. But I think I use those to then start writing for a website that also heard about books in publishing in DC. And so then I had some clips and when I moved to Richmond, I could use those to, I at least had something to show to editors.

You know, to come to them with a pitch. So I did that kind of just like freelance focus for probably a few years. And then I got my first staff job, which was at a, um, also now, now defunct publication, um, in Caroline Countycalled the Carolina. And so I technically worked for them for 20 hours a week. I was the only reporter I covered every, every public meeting in the county.

So like board of supervisors, planning commission, there were two towns. So their town councils, um,

Steph: wow.

Sarah: Uh, Uh, so, you know, if there were like important court cases and like community events and stuff, it was a lot. And I remember being absolutely terrified when I started.

I had been reporting in other stuff just in between those two things, but it was more just, it was less consistent.

It was kind of like, what could I find and what could I pitch? I think I built up some like skills by that time. But working at a newspaper really makes you learn a lot of skills really fast because you have to fill the space. That paper goes out. That one was a week late. I later moved to a daily down at Petersburg, but like, those pages are going out every week or every day and something has to be on them.

Steph: Did you have stuff due every day? No. Is that a lot? I don't know. Is that normal?

Sarah: I don't think I wrote something every day, but I was probably had something every, I don't know, four out of five. And we would rotate at the decks.

So it's like, I think it was every third Saturday you worked and you would usually write at least two stories that day off of just whatever was going on in the community.

Rachel: What skills do you use for your job? I mean, you mentioned that you, you learn a lot of different skills during reporting.

What are those, like if you knew that you had these skills, these innate things early on, would you have, would you have ended up there sooner, or that

Sarah: I have a set of personality traits that are both really well suited to journalism and really poorly suited to journalists.

Rachel: We'd love to hear it. Let's take a deep dive into your personality too.

Steph: What is your Enneagram?

Rachel: Are you a Samantha?

Sarah: No. I had a coworker at the Mercury um, Michelle Hankerson, who is from Hampton roads and she's now the news director at WHR oh, down there.

Great reporter. Great. Just like, really great at everything and as a human being, but she loves star charts. And so whenever she would do a star chart for the particular legislator.

I mean, it's always interesting to hear other people talk about you. .

Steph: I'm a Capricorn. but I'm a Leo rising and that's really where it comes through different parts.

 Let's go back.

Sarah: Um, I think that I am in generally good listener. I've been told that people find it fairly easy to talk to me. So that's obviously a skill that can developed as sort of paying attention to how do you get people to tell their story? Um, you know, whether their story is, you know, the kind of thing that you're going to be writing about.

 I think that one of my strengths is being able to clearly sort of break down very complicated issues and that's really important to me.

 This is going to be a little bit of a tangent, but that's okay. I think that anybody who goes into journalism, that even though you hear about this sort of stereotype of the journalist as being this very cynical person, I think that that comes from the fact that anybody who goes into this field sort of is fundamentally an idealist.

And I think that's because it's sort of founded on this belief. You know, the public has a right to know information and the public should be involved in decision-making that they have the capability to understand what's going on and that not just do they have the capability, but that as informed citizens, they should be involved in all of these processes.

And. I tend to think that people are a lot, they're very interested in some of these more complicated topics. I do think people are really interested and then utilities and the transition to clean energy and sea level rise and energy efficiency and all of these things. It's just that there often is a really high barrier to understanding them.

And some of that is still. Um, you know, and some of it is because it's complicated. And so I sort of see my role as being this intermediary, who I had the time and I'm in a position where I can put a lot of effort into figuring out why were these things the way that they are, and people are willing to talk to me about that and that I can then sort of pass that on to members of the public who then can make better, more informed decisions. And again, to kind of come back to that, that like policy question of there's often a lot of different options of policies that people can select. And, but you can't really have a good discussion about what those options are. People don't understand what the basic issues.

Steph: I think that makes total sense.

Like all of that makes sense. And it's interesting people Rachel I've talked to before, communication has been such a strong, like, to be good at your job. You need most of the people to, you have to be a good communicator.

But also I think your idealism is re I mean, am I sort of hearing, we should abolish the electoral and it's nice to hear that from someone who actually interacts with people outside of like the, I feel like I'm in a bubble out of the time and you actually talked to people from different places and with different life histories and different views.

And it's nice to hear that you think that people just really want to know and make informed.

Sarah: The favorite emails that I get are from people who are not plugged into a lot of like the political circles. It is just somebody who happened to read it. And then just like writes me a note, you know, sometimes about, oh, you know, we did this with energy efficiency, like thanks for filling us in on what's being done. And I find those to be really some of the most motivating things that I hear, because it is that kind of that reminder that people care, people are invested in the decisions that their representatives make

Steph: as a Gemini, we talked about this stuff here. What, you also had a short little piece where you said there was some things that make you not well-suited to being a journalist, but you are anyway. Can you talk about maybe one of those?

Sarah: I am not somebody who thrives off of conflict. I think I'm definitely a people pleaser and it was, it has been a process for me to build up a thicker skin, but over time, people do feel comfortable saying things to journalists that I don't think they would be comfortable saying to almost any other members of the.

Um, people can be really mean. Yeah. And you do just kind of have to get used to that. That's been difficult for me. I'm sure. And I think related to that, And this is fun for me, kind of to look back on, you know, to, to have a moment where you're like, oh my God, look how far I've come. I did. This is that I used to be terrified to call people on the phone and interview them.

And like I just had in my mind that like, I would introduce myself and they would start yelling. I don't remember what I was thinking, but I would have to like spend 20 minutes or so like psyching myself up to make the calls and what I actually did for a while. Is, I would pretend that I was a boyfriend that my sister had at the time who just happened to be very like outgoing and gregarious, fake

Rachel: it till you make it.

Sarah: Yeah. So something about like, pretending to be Alberto. And I did that for a while and like, well, I will still, if it's like a very high school, Call at like, yes, I get nervous, but over time, just doing that again and again, and again, really just, you can't be that stressed all the time. Like you've got to start losing some of that.

Rachel: Yeah, no. And it sounds like practice and experience also has helped you get a little bit more comfortable.

Steph: this being said, my adult husband still won't make a phone call.

Rachel: I was going to say the same thing. I was like, do you have any tips for Greg ordering dinner for take out?

Sarah: I was talking to somebody about this the other day is that I've always been kind of weirdly phobic about ordering takeout over the phone.

Rachel: I understand it. I get stressed about certain things like that.

The longer you wait to do it, the more stressed, or do you want to just do it, just get it over with yet? Yeah,

Sarah: I do. I, I do wish I had known though when I started working as a journalist, that the vast majority of journalists also started out or still do get nervous making calls. I wish I really wish I had known that because I just had this perception that.

Oh, nobody else had this problem. Everybody else was just like so brave and didn't care.

Rachel: I mean we, in our field, we give these talks at conferences and it's incredibly nerve wracking. And the, I remember the first talk I gave, I was.

So, so incredibly nervous, just so nervous. And I did it and somebody came up to me after and said, you know, good job, whatever. And, and he said he was a professor, probably in his forties. He said, you know, I still get nervous sometimes with TA. And it was just like, oh, I mean, first of all, it's a little scary that it doesn't go away, but he was so kind and yeah, it was like, okay, I'm not alone.

I also, I don't know. It almost helped me overcome it. It was like, We don't have time to be nervous anymore. Like if everyone's like this. I don't know.

Steph: Imposter syndrome is like super real, too, right. Where you're like, why am I the person making this call? Like, who allowed me to, how did

Rachel: I get this microphone? How we got here?

Steph: Oh, full circle.

. I have a feeling. I know the answer to this question and it is, uh, if there were no climate crisis, what would you be doing?

But I think I know the answer to this question, but you, you answer it

Sarah: . I want to, I want to see if it matches up

Steph: You'd probably still be a journalist because yeah, every. I'm the only person that we've talked to thus far though. Like, I don't have a totally different job. I don't know, not what I do now.

 What you don't know is this podcast is just a vehicle for me to learn about other jobs so I can leave mine.

Rachel: This is a reverse job interview.

Sarah: I do think I would still be a journalist.

Um, I didn't, you know, go into journalism thinking that I was going to be covering environmental issues. That was definitely something that evolved over time. And it was actually when I was at the Petersburg paper I had an editor there who really was something of a mentor to me, and he was talking to me one day and he said, you know, this, this one reporter here has this focus on business. And this other one like focuses on sports. I think that you should have a focus. And I think it should be like environment and agriculture, because you really seem like your interests. And those areas. And I was like, you're yeah, you're right. I am interested in those. So, you know, when you're working at a very, very understaffed daily paper that covers six localities, it's not like you can really specialize, but when I could, you know, when I had the time, we would sort of prioritize those kinds of stories.

And I mean, he was absolutely right. I ended up enjoying those things. And when I left that paper and I went back to freelancing, I made this decision that I was going to like brand myself as an environmental journalist. And that turned out to be a really good call because some of the work there that I had done ended up getting me a job at the bay journal, which writes about the Chesapeake bay.

And then at the Mercury. My editor, I guess, had among one of the ways that he found me was by Googling for environmental journalists. So you were like having a website, a website was a very good idea.

Steph: Another thing that's really important is finding a mentor who, and it sounds like your mentor, the Petersburg paper had this top-down view.

Sarah: And that, that was really, really important.

I mean, I, I will also say that have always kind of felt a dearth of mentorship. That's, that's definitely been something that I am always really jealous of people when I hear that they have these really strong mentor figures in their life. And I think that, you know, there's probably a gender component to that.

I'm sure journalism, I think. Increasingly becoming much more diversified. Like, I mean, there's a ton of just incredibly talented, like great female journalists and in Richmond and around the state. Um, but you do still see a lot of leadership that is male. There's just, there's fewer female journalists who are in their like fifties or sixties.

Steph: . It is a boys club, right. If I like, and it is totally a boys club and I feel like we're all constantly fighting these embedded, the structural patriarchy that exists in so many. Predominantly male fields like journalism. If you think of, think of like new films from the 1950s, it's always like a girl journalist and then like his girl Friday or whatever, right.

Or like scientists, you picture a scientist, you often picture a male, someone who's gendered male. I don't know. I think you're totally right. And that's, and that's a bummer.

Sarah: I do think it is definitely changing. A lot. And I think it's also like worth remembering that like one of the most influential American journalists was a woman who was Ida Tarbell who, you know, exposed standard oil.

You know, she is the woman who, who broke up standard oil, the largest oil company, you know, this, this just massive entity that, that dominated everything.

Steph: . But Sarah, you could be someone else's mentor though. Cause I feel like you have. Sure. Good listener, great listener. Have a path. Gemini. You're the new old guard. Is that weird way to say, oh my God, no, you're not. That's not what I meant. I, that came up awfully.

Sarah: At some point, I want to say it might've been what I started working my first staff job in Caroline county. So I, I think I would have been about 20. 8 27.

Steph: I'm going to emphasize that as young.

Sarah: Correct. I had this terrible moment one day where I was like, oh my God, I'm not like the bright young thing in the office, which you are when you're like right out of college.

I know. And you're like that that ship has sailed.

Steph: I think I fully get that. I pretend I'm young all the time. Everyone's like, you've been at this job for a while. You don't have this excuse anymore.

Well, Sarah, this has been such a lovely conversation.

Uh, we usually wrap up by asking you if you have any pets and if they have a social media presence.

Sarah: Sadly do not. I'm not allowed to have them at my apartment, but I can make some good recommendations, specific, specific dog accounts that you follow.