A cluttered environment has been shown to deplete energy and have a detrimental impact on our overall mood and self-image. However, numerous interior design techniques and approaches have been found to relieve stress levels. But, what’s more to it? How do the elements of interior design improve our health?
Studio Institute Denver Founder and Professor MaDonna Collingwood explores how interior design impacts our physical, and mental health and well-being. Studio Institute Denver offers accelerated programs in interior design and construction management. She helps individuals who are pursuing a career change while still working to keep daily expenses.
Professor MaDonna Collingwood teaches students everything they need to know to begin a career in the building trades without the need for expensive college tuition.
To know more about what they do, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote.
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Interior Design and Its Impact On Our Well-Being with Prof. MaDonna Collingwood
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’d like to once again talk to you about career change. Now, a lot of people find themselves in a place in life where they need to make some sort of a career change because whatever you’re doing right now isn’t working, and one of the prospects that a lot of people run into is this idea that, to make a new career, you have to go back to school and get a whole new degree, which is not only really time consuming but also consuming a lot of money. And I think one of the best phrases I’ve heard from people looking at that option and says, “Okay, that’s great. Now, who’s gonna pay my mortgage? Who’s gonna pay my rent during this whole four-year period when I’m going back to school and pursuing something completely different?” Today, my guest is Professor MaDonna Collingwood and she started an organization called the Studio Institute Denver and what makes this one a little bit different than the ones that I had previously engaged with is it’s not tech focused, it actually helps people who want to move away from technology and build a career in the trades.
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Professor MaDonna, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining today. Now, let’s start off by telling my audience a little something about the Studio Institute Denver. What is it all about and how does the programming work?
It’s a 6- to 12-month accelerated trade school. I have two programs, one in interior design and one in construction management. We do mostly night classes hybrid so some are online, some are in person, some are both, and then we do a little bit of daytime on Fridays. So, most of my students work full time and then they go to class at night.
So your core audience, your core crowd are people who are pursuing a career change while still working full time and so they don’t have to really deal with some of those issues of, “How am I gonna keep the lights on? How am I gonna pay my rent?” and stuff?
Right, and I record every class and every lecture and then I send out a virtual link as well so they can always join and I’ll share my screen and they can watch the whole class from home so if they have to work late or they can’t make it in for whatever reason, they can still attend.
You probably have a lot of people who have interesting schedules that can be variant. Do you end up having a lot of students who also have childcare duties, like taking care of kids and stuff like that, that can make it even more challenging to make any kind of a career change?
I do. It’s a trade school so the ages of my students really varies a lot. It goes from 18 to like mid 50s right now. Yeah, a few of my students are parents so they’ve got to pick their kids up from school and everything so they can only attend at certain times or on certain days.
Not bad. And take us a little bit through the story of the kind of person that comes into your program. I know that age 18 is probably people coming straight out of high school that just want an alternative to going to college, but some of the older students, are they people that oftentimes have a career, are they often at a point where they’re just like, “I just need something else,” is there some sort of breaking point that happens with a lot of the people that you see come in?
For a lot of my second career students, it’s not so much of like a complete career change but they want to combine it with the career that they have now, so a lot of them will be real estate agents and they want to flip houses or they want to stage and a lot of them right now are in the spa industry so they’re focused on human health and wellbeing so they’re looking at getting a WELL Building certificate from me, or learning how to design and do occupancy-focused designs.
Oh, wow. So you’re saying you have a lot of people who are taking your programs to enhance the careers they already have, which makes it a little bit less of a conflict in people’s heads, because some of the people in these continuing education courses, they have a job and they know that their program is trying to get them to leave their job but they’re still doing this job that they don’t really want to be doing so you have people who are kind of combining this almost holistically into a path and saying, “Okay, this interior design course is gonna help me further what I’m doing currently with real estate or anything else.”
Right. Interior Design ties into a lot of their industries that people might not think about, but you can really expand on a lot of careers with an interior design certificate.
Oh, wow. What are the other kinds of careers that people might not be thinking about?
Definitely health, human health and wellbeing, also anything really in like the energy sustainability, green building. We focus on that a lot as well. Definitely the real estate industries with staging, fix and flips. Anybody who takes my course and gets a certificate can basically skip on hiring a general contractor, which is somebody who is necessary and licensed but they contract out a lot of work so they’re hiring people and then charging a fee on top of it, so if you have my certificate, you can be that middle person and then you don’t have to pay extra for it.
And you mentioned this health and wellbeing. What do you see as the connection between, let’s say, someone’s even talking about their own home personally, the connection between what people are surrounded in their environment and the mental health, wellbeing, whatever you want to call it, in your own life?
So I follow the WELL Building standard which is an accredited organization that’s accompanied with LEED, Leadership and Environmental and Energy Design, so the WELL Building standard, they have a residential code that you can follow and it goes through everything from lighting to HVAC to flooring, the materials that you’re using, the emissions, and then it goes even further into movement, walkability, circulation paths, so it’s kind of how all of these smaller elements that you might not think about can really have an impact on your physical and mental health and wellbeing.
So you’re saying that there’s so many things people don’t really think about on a day-to-day basis but maybe having a significant impact on wellbeing, whether it be something, I’m just imagining, I’m just even looking over at my house and seeing what possibly could be in a walking path that causes that little bit of frustration that people don’t think about because then you just move on but what you’re seeing is that that can add up a bit.
Exactly. Really, with the lighting a lot, because certain types of lighting can give you headaches or certain types of lighting that create maybe like a little bit of background noise that most people wouldn’t notice but it does have an impact on you, especially someone who is autistic, if they’re in a school building and they have that background noise from the lighting that might impact them differently. Also, their circadian lighting design so the color of the lighting at certain times of the day, like you can see it on your iPhone, it changes automatically after whatever time it is, 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., it goes to more of a red instead of a blue, so that kind of lighting design can be done in homes and it’ll improve your quality of life overall but definitely your sleep quality.
Interesting. And this seems like pretty recent research, or at least I’ve only been hearing about this the last five or six years, in the sense of like us understanding, I remember when I first started hearing all about what the blue light on your phone was doing and they started recommending you actually put the phone out of your bedroom in another room so it doesn’t interfere with your sleep. Is this something more people are becoming aware of and more people are thinking about over time or is this something that’s been around way longer that I just idiotically haven’t been aware of like 10, 20 years ago?
Well, LEED has been around since the 90s and that was really the focus on the environment and energy and emissions and then WELL is an extension of LEED, so we’re keeping those same standards that we’ve had since the 90s for energy and the environment and then building on it to also include people, because that is important. I think that WELL started, it’s relatively new, maybe 2017, 2018, so if you follow the WELL Building standard now, you’re getting all of the necessary requirements for energy and efficiency and then also you’re thinking about the health of the end user.
That makes sense. And so the other thing I’m wondering about this is that if someone in their day-to-day life just starts observing that they’re getting headaches, say, in the afternoon, just a scenario, and these things tend to start out slowly and not realize until it’s like suddenly totally different, do you think that that could potentially be a lighting issue alongside the normal things like dehydration and poor diet and the other things that lead to headaches?
Yeah, and not just a lighting issue but I would look at all of the concepts. There’s 11 concepts in WELL, might be different for residential, I do a lot of commercial as well, but in the WELL Building standard, you could read things about it might be your air quality, it might be the acoustic quality of your home, it might be the lighting, it might be the thermal qualities of the home. It could be nourishment, movement. They’ve got a section for physical activity. So I think that entire standard would really cover the basis of your home in general but then also lifestyle.
Yeah, of course, lifestyle is a major thing. Now, also, do some of these standards change based on seasons? Is there something that maybe this works in the summer but, in the wintertime, you might need something a little bit different with less sunlight and colder temperatures?
Definitely when you’re designing any type of building, you’re thinking about the location so if you design all over the country, you’re thinking about the physical site, location of the building. If you’re putting in south-facing windows, that’s going to bring you a lot of heat. You might not want that if you live somewhere where it’s hot all the time. But if you live somewhere where it’s cold and you need that extra insulation, you need the extra heat, you would put your windows over there. So there’s a lot of definitely physical location factors involved in the design that you’re creating.
So there’s so much for people to think about when thinking about what’s the right design, everything from how it fits into your lifestyle to how it’s going to impress upon your quality of life. Is there any general advice you would have for anyone that’s kind of really thinking about that, is this a really, really complicated problem where you’re thinking about location, you’re thinking about what direction your door faces, everything, or is this something that can be boiled down to a couple simple takeaways that people can just think about, say, over the weekend?
I’m sure there’s a smaller, a few like DIY things that you can change in your lifestyle, but if we’re talking about really creating a design from core to shell, there’s so much that goes into it that the average person just would not be able to think of or understand.
It really takes like that in-depth research and knowledge of design to create something that’s really going to improve someone’s health and wellbeing. Click To Tweet
And then I also need to ask, since you started on this journey, have you done a complete makeover of your own home to fit a quality of life that you really desire?
No, I haven’t got there yet. It’s definitely a work in progress. I’ve been working on it for about a year and I’ve just made small changes so far, but we’ll get there eventually.
Yeah. I mean, I know the life of a business creator, especially when you’re doing your own teaching work as well, because, from my understanding, you teach the courses yourself, can quite occupy a lot of your time.
It does because I own and operate the business. So I do have a director who handles all of the marketing, which takes a lot off my plate, but I still am the admissions and enrollment coordinator, I’m the financial aid counselor, and I’m the professor.
Yeah. Have you been able to offload anything other than the marketing yet, such as the accounting, some of the bookkeeping stuff or some of the business development or is that all still just pretty much everything but marketing at this point?
Marketing and accounting, I have never done, I’ve always outsourced that, but everything else has been me. I didn’t really want any input or anybody’s help on creating the program because I’m the one that went through seven years of traditional university for architecture to learn from my own experience to improve it and make a more efficient program.
One of the things that a lot of people when building things need to consider is what do you really want to keep and what do you want to pass off, which takes understanding of your background and your strengths. So you knew that you don’t really have that big of an interest in checking off numbers, bookkeeping, or determining a marketing plan. However, did you determine your target customer? Like when building this business, was it always the idea of people who are, “I already have a career and I’m not necessarily shifting it all the way but I’m using these new skills to enhance it.” or did that come about through a couple other iterations when you first started?
It’s changed a bit. It’s really hard to pinpoint one target audience for my business because it’s just students, whoever wants to learn, whoever wants to be dedicated and go to a trade school, but also I have a few admissions requirements because we are using software and technology and we’re doing some licensing with Photoshop, CAD, SketchUp, they do need to have some sort of familiarity with computers. They need to — can’t be somebody who’s never used a computer before or somebody who’s never used an email, which, being a trade school, you do get some of those applications.
Yeah. So far away from the worlds that I’ve lived in but, yeah, come to think of it, if most of your day are spent plumbing, construction, something like that, I know that there are actually other guests that I’ve interviewed on this podcast earlier that have built kind of coursework around helping those people just figure out how to like enter data into a computer and figure out how to build a business and that can be another complicated side of things because not everyone comes from the same background. So, is there a prerequisite on knowing anything about the trades at all? Or is the prerequisite just simply around having the experience with the technology to be able to like answer emails and do whatever is needed to complete the course?
Yeah, there’s no experience necessary in the trades because I teach all of that. I have Construction Documents 101, Interior Design 101, those very entry level classes that everybody starts with so they’ll get that knowledge from me. A lot of my stuff is online so they have a student log-in where they log in to their course and read through their lecture and complete their quiz for week 1. So, just being able to navigate a computer is important.
How do you control for that prerequisite? Is it through the admissions process? Would you interview them or do you have them do a screen share or something, just to see that they can actually do the things that are needed to complete the course?
Yeah, it’s in the admissions process. Our application is online so everybody who gets accepted has to go to our website, fill out our online application, and then they have to check a box that they are agreeing that they can complete online courses.
Yeah. And so you said that your courses have a hybrid setup as well in the studio. Is it half online, half in the studio or is it that some people are in the studio and some people are online?
Well, everybody builds their own schedule through registration. One course is offered on multiple different platforms and they choose what’s best for them. But, generally, I have some courses that are online only all the time, which would be those like Interior Design 101. Those courses are very much a lecture and then a quiz. But the software classes are a lot more hands on so those are only in person. But I have that virtual attendance option so there’s always a link that they can log in and they can see us doing the in-person class so they can still follow along. But I teach CAD, SketchUp, Photoshop in person,
So they’re in person but with the option of like, not encouraged, but if it’s really needed in a pinch, you can just dial into this one because you’re traveling for work or you got COVID or something.
Right.
Excellent. So now I want to shift a little bit over to your story. What made you decide that you wanted to build a studio institute? What made you decide that teaching people how to enhance their careers through some of these courses was the path that you wanted to pursue in life?
Well, I took the traditional education route because, at that time, when I was in middle school, in high school, it was just go to college, go to college, go to college, get a degree in anything, and then you’ll just get this easy management position. They were still kind of pushing that. So, I went to seven years of traditional university, I got a master’s in interior architecture, had a 4.0 every single year even through grad school. I was really proficient in the actual skills. There was SketchUp rendering, like I took it really seriously, and then, when I was finished with school, they didn’t set me up with a job or anything, they just sent my diploma in the mail, and then when I was applying for entry-level jobs, they would say, “Oh, well, you don’t have any experience.”
Yeah.
And then when I was applying for jobs that maybe weren’t considered entry-level architecture jobs but maybe an assistant at a firm or something like that, they would say that I was overqualified, because I was so good at the software skills and I was so good with my education. It’s really frustrating, how can you get a job with no experience but if nobody’s going to give you a job to get experience, you’re just stuck in this revolving door and I was really seeing like the return on investment for the hundreds of thousands of dollars I spent in school and the fact that the grades really didn’t matter. Me getting a 4.0 the whole time wasn’t going to get me a job. So, I was feeling like why did I try so hard to get 100 percent in every single class when that really doesn’t mean anything when you go to apply. So I was just kind of examining, like if I could go back and do it differently, how would I have done it if I knew this was an option. So I was thinking like a more efficient, better way to get to the same position that I got to without hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and the seven years in school.
This is something that frustrates me quite a bit about the modern world as well. I think we’ve all seen those online job postings that say entry level but then they say two to three years of experience and it’s like, okay, well, that’s not really entry level. And then the question is what was all that for? From what I understand about people who get 4.0 averages and do it the whole time through, you’ve probably put a lot of stress upon yourself to make sure that every single assignment was done right, probably years and years of a lot of pressure, and then you’re asking, “Okay, like, why did I do this?” And you said that some of your students are as young as 18 and so is that part of like what your feeling is that these 18-year-old students are getting a better way to get into a career where you have a portfolio and you can show what you’re doing than seven years of stress and, like you said, $100,000 in debt?
Right, I think that the kids now maybe have a little more understanding that there’s a lot of different routes than just the traditional university route. Also, the teachers that they have and the guidance that they have is different. Teachers are younger now. You can graduate at 25 and become a teacher and you’re closer in age to them and you can tell them about your own experience.
When I was in school, no offense to anybody, but my teachers were all like 80 and 90 year olds and they weren’t really familiar with how things are right now. Click To Tweet
Well, yeah, just like anyone who has found themselves in a really tough job search or tough desire to change careers and gotten advice from someone who’s, I’d say, 50 or over right now, that doesn’t understand how different things work at this point and has never gone through that whole like, well, exactly what you’re saying, too much experience for this job but then when you apply for the job with the right amount of experience, they’re like, “Well, we want more,” or something like that. There’s definitely this disconnect between what people need out of an employment resource and how they’re getting connected to the people who are out there ready to fill those positions.
Right.
Well, hopefully, you can fix that. Obviously, you personally can’t fix every single problem that we have out there all at once but it sounds like so then you decided, after that seven years’ experience, $100,000 in debt, so many other things, that you were going to build this education program, I hope, correct me if I’m saying it wrong, but this studio, the education program, to give people another option for getting themselves into the job that they really want.
Yeah, and it’s not the traditional coursework either. We’re not really writing papers. I don’t make them take Gen Eds so there’s no psychology class they have to take, no art history. It’s only the skills that you’re actually going to use when you’re done so you can go apply for a job and they’re going to say you need to be proficient in CAD and you’re going to say, “Great, because I took three CAD courses and I know how to use it.” And it’s not going to be, “Oh, well, I’ve never seen this. I was busy taking history and psychology so I don’t know how to use this software.” They’re gonna be more familiar.
So, you’re getting right to the point and, I think, in college and high school, in high school, at some point, you have to be well rounded, but in college and grad school, people took these courses that were very much, okay, this is general education and this really hasn’t helped me do it. And even in the non-Gen Ed courses, what I noticed in college, is there are a lot of things that people learn and stress out about that they end up in never using in the rest of their lives and I’m sure you have plenty of examples, even for the courses from your major where you’re like, “All right, I learned this, it was great but not once was I asked to recite this piece of information, not once was I asked to use this particular knowledge set,” and then after about seven or eight years, you just lose it because you never applied it again.
Right. I had to take five art history courses because they were required so I have a minor in Art History.
Five?
Yeah. I can’t remember any of it and I’ve never used it ever again since then.
Oh my gosh.
But they’re required.
My only learning about art history is like the art museum whenever they have like some exhibit that someone wants to go to and they’re like, for a while, we did paintings, it just feels like they did paintings of mostly just religious and Jesus for hundreds of years then they started like putting everything in these little squares amongst big squares and then these abstract guys started coming in and just splashing paint all over the place, and that’s the extent of my understanding of art history.
Yeah.
So when you were ideating and building this course, did you have a familiarity with some of the more tech-focused ones that existed, like the galvanized general assembly, boot camps is what they call it, but they’re like this similar non-traditional education where it has the same idea of getting right to the point, like you have no Gen Ed, you’re finished in about six months, and you’re just mostly learning how to use the systems and how to build the models or how to build whatever it is.
I’ve looked at the other trade school programs for interior design around here, there’s only a couple, there’s one other one in Denver, one in Fort Collins, but I kind of always knew how I was going to do mine but I definitely looked at them because you always want to research your competition and see if there’s anything that maybe they’re missing where you could fill in the holes, but what really sets me apart is obviously the tuition, because I’m the least expensive trade school in Denver, because I’m not charging for things like huge 3D printers and Gen Ed extra courses, I’m only charging for exactly what they need.
Yeah.
And then also the scheduling, like one of them is only kitchen and bath and it’s a nine-month certificate. I teach commercial residential LEED WELL Building so I’m not only doing kitchen and bath, and then another one is 40 hours a week, full time, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a lot of people can’t do that and pay the high price tag, they have to take out a ton of loans, and then I have those flexible night classes and then I offer financial aid so they have no interest payment plans so they could — their tuition comes automatically off of whatever card they put in when they enroll every month and then there’s no added interest. There’s no late fees.
So you really have this goal of making this accessible to anyone that wants to pursue this path, whether it be a career change, a new career, or a career enhancement.
Yeah, exactly. It can be hard work. It can be a lot of coursework because they’re learning a new software program and then they’re creating a residential project and they’re creating a commercial project, but as long as they are determined and they can prioritize it, my students do really well. And a lot of them work from home, like they’ll get really excited about 3D modeling once they learn the software because it’s actually fun to use.
Sounds like it.
Then they end up just doing their homework, they do it like every night for one hour from home without even thinking about it because it’s fun for them to do.
That’s good. I love that idea because when you’re doing something that the time just passes by and you don’t have to think about it, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re pursuing something that’s right for you. Breaks my heart to hear how many people have jobs that just aren’t right fits for them, it just isn’t working out, they’re just not interested in whatever they’re doing, it just doesn’t fit who they are and how they are, so I’m glad to hear that most of your students, it seems like, are in a place where like they get to these 3D models, like, “Oh my god, this is really cool. I’m gonna move this around, I’m gonna expand with that, I’m gonna learn how to really get into it and do it properly.”
Right, and there’s a lot of minor and focus studies that they can work on so a lot of people, if they really love 3D modeling, maybe they just want to be a 3D modeler because firms will hire out 1099 employees just to make their 3D models because the people that work there maybe don’t have time for that, they’re busy doing estimation, they’re busy project scheduling and ordering, so they’ll outsource that, you could just be a 3D modeler. If they really like CAD drafting, they could just be a drafter. Or if they enjoy the entire thing from core to shell, they could be a commercial designer.
Oh, wow. So there’s like several different paths that people go on. So it sounds like you knew what you wanted from this right from the get go. It sounds like you didn’t — obviously, you say you didn’t want input from people that didn’t know the subject, you wanted to build everything out yourself, you knew exactly what it was going to be. Everyone that builds anything has that period between when you build it and when you launch it and when it starts to get some kind of traction when you start to get your customers. Did you ever have any self-doubt in that area or did you always know this is the right thing and it’s going to come?
There’s been a lot of changes made so there’s always — I think everybody has those thought periods where it’s really exhausting and draining and you’re like, “Why should I continue to put all of this effort in?” but, eventually, it all comes together and it’s all worth it. I think I knew when I started this business what type of business it was, it’s not a t-shirt shop, it’s not something where I can work from home and just send out packages, I’m not reselling anything, so actually finding students to pay for tuition, even though it’s cheap for tuition, that’s still a big expense and a big commitment, so I think I always knew that it was going to take years and years, it wasn’t going to be the type of business where you get revenue in one year.
Yeah. Did you have to do anything, part-time jobs or a different full-time job to keep your lights on while this was building up?
Yeah, and I do still. I work all the time. I work like 60 hours a week, but, yeah, I do a lot of different little jobs while I’m doing my school to keep things going.
How do you maintain like a balance in your life, get your rest, get your exercise, all those other things that people need?
It’s hard and a lot of times I lose the balance, but what helps is with exercise and staying healthy and stuff. I know that it’s more about consistency so even if I only go to the gym for 15 or 20 minutes because that’s the only time that I have, it’s better to be consistent and continue doing that than, “Oh, I can only go once a week but I’m gonna go for a whole hour,” or something. And then I’d be in a school, we do have breaks, like right now my students are on fall break. Of course, I still have to work behind the scenes but I don’t have to teach this week so that does save me a few hours. We have those winter breaks, which is a really long one because we’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s all together so there’s some breaks between the semesters where I still have to work but I don’t have to teach.
Yeah, and so that gives you a little bit of breathing room. And do you have a mindfulness journaling meditation practice on top of any of that?
I do. I have my daily to-do list. It never gets done completely but I have a laminated list that I try to check off of things that I want to do every single day. And then I do a lot of dream journaling. I think that like your subconscious speaks to you a lot in dreams and maybe people aren’t always tapped into it so I try to —
Ah, that’s fascinating. I’ve actually also been — I don’t write it down every single time but I do try to remember some of these vivid recurring dreams. It’s so interesting because it doesn’t necessarily fit into people’s understanding of life from, say, a pure scientific standpoint, necessarily, but it’s like, yeah, what are these dreams trying to tell you? Do you oftentimes act upon if you identify a pattern like I had four similar dreams within the past month, maybe that means I need to try doing this differently or I need to try a new hobby or a new part of my routine?
Yeah, and it’s mostly about symbolism so I try to kind of — like I look a lot on TikTok, there’s a lot of dream interpreters on there, I’ll try to look up like what does a cat mean, because I’ve had probably 50 dreams about cats, different types of cats, so then I’ll try to look that kind of stuff up to figure out what is that symbolism? What is that trying to tell me?
I actually have an old book written in the 1970s that’s like a dream dictionary that does similar and what I’m wondering is if you see all these different accounts and you looked at like, say, multiple people on TikTok that interpret cat, do they all say the same meaning? Does it end up being like, “Oh, well this person said it means this and this person said it means that and this person said it means that,” and then you end up all over the place?
Yeah, it does kind of send me all over the place because it depends on what kind of cat and I’ve had a dream about every single kind of cat you could imagine, whether it’s like a lion, a panther, a house cat, a bobcat, like every single type of cat and they all mean something different, but I think maybe cats in general means something.
Well, not to continue that far off on this tangent but I feel like a lot of people, if they were to have that dream over and over again, would come to the conclusion that that means I should get a cat. Is that missing the point?
Yeah, I don’t think that it’s quite that simple. I think that they symbolize something that is totally different. I don’t think it’s literal.
I see. Yeah. So, the thought of anything in the dream like, just out of nowhere, last night, I had a dream that I was back on Long Island but for some reason there were mountains on the horizon in the distance, which makes no sense, so there would be nothing literally about that interpretation of the dream that says like, oh, it just means you should make a road trip from here to there and it’ll cover both bases or something very obvious based on the actual thing in the dream.
Right.
That makes sense, and I do find the whole thing fascinating. As I said, I’ve been looking into it for quite some time. But one of the things I’m also wondering about program in these trade schools is, since I’m familiar with the data science and technology trade schools, you’re familiar with the construction, interior design trade schools, do you see this as a pattern that’s going to enter into some of the fields where there currently aren’t any trade schools yet? More and more places in life as alternatives to this 100,000-plus dollar education system?
I do. I don’t know if I would necessarily see it being more trade schools but I see people graduating high school or not graduating high school but finishing that period in their life and then getting certificates or taking classes even if there is no certificate just to get the knowledge. If you can log on to Teachable and take a course on creating websites and you become good at that, then you can be a website designer. I see people taking multiple courses. It doesn’t have to be, “Oh, I went to school for seven years so now I’m an architect so that’s all I do is architecture.” Maybe somebody takes courses on marketing and then they also take courses on dance, if they want to, and then they start teaching dance classes and they learn how to promote it through social media and then they make more money than they ever would have if they went to college for that.
That’s amazing because what I’m hearing is people being able to take these interests and traditionally old school, whatever you want to call the 20th century mindset of things, was always that they all have to have this like obvious connection to one another. So maybe you’re interested in, my original field was atmospheric science but you’re also interested in math and, okay, that makes sense because math as part of the equations you put into the models about how the atmosphere works, but things that are, at first glance, first look, don’t make any sense together, just like, yeah, marketing and dance, but maybe they do, and so would you say that for anyone out there listening, if anyone has these, say, five areas of interest, and three of them are completely different, another two are kind of similar, that they should just explore how do they all make sense together possibly because maybe they do it just in a way that hasn’t been done by that many people already?
Yeah, I would definitely encourage exploring different connections and pathways between different career paths. I have a lot of students applied from the spa industry, I think it’s taken like a bigger hit since COVID, so I have a lot of people applying and then they’ll tell me, “I do spas and that has nothing to do with design.” And I’m like, “But wait a minute, because it does. Do you manage your inventory? Do you order and schedule? Do you buy things at a wholesale and then mark it up and sell it for a retail price? Because that’s what construction managers and designers do.”
So I’m hoping is that more people can find that path. I’ve encountered people who’ve managed to become senior developers in their mid-20s, essentially, because right after high school, they said, “Okay, what I wanna do is just take this course,” and some of them even do some online courses, even from the traditional universities that just get right to the point and get to it, and then by the time they’re 19, 20 years old, they already have a job and, those five years, become a senior developer and then you’re in such high demand, you can pretty much work anywhere you want at that point.
Of course. I’m passionate about what I do, because of my experiences, and there’s a lot of people that are passionate about interior design so if it’s something that you’re passionate about, that’s great, but I don’t think that you have to be passionate about your career.
I love all these just new ways of thinking about things. Do you envision, with all these changes both in the way we’re thinking about things, the way we think about our interests, the way we think about what our job means to ourselves and how to go about preparing for them, a change in our work culture in general? And a lot of people making a big deal about quiet quitting, a lot of people making a big deal about hybrid/remote work models, do you envision even bigger changes on the horizon?
Yeah, I definitely do. I think that people maybe are either going to pursue their passions in a different way in their career and do it for themselves and make their own pathway or they’re going to treat their career as exactly what it is, just a job that pays the bills and your passions and your hobbies and the things that you’re excited about are outside of your job.
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That makes complete sense. And then also, for anyone out there listening, if anyone’s interested in your curriculum, your education program, what is your web page or the best way to get some more information?
It’s studioinstdenver.com. And Facebook is really good way as well. We have a Facebook page and a Facebook group and it’s just Studio Institute Denver.
And given what you said about dreams before, do you have TikTok content as well?
We do have a little bit of TikTok content. Right now, it’s just on my personal page, which is just MaDonna Collingwood, first name, last name. So I have a few of my own personal videos on there and then I post a little bit about my school on there. I have a link in my bio, once in a while, I’ll post things but I don’t want it to look too much like it’s filled with ads because I want people who genuinely want to do it. I’m not trying to trick anybody into signing up for tuition or anything.
Yeah, yeah, it’s just about getting people the information and then you can make your own decision.
Yeah, so I’ll post things like, “Oh, day in the life of a college professor,” or something like that. I’ll post those on TikTok a little more than I would post like my, “Enrollment starts now,” less of those kind of posts. I save those for Google.
Oh, yeah. That makes sense. So Professor MaDonna Collingwood, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, sharing with us your mission. Definitely love bringing more options to people, more options around how we go about education, more options about how we think about our careers, more options about how we change careers, and just additional pathways to get people from the place wherever you are, hopefully you’re happy but if you’re not, to get you to that place where you will be happier and you will be pursuing the things that you really want to be pursuing in life.
Exactly. Thank you.
And I’d also like to thank all the listeners out there for tuning in to this episode and any other episode you’ve tuned into and I hope you will tune in again. Have a good day.
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About MaDonna Collingwood
Founder and educator, and professional in the building trades field. She has designed a 6 month accelerated program here at Studio Institute Denver. She teaches students everything they need to know to start a career in building trades, without the 100K college price tag. Get your foot in the door, it starts here.