July 16, 2025 • 38 mins
In this episode of EdUp Learning and Development, Ben Erwin shares his journey from being a writing instructor to becoming an instructional designer at Purdue University. He discusses the challenges of burnout in education, the importance of community and networking, and how LinkedIn played a crucial role in his career transition. Ben emphasizes the need for work-life balance and offers valuable advice for those looking to shift careers, highlighting the significance of self-reflection and the understanding that every job is temporary. He also shares insights into his daily productivity habits and the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
In this episode of Add Up Learning and Development, Ben
Irwin takes us on an honest and relatable journey from life as a
writing instructor to thriving as an instructional designer at
Purdue University. This conversation is full of
wisdom for anyone considering a career pivot.
Ben opens up about the reality of burnout in education, how he
(00:23):
found clarity in the chaos, and why LinkedIn became a game
changer in his professional growth.
We also dive into the power of community, the importance of
knowing your value, and what it really takes to break into the
field of instructional design today.
Whether you're feeling stuck searching for your next step, or
just want to hear from someone who's been there and made it
(00:46):
through this, this episode will leave you feeling seen and ready
to take action. Let's jump in.
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(01:07):
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(01:28):
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and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icebringsolutions.com to learn more about us, download
(01:51):
our resources and connect. Hello everyone and welcome to
another amazing episode of Add Up Learning and Development.
My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host.
And today we have a fabulous guest.
We have Ben Irwin, who is an instructional designer of Purdue
University. Amongst other things, he is a
(02:14):
job curator, Finder, sharing extraordinaire.
So, Ben, welcome to the show. Hello thank you I I will try my
best to match your energy. I know I just love talking to
people, so it really does like release a lot of endorphins.
For me. It's like exercising.
I get really excited, especiallytalking to people that I know
(02:34):
fairly well, like yourself, because I know this is this
episode's going to be really, really great.
So I'm I'm so glad you joined me.
Well happy, happy to be here andto chat.
Well, let's start at the beginning.
You know, I know a little bit about your personal journey
because we've talked, but you know what kind of led you here
(02:55):
to where you're at? You've grown substantially on
LinkedIn, like over 50,000 followers now you know, You know
what does the path behind that look like?
Yeah, celebrate. That is awesome.
That is amazing. I use this vanity metrics.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
But it's, it talks about how people trust you and how they
(03:17):
value your content. So I think that's really
important to to celebrate that for sure.
Yeah. So tell us, tell us about your
journey, Ben. So, so to try to truncate this,
I'm currently an instructional designer.
I've been working at Purdue for the last two years.
(03:39):
Prior to that, I was a writing instructor and writing center
director at a large northeasternuniversity for for 12 years.
So I did that for for more than a decade and and prior to that I
worked for a number of years in the early 2000s as a journalist
(04:02):
in very various capacities. So I was everything from.
So you're a great writer. That's why people follow your
LinkedIn. Like, yeah, everything that I do
starts with with writing and andthat's, you know, the reason
that I don't appear on lots of shows like this is that I'm a
(04:24):
much better writer than talker. I'm glad you made an exception.
But so, so I've, I've actually had a number of, of different
careers and kind of all of that to me is, is really linked in
terms of, you know, when, when Iwas working at daily newspapers,
it, it only took a few years to realize I, I loved journalism,
(04:48):
but I hated journalists. And what I really enjoyed was
working with writers. And I'd sort of thought back to
my time as an undergrad working in, in my university's writing
center and thinking, oh, like, that's someone's job.
I could do that for a living. I could spend more of my time
(05:12):
working one-on-one with writers,which which is how I, you know,
got into, into writing center work and into teaching.
And, and again, you know, at at a certain point in my career,
realizing there wasn't the opportunity and the upward
mobility that I wanted in terms of my own growth and my own
(05:35):
learning. Isn't that tough?
That's so tough to like, like, oh, I love this.
But there's, you know, like it'skind of the end of the path
here. And you know, I'll, I'll be
honest, like there, there were alot of things about directing a
writing center that really facilitated my, my burnout and
an eventual career transition. But I do also sometimes think
(05:58):
like, oh, if these other elements had been better, right,
I, I might still be doing that. But you know, I, I really love
instructional design and, and I'm really, you know, have, have
enjoyed that transition because it's, to me, it's fun and
rewarding in so many of the sameways that teaching was.
(06:23):
But I also then get to flex these other creative muscles
that outside of the my own courses that I taught
frequently, kind of went unused.Yeah.
Oh, I love that. And it's so interesting because
I've interviewed so many people on the show.
Like, people don't realize that we don't come from necessarily
(06:47):
education backgrounds. And you're gonna hear my puppy
has joined us this morning and he has a squeaky toy.
So for those of you who are hearing that in the background,
I'll try to edit that out. But it's just it's part of life.
That's what it is. And we've started different
spots, you know, where I, you know, I come from education K to
12, but I did some other things before I popped into
(07:07):
instructional design. I think it's just so interesting
that like instructional design has so many places you can go
with these transferable skills that you have, no matter what
career path you're on. It's really interesting to me to
to to discover that as I'm having more and more of these
conversations. Yeah.
(07:27):
And you know, the team that I work on now, there are a few
folks who have, you know, degrees and advanced degrees and
instructional design. But one of the things that I
really appreciate about the field is that you've got folks
coming from all over the place with different backgrounds,
different experiences. And you know, I'm, I'm working
(07:49):
within kind of academic instructional design.
But even across the field, if you look at corporate and
nonprofit and all of these variations on, you know, ID
work, you do really, I think seethe the opportunity that the
field presents, even if you comefrom like less traditional paths
(08:15):
or a little bit. Like we welcome everybody here.
We honestly do. Like we welcome everybody.
Yeah, right. You'll, you'll see folks from,
from Ed on the same team as folks from corporate and you
know, folks from all these different industries and
different spheres and backgrounds, but still kind of
(08:38):
being united by the skill set ofhow do I craft effective
learning environments for different audiences to achieve
specified outcomes, right? For sure.
I think when I worked at Amazon,50% of my team were came from
the classroom like the K to 12thclassroom, but the other 50%
(08:59):
came from like you're saying, various aspects of the industry.
So that's good segue into my next question because you've
been doing a lot of job postings.
So many of the people that listen to the show I know are
looking to shift in to a career in learning and development.
So as far as your own journey isconcerned, what's like a pivotal
(09:20):
moment or decision that you madethat kind of just changed
everything for you? Like you're like, I know I'm
going to go into instructional design and this is what I'm
going to do. So there was a few factors,
yeah, that that created this like Confluence for change.
Part of it was that I was getting burnt out in in my past
(09:41):
role and just kind of overseeinga staff of 40 plus people
feeling as though I was kind of on call 24/7.
Yeah. That's a lot.
Like, and having to to teach andwork with faculty across campus
and lead dozens of workshops every semester.
(10:01):
It was, you know, my my list of tasks sort of slowly grew every
year for more than a decade that.
Is not sustainable. That is not sustainable.
Yeah, right. And, and made even worse when
you know, you're sort of being told, or at least in my case, I
was told, oh, hey, we'll, we'll get you this help or we'll do XY
(10:25):
and Z. And none of that ever
materialized. I think in part because, you
know, you're, you're able to hold the ship together right
through the expertise of my staff and, and folks within my
department. But but that that relationship
was becoming more tenuous, whichwas also exacerbated by COVID.
(10:50):
Yeah. For sure.
So like for for me, COVID was a real sea change in how do we
look at employment and a big part of that being the
proliferation of remote work as as much as like I taught online
and I tutored online and done a lot of synchronous online work.
(11:12):
Hadn't really thought up until that point, oh, I could make
this a reality. I could work from the literal
comforts of my homework faster, work more efficient, be more
productive and, you know, not, not have to be in an office
every day. Yeah.
Be the stress of commuting or just like it's so interesting to
(11:37):
me that people do go back to theoffice and I know some people
need that kind of stimulation tohave Co workers around and
things like that. But for me it would be like
there would be tons of distractions.
I mean, there's enough to deal with at home, but in the office
there was just I go, I got to commute.
What's the traffic like? You know, what time do I have to
(11:58):
be in the office? Am I going to be late?
Am I going to be, you know, likewho do I need to talk to?
Like it just, it was a whole different situation.
I yeah. And I, I guess to me also a
caveat that I will be transparent about is, you know,
my wife and I don't have children.
We live in a home, you know, live in a home that has enough
(12:18):
space for us both to, you know, work separately, but in in the
same home every day. If we had kids or if we were
living in a one bedroom apartment, I'd get out.
Number one, you'd want to get out number.
Two, I write like I, I would probably be singing a, a
(12:40):
different tune, but very privileged to, to have the space
to make, you know, remote work really effective and really
seamless. So, so to me, those, those two
factors, right where I was at inmy career, coupled with COVID
and changes in education and academia, all kind of
(13:04):
contributing to the, the initialimpetus to, to find something
else. And when I started looking, I
didn't know that that ID was going to be the path.
I I did a lot of research and networking in a whole lot of
other areas before I really kindof narrowed down.
(13:27):
Here's here's what the best alignment for my skill set and
experience would be. I think that's great advice too,
because people, they will come, they probably come to you for
advice and they come definitely come to me for advice.
And they say, well, where do I start?
And I'm like, well, where do youwant to be?
And you did that. You did the research, you
figured out where you wanted to be what, what was going to work
for you, what didn't work for you.
(13:49):
I think people think like, OK, Icreated this goal.
I want to go into instructional design, but they're not thinking
about how vast that field is. Absolutely.
I and that was my problem too, right?
I had a very specific idea, you know, prior to doing any real
(14:09):
research, I had a very specific idea about what instructional
design was. And it was one of the reasons
that I hadn't really considered it.
And, and again, my, my own ignorance kind of holding me
back. And once I started networking on
LinkedIn, once I started kind ofdoing more research on my own
(14:31):
and really analyzing and breaking down job posts and, and
seeing, oh, there, there are different iterations of this
job. There are so many variations of
this work. How can I find a role that that
is going to be a good fit for me?
Right? So that that's another piece of
(14:51):
advice that I always offer folksis your job search will take
significantly longer than you think.
Yeah, I think lots of people learn that.
They think that it's not like a corporate job where you're like
a sales representative or like aStockbrook or something.
You can just transition, you know, even those have little
caveats to it, but it's something that you really have
to find where where you belong. I should have never bought that
(15:14):
toy. I, I want to go back to
something you said about the burnout because one of the
questions I like to ask is like,what's something people don't
talk about enough in this field that you've had to navigate
behind the scenes? And I think this applies to all
roles. And it's burnout.
It's the constant pressure of feeling like you always need to
(15:37):
be on. You're the person that people
turn to to answer the questions quickly, especially if you're in
that leadership role, just navigating all the projects,
being the face of the of the department when you are in the
leadership role. So as far as burnout is
concerned, how do you feel that shifted from when you were the
(15:57):
directing the writing center to now you're in this instructional
design role? I'm going to grossly
oversimplify, but it's, it's night and day.
I'll, I'll be honest, you know, in my director role, as I said,
kind of the, that position was growing every year and we had,
(16:20):
or I should say the university had these kind of KPIs for
growth and contact hours. And you know, what are we doing
and how are we doing it and how can we make it more efficient
and how can we spend less money and use fewer man hours to get
more? Do more with less, yeah.
Yes, right. And like, I had the data to
(16:41):
know, hey, short of dining services, we see more students
across campus than any other service at the university.
Like we are seeing thousands of students.
We had, you know, north of 7000 contact hours every accident
here. Like it, it was a sizable
(17:01):
operation and the and as much aslike I said, I was fortunate to
have a really great staff, but never had assistant directors,
never really had infrastructure in place and part of that was my
fault as well. I think my tendency to just take
(17:23):
everything on and just yeah. We gotta not do that, Ben.
That's bad for us. Right.
But part of me was like, oh, I can make anything work.
Yeah, for sure. But then you realize how
intricate the project is. You know, like, oh, this looks
so simple from the outside. Yes, right.
(17:44):
So, so as I said, it was, it washigh stress, high demand.
So much of that job, by the timethat I left, was essentially
solving, you know, 40 people's problems every.
We can imagine how. Many emails you got or slack
messages. Jesus.
(18:04):
Yeah. So in in an average day in that
role, I would get 60 to 70 emails, about 90% of which would
require a direct response because I was running all of the
comms, all of the social media. I was the point.
Person. For like software training for
(18:25):
students, so, so many random tasks, right.
So that that was a very in termsof weekly hours was very
intense. And one of the things that I
very much appreciate about my current role is, you know, I'm
fortunate to be in a department and on a team where, you know, I
(18:46):
have supervisors who say, like, we here are the hours that we
work. You should not be working, you
know, mornings, nights, weekends, right there.
There might be times when because of projects and
deadlines, that happens. That's just the nature of the
work. But, you know, having folks
(19:07):
above me very actively say, hey,if you find yourself having to
work nights and weekends all thetime, that's a problem.
And it's not a you problem. It's a workload problem.
Like that's something that we then need to talk about and
address. And it's not this negative
reflection on you or your abilities or your work ethic.
(19:29):
It's that, hey, maybe you have too much work.
Yeah, you know, that's a great, that's great leadership if I'm
being honest to to recognize those things and be able to set
those healthy boundaries. I think I read a study recently
about like the four day work week and how productivity
increased like 80% with the 44 day work week.
(19:49):
And especially in our culture, it's so ingrained to us.
The more you work, the the more productive you are.
When I absolutely just knowing myself and and being in other
roles, I think it's the oppositebecause you get to a certain
point where your brain's just not, it's, it can't focus
anymore. It's just like like burnout and
stuff like that. So that I am so happy to hear
(20:12):
that you have that sort of leadership on your team.
And I think it really does help people kind of feel like they.
Are able to step away from the job because the job is not your
life. You do other things right, Ben.
And I think that's a problem that I've felt and that I think
a lot of educators feel right. You're so much of your identity
(20:37):
is wrapped up in here's what I do for a living or, or thinking
about myself. It it was the sense of here are
all the courses I teach. Here are the students that I'm
helping in the writing center. Like you're proving yourself.
You're showing your credentials like all the time.
Right, yeah, right. And that becomes this weird
(20:58):
kernel of your identity. And and then if, if that
suddenly goes away for for any reason, then thinking like, oh,
what, what am I now? If I'm not these other things
that I was, what, what am I in this new role?
(21:18):
And I think that that I think. This definitely resonates with a
lot of people who are listening right now.
And, and like I, I'm going to say I'm one of them.
Like what I do is who I am, so if something were to I
definitely have a breakdown of some sort.
Well, I think we, we also don't talk nearly enough about, you
(21:42):
know, there's a reason that whenyou like, go to a party or
something, people ask, what do you do for a living?
And it's the worst, often times most boring question to ask a
human being. Plus just.
Can't explain it. We can't explain it, and we
can't explain our jobs in a way people understand.
They don't know what instructional designers do
(22:03):
anyways. So that adds a whole extra layer
of stress on the, you know, trying to explain and and share
what we do. Yeah, yeah.
I think people, if you say, oh, hey, I teach whatever the level
is, they they get that if you say, well, I work with subject
matter experts to bring their vision to life to craft more
(22:26):
efficient, effective learning environments for X audience.
OK, well, what does that mean? Yeah, exactly.
That's the next question. Well, what does that mean?
Oh yeah, I'm several of these topics.
We could probably go off and tanges on it, but I want to save
those for some future episodes and maybe for some future
LinkedIn lives. One of the things I do want to
(22:48):
ask you, and I'm kind of curiousabout this too, is if someone
were to shadow you for a day, what's something that would
surprise them about what you do in a day or how you work?
Yeah, different. Like something, something fun or
something like interesting. Like I do this to stay
productive or I do this during the day.
Like, I don't know. I'm interested to know because
(23:10):
you're such a creative person. Yeah, that I, I wouldn't go that
far. Let's see things we can't take
back. I'm, I'm definitely a morning
person, especially the, the older I get, the easier it
becomes to wake up at, you know,5:45 than it is to stay up until
2:00 in the morning. So I'm usually up for at least
(23:35):
an hour or two before my wife gets up.
So to me that is like prime working hours.
No one. No one is emailing, no one is
interrupting me. I can just turn on music and and
and get to work for the day. I usually will make A to do list
at the end of every day or everyevening for the next day so that
(23:59):
as soon as I'm up and capable ofthinking enough to get something
done I can just jump into work and start checking things off A
to do list. I also live and buy, live and
die. Buy to do lists my.
We're similar that very much thesame that way.
Like and part of it is very self-serving in that I love
(24:22):
checking something off of a listI love.
Psychology proves it's a thing. It's motivation, whether
extransic, intransic, like, whatever it's it's a thing, yes.
And, and I at my core, I'm just a big dumb animal.
I want that, that serotonin hit of, of, oh, I accomplished a
(24:42):
task, right. So I don't know what might
surprise people other than, you know, I, I try to have, have a
very clear structure to my day. A lot of my time is spent in
meetings. So, so that both both
(25:04):
complicates things and gives thestructure right.
So I'll, and, and I'll try to plan my week knowing all right,
here are my standing meetings. So these other days have to be
the real buckle down, get stuff done, make sure you're, you're
ahead of deadlines, etcetera. You know, but I, I think like,
(25:26):
like most remote workers, my biggest struggle might be the
fact that everything in my houseis vying for my attention.
And so many things in my house are potentially more enticing
than than getting work done. But I, I think I've become
pretty good at, at, like I said,blocking out time and making
(25:49):
sure that, that I give myself enough time to, to get certain
things done like that. That was something I really
struggled with in the beginning was not knowing how long certain
tasks would take and budgeting my time effectively.
But, but now I think I have a much better sense of, OK, here's
(26:11):
here's where I need to block outmy calendar.
Here's where I need, you know, 0distractions.
As much as I am prone to like working in our living room there
there are certain tasks where I know, OK, I need to be in the
office. I need 100% or especially I need
uninterrupted time because some of you know, some of the work is
(26:34):
so meticulous if I get interrupted in the middle of
something. Oh.
It takes forever to get back on focus.
It just. Yeah, I feel you.
I have. I was just talking to my
boyfriend about this last night.I was like, I have generalized
anxiety disorder and that the part where it's like, you know,
(26:56):
getting distracted. I was like, I that has to do
with ADHDI can it takes me like I need like these are
soundproof. I need to have music on.
I need the door to be shut. I need you to know that it not
come bother me. I mean, the puppy distracts me
enough or the dogs distract me enough and just focus because I
(27:17):
am so proud. I use Pomodoro technique to
focus in on the specific tasks and I only do one thing for 25
minutes because you know, like Ilove checking those LinkedIn
notifications or I love going out there and seeing what's out
LinkedIn world. So I have to turn that that
stuff off. But yes, I'm a morning person as
well. I love the quiet time in the
morning. It's like my time.
(27:40):
Yeah, I to me, the get getting up early offers all of the same
advantages that people talk about, you know, when they're a
night owl. Yeah.
And I think that the common denominator is always no
interruptions. Like that's that's what makes
that time great is no one else is around.
And you, you have, you have kindof unfettered freedom without
(28:05):
intrusion, which which is becoming more and more rare as,
as like we're required by professions to be tethered to
electronic devices all day, every day.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I want to know from you.
So in closing, you've shared a lot of great information and for
the listeners out there who are thinking about they're taking
(28:28):
the leap of the best transitioning teachers or
they're just trying to transition their roles, they're
already in L&D. What 3 pieces of the best advice
you could give for them to hold on to at this point?
Because you know, a lot of different people are looking for
jobs and we hear all the stuff about job saturation, market
saturated. What 3 pieces of bias could you
give to them? So first, as I've mentioned,
(28:53):
plan for your transition to takelonger than you think.
You know, I I was studying options and doing research for
the better part of a year beforeI really started to even apply
for things. And even then it was for me, it
was a slow process of narrowing things down more and more as as
(29:14):
I was networking, as I was learning, and quite honestly as
I was failing miserably feeling.The part of it for sure.
Rejections and failing. Right.
And, and giving yourself that time is, was really helpful for
me and being able to kind of recognize that, hey, I'm, I'm
going to fail for a while. You know, I hadn't written ACV
(29:39):
in more than a decade. Oh yeah.
Right. And I have, I worked with
students and faculty all the time on their own application
materials and consider myself pretty good at it.
But when it came to doing it myself, I really, I really
struggled and I really struggledto kind of better understand the
(30:01):
new job market and initially really struggled with
quantifying my work in ways thatthis new audience would
understand and be persuaded by. So I would say give give
yourself more time, recognize that that failure is probably
(30:21):
going to be a part of that process.
And I think the key is being willing to be critically self
reflective enough to learn from what's not working.
As much as I love the transitioning teacher community,
the the hubris sometimes is kindof mind boggling to me.
(30:45):
Or the the expectations of like,well I'm I'm going to find a new
job in a month and it's going todouble my salary.
Even if you're like fully prepared and you know all the
people that know all the people,that's still not the case.
Yeah, like listen, if if that's your experience, amazing.
Good for your. Anomaly.
(31:06):
That was not my experience at all.
So that that to me is one piece of advice.
Second, I'm very biased because I'm on LinkedIn all the time,
but I legitimately believe in the potential that LinkedIn
offers in terms of not only networking but learning.
And I think too many people viewnetworking or view LinkedIn as
(31:30):
this networking platform and I view it as a learning platform.
Me too. Like my, unless you're, you're
directly selling something, not to say audience size doesn't
matter, but we get, we get caught up, I think in, in things
like how, how many followers do I have?
(31:50):
How many connections do I have? And it's really a, you know,
quality over quantity scenario. And, you know, if if you are
looking to learn about a field that you haven't worked in yet,
LinkedIn is the absolute best place to do it.
There are so many experts who are kind and generous with their
(32:14):
time and are willing to to answer questions.
Especially in this community. Right.
Yeah, like, and one of the reasons that I, I enjoy trying
to post jobs and post what I hope who will be helpful content
is just the knowledge that like I've been there, I've made all
of these mistakes. If something I write or share
(32:37):
can help someone avoid even one of the mistakes and setbacks
that I had, like, that's great. I think there's there's I also
have a lot of like teacher energy that's pent up and I'm
like, Oh my, how can I help someone today?
Like what can I do that's going to?
(32:57):
Yeah, that's ingrained in US, right?
That never goes away. That never goes away.
Yeah. So, so use LinkedIn, use it as
as a tool to learn. And then I guess the last piece
of advice, and this is for anyone transitioning careers,
realize that you are not your job and that every job is
(33:21):
temporary. I I talk with so many
transitioning educators who essentially say, hey, I want to
land my dream job. Oh I just did a poll about Dream
and Job being in the same sentence.
Like the the rhetoric of that I bristle with real hard, but but
(33:45):
also I think recognizing OK if you're particularly if you're
shifting industries, what you want is a foot in the door.
Right. Like and, and, and recognize
that you might only have that job for the next year or two
until you accrue the experience that's going to get you the next
(34:05):
role. And if you're, if you're stuck
on this idea of, well, I'm goingto finish out my career at this
company. Like good luck even even the
best employee at the best company.
That's just not a thing nowadays.
Yes, and and also if you want tomake more money you need to hop
(34:27):
from job to job. It is the only way at this point
to legitimately improve your earning power.
And, and I know four or five years ago there was a lot of,
you know, bad negative press about quote UN quote job
hoppers. But my thought was always, well,
these are bad faith takes being made by people who aren't
(34:48):
actually in the job market. Because if if you're getting,
you know, 2% cost of living increases every year at your
job. And inflation is 9%.
Yeah, right. You're losing money every year.
Only way to have a significant impact on your earning power
might be to, you know, short of a promotion is to shift
(35:13):
companies, to shift roles and, and to find something.
So I, I think that is, is something folks might get hung
up on is I need the perfect role.
Also, I, you know, I, I was veryfortunate and privileged that I
could make a lateral move in terms of salary.
(35:34):
And, you know, we can still pay our bills.
We're fine. To me, trying to get
significantly more money wasn't nearly as important as I want a
job that isn't grinding me into the ground and, and negatively
impacting every other aspect of my life.
So things like being able to work remotely, being able to
(35:57):
work typical hours and not receive emails and messages 24
hours a day just immediately have we're not.
Vampires, we don't stay up all night.
Seriously folks, this is great advice and I, I really think
people need to understand this that it's OK to I think money is
(36:19):
a taboo topic in our culture as well.
Like people just they don't talkabout it now I talk about it.
But Ben, thank you so much. I, I, I know you and I could
talk a lot longer about a lot ofdifferent things, but that just
means you have to come back on the show again.
So everything that Ben talked about, you know, we're going to
(36:40):
have information in the show notes where they find him out on
LinkedIn, the work that he's doing with job postings.
You need to follow him. Great resource.
So thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with our
audience. Yeah, thank you for letting me
blather on for. Of course, of course.
I mean, it's great advice. It really is the job hopping
stuff, talking about the burnoutstuff, you know, just trying to
(37:03):
figure your way through and everybody needs support.
So thank you so much. Absolutely.
Hi, we're Ice Spring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who helped more than60,000 clients across the globe
succeed with better online learning.
Our two flagship solutions are Ice Spring Suite and Ice Spring
Learn LMS Ispring Suite is an intuitive all in
(37:38):
Go to www.ispringsolutions.com to learn more about us and
connect. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is
packed. If today's episode sparked an
idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow
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(38:01):
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going? Connect with Holly on LinkedIn
and share your biggest take away.
She reads every message. Until next time, keep learning,
keep leading, and keep believingin your own story.
Talk soon.
In this episode of Add Up Learning and Development, Ben
Irwin takes us on an honest and relatable journey from life as a
writing instructor to thriving as an instructional designer at
Purdue University. This conversation is full of
wisdom for anyone considering a career pivot.
Ben opens up about the reality of burnout in education, how he
(00:23):
found clarity in the chaos, and why LinkedIn became a game
changer in his professional growth.
We also dive into the power of community, the importance of
knowing your value, and what it really takes to break into the
field of instructional design today.
Whether you're feeling stuck searching for your next step, or
just want to hear from someone who's been there and made it
(00:46):
through this, this episode will leave you feeling seen and ready
to take action. Let's jump in.
Hi, we're ispring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who help more than 60,000 clients across the globe
succeed with better online learning.
(01:07):
Our two flagship solutions are ispring Suite and ispring Learn
LMS. Ispring Suite is an intuitive,
all in one authoring tool for creating engaging e-learning
content, and ispringlearn is an innovative online training
platform for onboarding, upskilling, and certifying your
teams. We also provide tons of free
(01:28):
resources for aspiring and experienced e-learning
professionals, conduct weekly webinars with top industry
experts, and organize annual e-learning conferences,
challenges, and championships. We'd be happy to get to know you
and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icebringsolutions.com to learn more about us, download
(01:51):
our resources and connect. Hello everyone and welcome to
another amazing episode of Add Up Learning and Development.
My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host.
And today we have a fabulous guest.
We have Ben Irwin, who is an instructional designer of Purdue
University. Amongst other things, he is a
(02:14):
job curator, Finder, sharing extraordinaire.
So, Ben, welcome to the show. Hello thank you I I will try my
best to match your energy. I know I just love talking to
people, so it really does like release a lot of endorphins.
For me. It's like exercising.
I get really excited, especiallytalking to people that I know
(02:34):
fairly well, like yourself, because I know this is this
episode's going to be really, really great.
So I'm I'm so glad you joined me.
Well happy, happy to be here andto chat.
Well, let's start at the beginning.
You know, I know a little bit about your personal journey
because we've talked, but you know what kind of led you here
(02:55):
to where you're at? You've grown substantially on
LinkedIn, like over 50,000 followers now you know, You know
what does the path behind that look like?
Yeah, celebrate. That is awesome.
That is amazing. I use this vanity metrics.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
But it's, it talks about how people trust you and how they
(03:17):
value your content. So I think that's really
important to to celebrate that for sure.
Yeah. So tell us, tell us about your
journey, Ben. So, so to try to truncate this,
I'm currently an instructional designer.
I've been working at Purdue for the last two years.
(03:39):
Prior to that, I was a writing instructor and writing center
director at a large northeasternuniversity for for 12 years.
So I did that for for more than a decade and and prior to that I
worked for a number of years in the early 2000s as a journalist
(04:02):
in very various capacities. So I was everything from.
So you're a great writer. That's why people follow your
LinkedIn. Like, yeah, everything that I do
starts with with writing and andthat's, you know, the reason
that I don't appear on lots of shows like this is that I'm a
(04:24):
much better writer than talker. I'm glad you made an exception.
But so, so I've, I've actually had a number of, of different
careers and kind of all of that to me is, is really linked in
terms of, you know, when, when Iwas working at daily newspapers,
it, it only took a few years to realize I, I loved journalism,
(04:48):
but I hated journalists. And what I really enjoyed was
working with writers. And I'd sort of thought back to
my time as an undergrad working in, in my university's writing
center and thinking, oh, like, that's someone's job.
I could do that for a living. I could spend more of my time
(05:12):
working one-on-one with writers,which which is how I, you know,
got into, into writing center work and into teaching.
And, and again, you know, at at a certain point in my career,
realizing there wasn't the opportunity and the upward
mobility that I wanted in terms of my own growth and my own
(05:35):
learning. Isn't that tough?
That's so tough to like, like, oh, I love this.
But there's, you know, like it'skind of the end of the path
here. And you know, I'll, I'll be
honest, like there, there were alot of things about directing a
writing center that really facilitated my, my burnout and
an eventual career transition. But I do also sometimes think
(05:58):
like, oh, if these other elements had been better, right,
I, I might still be doing that. But you know, I, I really love
instructional design and, and I'm really, you know, have, have
enjoyed that transition because it's, to me, it's fun and
rewarding in so many of the sameways that teaching was.
(06:23):
But I also then get to flex these other creative muscles
that outside of the my own courses that I taught
frequently, kind of went unused.Yeah.
Oh, I love that. And it's so interesting because
I've interviewed so many people on the show.
Like, people don't realize that we don't come from necessarily
(06:47):
education backgrounds. And you're gonna hear my puppy
has joined us this morning and he has a squeaky toy.
So for those of you who are hearing that in the background,
I'll try to edit that out. But it's just it's part of life.
That's what it is. And we've started different
spots, you know, where I, you know, I come from education K to
12, but I did some other things before I popped into
(07:07):
instructional design. I think it's just so interesting
that like instructional design has so many places you can go
with these transferable skills that you have, no matter what
career path you're on. It's really interesting to me to
to to discover that as I'm having more and more of these
conversations. Yeah.
(07:27):
And you know, the team that I work on now, there are a few
folks who have, you know, degrees and advanced degrees and
instructional design. But one of the things that I
really appreciate about the field is that you've got folks
coming from all over the place with different backgrounds,
different experiences. And you know, I'm, I'm working
(07:49):
within kind of academic instructional design.
But even across the field, if you look at corporate and
nonprofit and all of these variations on, you know, ID
work, you do really, I think seethe the opportunity that the
field presents, even if you comefrom like less traditional paths
(08:15):
or a little bit. Like we welcome everybody here.
We honestly do. Like we welcome everybody.
Yeah, right. You'll, you'll see folks from,
from Ed on the same team as folks from corporate and you
know, folks from all these different industries and
different spheres and backgrounds, but still kind of
(08:38):
being united by the skill set ofhow do I craft effective
learning environments for different audiences to achieve
specified outcomes, right? For sure.
I think when I worked at Amazon,50% of my team were came from
the classroom like the K to 12thclassroom, but the other 50%
(08:59):
came from like you're saying, various aspects of the industry.
So that's good segue into my next question because you've
been doing a lot of job postings.
So many of the people that listen to the show I know are
looking to shift in to a career in learning and development.
So as far as your own journey isconcerned, what's like a pivotal
(09:20):
moment or decision that you madethat kind of just changed
everything for you? Like you're like, I know I'm
going to go into instructional design and this is what I'm
going to do. So there was a few factors,
yeah, that that created this like Confluence for change.
Part of it was that I was getting burnt out in in my past
(09:41):
role and just kind of overseeinga staff of 40 plus people
feeling as though I was kind of on call 24/7.
Yeah. That's a lot.
Like, and having to to teach andwork with faculty across campus
and lead dozens of workshops every semester.
(10:01):
It was, you know, my my list of tasks sort of slowly grew every
year for more than a decade that.
Is not sustainable. That is not sustainable.
Yeah, right. And, and made even worse when
you know, you're sort of being told, or at least in my case, I
was told, oh, hey, we'll, we'll get you this help or we'll do XY
(10:25):
and Z. And none of that ever
materialized. I think in part because, you
know, you're, you're able to hold the ship together right
through the expertise of my staff and, and folks within my
department. But but that that relationship
was becoming more tenuous, whichwas also exacerbated by COVID.
(10:50):
Yeah. For sure.
So like for for me, COVID was a real sea change in how do we
look at employment and a big part of that being the
proliferation of remote work as as much as like I taught online
and I tutored online and done a lot of synchronous online work.
(11:12):
Hadn't really thought up until that point, oh, I could make
this a reality. I could work from the literal
comforts of my homework faster, work more efficient, be more
productive and, you know, not, not have to be in an office
every day. Yeah.
Be the stress of commuting or just like it's so interesting to
(11:37):
me that people do go back to theoffice and I know some people
need that kind of stimulation tohave Co workers around and
things like that. But for me it would be like
there would be tons of distractions.
I mean, there's enough to deal with at home, but in the office
there was just I go, I got to commute.
What's the traffic like? You know, what time do I have to
(11:58):
be in the office? Am I going to be late?
Am I going to be, you know, likewho do I need to talk to?
Like it just, it was a whole different situation.
I yeah. And I, I guess to me also a
caveat that I will be transparent about is, you know,
my wife and I don't have children.
We live in a home, you know, live in a home that has enough
(12:18):
space for us both to, you know, work separately, but in in the
same home every day. If we had kids or if we were
living in a one bedroom apartment, I'd get out.
Number one, you'd want to get out number.
Two, I write like I, I would probably be singing a, a
(12:40):
different tune, but very privileged to, to have the space
to make, you know, remote work really effective and really
seamless. So, so to me, those, those two
factors, right where I was at inmy career, coupled with COVID
and changes in education and academia, all kind of
(13:04):
contributing to the, the initialimpetus to, to find something
else. And when I started looking, I
didn't know that that ID was going to be the path.
I I did a lot of research and networking in a whole lot of
other areas before I really kindof narrowed down.
(13:27):
Here's here's what the best alignment for my skill set and
experience would be. I think that's great advice too,
because people, they will come, they probably come to you for
advice and they come definitely come to me for advice.
And they say, well, where do I start?
And I'm like, well, where do youwant to be?
And you did that. You did the research, you
figured out where you wanted to be what, what was going to work
for you, what didn't work for you.
(13:49):
I think people think like, OK, Icreated this goal.
I want to go into instructional design, but they're not thinking
about how vast that field is. Absolutely.
I and that was my problem too, right?
I had a very specific idea, you know, prior to doing any real
(14:09):
research, I had a very specific idea about what instructional
design was. And it was one of the reasons
that I hadn't really considered it.
And, and again, my, my own ignorance kind of holding me
back. And once I started networking on
LinkedIn, once I started kind ofdoing more research on my own
(14:31):
and really analyzing and breaking down job posts and, and
seeing, oh, there, there are different iterations of this
job. There are so many variations of
this work. How can I find a role that that
is going to be a good fit for me?
Right? So that that's another piece of
(14:51):
advice that I always offer folksis your job search will take
significantly longer than you think.
Yeah, I think lots of people learn that.
They think that it's not like a corporate job where you're like
a sales representative or like aStockbrook or something.
You can just transition, you know, even those have little
caveats to it, but it's something that you really have
to find where where you belong. I should have never bought that
(15:14):
toy. I, I want to go back to
something you said about the burnout because one of the
questions I like to ask is like,what's something people don't
talk about enough in this field that you've had to navigate
behind the scenes? And I think this applies to all
roles. And it's burnout.
It's the constant pressure of feeling like you always need to
(15:37):
be on. You're the person that people
turn to to answer the questions quickly, especially if you're in
that leadership role, just navigating all the projects,
being the face of the of the department when you are in the
leadership role. So as far as burnout is
concerned, how do you feel that shifted from when you were the
(15:57):
directing the writing center to now you're in this instructional
design role? I'm going to grossly
oversimplify, but it's, it's night and day.
I'll, I'll be honest, you know, in my director role, as I said,
kind of the, that position was growing every year and we had,
(16:20):
or I should say the university had these kind of KPIs for
growth and contact hours. And you know, what are we doing
and how are we doing it and how can we make it more efficient
and how can we spend less money and use fewer man hours to get
more? Do more with less, yeah.
Yes, right. And like, I had the data to
(16:41):
know, hey, short of dining services, we see more students
across campus than any other service at the university.
Like we are seeing thousands of students.
We had, you know, north of 7000 contact hours every accident
here. Like it, it was a sizable
(17:01):
operation and the and as much aslike I said, I was fortunate to
have a really great staff, but never had assistant directors,
never really had infrastructure in place and part of that was my
fault as well. I think my tendency to just take
(17:23):
everything on and just yeah. We gotta not do that, Ben.
That's bad for us. Right.
But part of me was like, oh, I can make anything work.
Yeah, for sure. But then you realize how
intricate the project is. You know, like, oh, this looks
so simple from the outside. Yes, right.
(17:44):
So, so as I said, it was, it washigh stress, high demand.
So much of that job, by the timethat I left, was essentially
solving, you know, 40 people's problems every.
We can imagine how. Many emails you got or slack
messages. Jesus.
(18:04):
Yeah. So in in an average day in that
role, I would get 60 to 70 emails, about 90% of which would
require a direct response because I was running all of the
comms, all of the social media. I was the point.
Person. For like software training for
(18:25):
students, so, so many random tasks, right.
So that that was a very in termsof weekly hours was very
intense. And one of the things that I
very much appreciate about my current role is, you know, I'm
fortunate to be in a department and on a team where, you know, I
(18:46):
have supervisors who say, like, we here are the hours that we
work. You should not be working, you
know, mornings, nights, weekends, right there.
There might be times when because of projects and
deadlines, that happens. That's just the nature of the
work. But, you know, having folks
(19:07):
above me very actively say, hey,if you find yourself having to
work nights and weekends all thetime, that's a problem.
And it's not a you problem. It's a workload problem.
Like that's something that we then need to talk about and
address. And it's not this negative
reflection on you or your abilities or your work ethic.
(19:29):
It's that, hey, maybe you have too much work.
Yeah, you know, that's a great, that's great leadership if I'm
being honest to to recognize those things and be able to set
those healthy boundaries. I think I read a study recently
about like the four day work week and how productivity
increased like 80% with the 44 day work week.
(19:49):
And especially in our culture, it's so ingrained to us.
The more you work, the the more productive you are.
When I absolutely just knowing myself and and being in other
roles, I think it's the oppositebecause you get to a certain
point where your brain's just not, it's, it can't focus
anymore. It's just like like burnout and
stuff like that. So that I am so happy to hear
(20:12):
that you have that sort of leadership on your team.
And I think it really does help people kind of feel like they.
Are able to step away from the job because the job is not your
life. You do other things right, Ben.
And I think that's a problem that I've felt and that I think
a lot of educators feel right. You're so much of your identity
(20:37):
is wrapped up in here's what I do for a living or, or thinking
about myself. It it was the sense of here are
all the courses I teach. Here are the students that I'm
helping in the writing center. Like you're proving yourself.
You're showing your credentials like all the time.
Right, yeah, right. And that becomes this weird
(20:58):
kernel of your identity. And and then if, if that
suddenly goes away for for any reason, then thinking like, oh,
what, what am I now? If I'm not these other things
that I was, what, what am I in this new role?
(21:18):
And I think that that I think. This definitely resonates with a
lot of people who are listening right now.
And, and like I, I'm going to say I'm one of them.
Like what I do is who I am, so if something were to I
definitely have a breakdown of some sort.
Well, I think we, we also don't talk nearly enough about, you
(21:42):
know, there's a reason that whenyou like, go to a party or
something, people ask, what do you do for a living?
And it's the worst, often times most boring question to ask a
human being. Plus just.
Can't explain it. We can't explain it, and we
can't explain our jobs in a way people understand.
They don't know what instructional designers do
(22:03):
anyways. So that adds a whole extra layer
of stress on the, you know, trying to explain and and share
what we do. Yeah, yeah.
I think people, if you say, oh, hey, I teach whatever the level
is, they they get that if you say, well, I work with subject
matter experts to bring their vision to life to craft more
(22:26):
efficient, effective learning environments for X audience.
OK, well, what does that mean? Yeah, exactly.
That's the next question. Well, what does that mean?
Oh yeah, I'm several of these topics.
We could probably go off and tanges on it, but I want to save
those for some future episodes and maybe for some future
LinkedIn lives. One of the things I do want to
(22:48):
ask you, and I'm kind of curiousabout this too, is if someone
were to shadow you for a day, what's something that would
surprise them about what you do in a day or how you work?
Yeah, different. Like something, something fun or
something like interesting. Like I do this to stay
productive or I do this during the day.
Like, I don't know. I'm interested to know because
(23:10):
you're such a creative person. Yeah, that I, I wouldn't go that
far. Let's see things we can't take
back. I'm, I'm definitely a morning
person, especially the, the older I get, the easier it
becomes to wake up at, you know,5:45 than it is to stay up until
2:00 in the morning. So I'm usually up for at least
(23:35):
an hour or two before my wife gets up.
So to me that is like prime working hours.
No one. No one is emailing, no one is
interrupting me. I can just turn on music and and
and get to work for the day. I usually will make A to do list
at the end of every day or everyevening for the next day so that
(23:59):
as soon as I'm up and capable ofthinking enough to get something
done I can just jump into work and start checking things off A
to do list. I also live and buy, live and
die. Buy to do lists my.
We're similar that very much thesame that way.
Like and part of it is very self-serving in that I love
(24:22):
checking something off of a listI love.
Psychology proves it's a thing. It's motivation, whether
extransic, intransic, like, whatever it's it's a thing, yes.
And, and I at my core, I'm just a big dumb animal.
I want that, that serotonin hit of, of, oh, I accomplished a
(24:42):
task, right. So I don't know what might
surprise people other than, you know, I, I try to have, have a
very clear structure to my day. A lot of my time is spent in
meetings. So, so that both both
(25:04):
complicates things and gives thestructure right.
So I'll, and, and I'll try to plan my week knowing all right,
here are my standing meetings. So these other days have to be
the real buckle down, get stuff done, make sure you're, you're
ahead of deadlines, etcetera. You know, but I, I think like,
(25:26):
like most remote workers, my biggest struggle might be the
fact that everything in my houseis vying for my attention.
And so many things in my house are potentially more enticing
than than getting work done. But I, I think I've become
pretty good at, at, like I said,blocking out time and making
(25:49):
sure that, that I give myself enough time to, to get certain
things done like that. That was something I really
struggled with in the beginning was not knowing how long certain
tasks would take and budgeting my time effectively.
But, but now I think I have a much better sense of, OK, here's
(26:11):
here's where I need to block outmy calendar.
Here's where I need, you know, 0distractions.
As much as I am prone to like working in our living room there
there are certain tasks where I know, OK, I need to be in the
office. I need 100% or especially I need
uninterrupted time because some of you know, some of the work is
(26:34):
so meticulous if I get interrupted in the middle of
something. Oh.
It takes forever to get back on focus.
It just. Yeah, I feel you.
I have. I was just talking to my
boyfriend about this last night.I was like, I have generalized
anxiety disorder and that the part where it's like, you know,
(26:56):
getting distracted. I was like, I that has to do
with ADHDI can it takes me like I need like these are
soundproof. I need to have music on.
I need the door to be shut. I need you to know that it not
come bother me. I mean, the puppy distracts me
enough or the dogs distract me enough and just focus because I
(27:17):
am so proud. I use Pomodoro technique to
focus in on the specific tasks and I only do one thing for 25
minutes because you know, like Ilove checking those LinkedIn
notifications or I love going out there and seeing what's out
LinkedIn world. So I have to turn that that
stuff off. But yes, I'm a morning person as
well. I love the quiet time in the
morning. It's like my time.
(27:40):
Yeah, I to me, the get getting up early offers all of the same
advantages that people talk about, you know, when they're a
night owl. Yeah.
And I think that the common denominator is always no
interruptions. Like that's that's what makes
that time great is no one else is around.
And you, you have, you have kindof unfettered freedom without
(28:05):
intrusion, which which is becoming more and more rare as,
as like we're required by professions to be tethered to
electronic devices all day, every day.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I want to know from you.
So in closing, you've shared a lot of great information and for
the listeners out there who are thinking about they're taking
(28:28):
the leap of the best transitioning teachers or
they're just trying to transition their roles, they're
already in L&D. What 3 pieces of the best advice
you could give for them to hold on to at this point?
Because you know, a lot of different people are looking for
jobs and we hear all the stuff about job saturation, market
saturated. What 3 pieces of bias could you
give to them? So first, as I've mentioned,
(28:53):
plan for your transition to takelonger than you think.
You know, I I was studying options and doing research for
the better part of a year beforeI really started to even apply
for things. And even then it was for me, it
was a slow process of narrowing things down more and more as as
(29:14):
I was networking, as I was learning, and quite honestly as
I was failing miserably feeling.The part of it for sure.
Rejections and failing. Right.
And, and giving yourself that time is, was really helpful for
me and being able to kind of recognize that, hey, I'm, I'm
going to fail for a while. You know, I hadn't written ACV
(29:39):
in more than a decade. Oh yeah.
Right. And I have, I worked with
students and faculty all the time on their own application
materials and consider myself pretty good at it.
But when it came to doing it myself, I really, I really
struggled and I really struggledto kind of better understand the
(30:01):
new job market and initially really struggled with
quantifying my work in ways thatthis new audience would
understand and be persuaded by. So I would say give give
yourself more time, recognize that that failure is probably
(30:21):
going to be a part of that process.
And I think the key is being willing to be critically self
reflective enough to learn from what's not working.
As much as I love the transitioning teacher community,
the the hubris sometimes is kindof mind boggling to me.
(30:45):
Or the the expectations of like,well I'm I'm going to find a new
job in a month and it's going todouble my salary.
Even if you're like fully prepared and you know all the
people that know all the people,that's still not the case.
Yeah, like listen, if if that's your experience, amazing.
Good for your. Anomaly.
(31:06):
That was not my experience at all.
So that that to me is one piece of advice.
Second, I'm very biased because I'm on LinkedIn all the time,
but I legitimately believe in the potential that LinkedIn
offers in terms of not only networking but learning.
And I think too many people viewnetworking or view LinkedIn as
(31:30):
this networking platform and I view it as a learning platform.
Me too. Like my, unless you're, you're
directly selling something, not to say audience size doesn't
matter, but we get, we get caught up, I think in, in things
like how, how many followers do I have?
(31:50):
How many connections do I have? And it's really a, you know,
quality over quantity scenario. And, you know, if if you are
looking to learn about a field that you haven't worked in yet,
LinkedIn is the absolute best place to do it.
There are so many experts who are kind and generous with their
(32:14):
time and are willing to to answer questions.
Especially in this community. Right.
Yeah, like, and one of the reasons that I, I enjoy trying
to post jobs and post what I hope who will be helpful content
is just the knowledge that like I've been there, I've made all
of these mistakes. If something I write or share
(32:37):
can help someone avoid even one of the mistakes and setbacks
that I had, like, that's great. I think there's there's I also
have a lot of like teacher energy that's pent up and I'm
like, Oh my, how can I help someone today?
Like what can I do that's going to?
(32:57):
Yeah, that's ingrained in US, right?
That never goes away. That never goes away.
Yeah. So, so use LinkedIn, use it as
as a tool to learn. And then I guess the last piece
of advice, and this is for anyone transitioning careers,
realize that you are not your job and that every job is
(33:21):
temporary. I I talk with so many
transitioning educators who essentially say, hey, I want to
land my dream job. Oh I just did a poll about Dream
and Job being in the same sentence.
Like the the rhetoric of that I bristle with real hard, but but
(33:45):
also I think recognizing OK if you're particularly if you're
shifting industries, what you want is a foot in the door.
Right. Like and, and, and recognize
that you might only have that job for the next year or two
until you accrue the experience that's going to get you the next
(34:05):
role. And if you're, if you're stuck
on this idea of, well, I'm goingto finish out my career at this
company. Like good luck even even the
best employee at the best company.
That's just not a thing nowadays.
Yes, and and also if you want tomake more money you need to hop
(34:27):
from job to job. It is the only way at this point
to legitimately improve your earning power.
And, and I know four or five years ago there was a lot of,
you know, bad negative press about quote UN quote job
hoppers. But my thought was always, well,
these are bad faith takes being made by people who aren't
(34:48):
actually in the job market. Because if if you're getting,
you know, 2% cost of living increases every year at your
job. And inflation is 9%.
Yeah, right. You're losing money every year.
Only way to have a significant impact on your earning power
might be to, you know, short of a promotion is to shift
(35:13):
companies, to shift roles and, and to find something.
So I, I think that is, is something folks might get hung
up on is I need the perfect role.
Also, I, you know, I, I was veryfortunate and privileged that I
could make a lateral move in terms of salary.
(35:34):
And, you know, we can still pay our bills.
We're fine. To me, trying to get
significantly more money wasn't nearly as important as I want a
job that isn't grinding me into the ground and, and negatively
impacting every other aspect of my life.
So things like being able to work remotely, being able to
(35:57):
work typical hours and not receive emails and messages 24
hours a day just immediately have we're not.
Vampires, we don't stay up all night.
Seriously folks, this is great advice and I, I really think
people need to understand this that it's OK to I think money is
(36:19):
a taboo topic in our culture as well.
Like people just they don't talkabout it now I talk about it.
But Ben, thank you so much. I, I, I know you and I could
talk a lot longer about a lot ofdifferent things, but that just
means you have to come back on the show again.
So everything that Ben talked about, you know, we're going to
(36:40):
have information in the show notes where they find him out on
LinkedIn, the work that he's doing with job postings.
You need to follow him. Great resource.
So thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with our
audience. Yeah, thank you for letting me
blather on for. Of course, of course.
I mean, it's great advice. It really is the job hopping
stuff, talking about the burnoutstuff, you know, just trying to
(37:03):
figure your way through and everybody needs support.
So thank you so much. Absolutely.
Hi, we're Ice Spring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who helped more than60,000 clients across the globe
succeed with better online learning.
Our two flagship solutions are Ice Spring Suite and Ice Spring
Learn LMS Ispring Suite is an intuitive all in
(37:38):
Go to www.ispringsolutions.com to learn more about us and
connect. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is
packed. If today's episode sparked an
idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow
or subscribe in your favorite app so you never miss an episode
of Ed Up L&D. Dropping a quick rating or
(38:01):
review helps more educators and learning pros discover the show,
too. Want to keep the conversation
going? Connect with Holly on LinkedIn
and share your biggest take away.
She reads every message. Until next time, keep learning,
keep leading, and keep believingin your own story.
Talk soon.
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