In this episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, I sit down with Dr. Philip A. Glotzbach, former President of Skidmore College, philosopher, and passionate advocate for the liberal arts, to talk about how students can get the most out of their college experience — and why it’s about far more than getting a job. His latest book, Embrace Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life, is both a practical guide and a philosophical invitation to use higher education as a launchpad for a meaningful life. His message: Embrace freedom. Your college years are a time to be curious, explore ideas, build relationships, and learn to love freedom.
A Life in Education and Leadership
Dr. Glotzbach’s journey began at the University of Notre Dame, where he discovered a love for philosophy, and continued at Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. and fell in love with teaching. After 15 years as a philosophy professor at Denison University, he moved into administration, eventually becoming President of Skidmore College for 17 years. Throughout his career, one question has guided him: What can we do to give students the best chance at a meaningful life?
The answer, for him, blends intellectual development, personal responsibility, and civic engagement — themes woven into his convocation talks to new students, which eventually became the foundation for Embrace Your Freedom.
Why College Is a One-Time Opportunity to Embrace Freedom
College, Dr. Glotzbach says, is a singular moment in life — “you get one shot at being an undergraduate.” It’s a time for “test-driving your adult self,” exploring big questions, and deciding what kind of person you want to be, as well as what kind of world you want to help create.
Too often, students see college only as a steppingstone to employment. While preparing for a career matters, narrowing your focus too early shortens the shelf life of your skills. Today’s graduates will likely change not just jobs but entire careers multiple times. The broader your education, the better equipped you’ll be to adapt to an unpredictable future.
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From Negative Freedom to Positive Freedom
One of the book’s central ideas is the shift from “negative freedom” — the absence of external constraints — to “positive freedom,” which is about deciding what you will do with that freedom. Positive freedom requires embracing structure and responsibility to pursue meaningful goals.
Dr. Glotzbach compares it to training for a marathon: you give up certain freedoms (like sleeping late) in exchange for the discipline that makes your goal achievable. In college, that means setting intentional objectives — for your courses, your extracurriculars, your relationships — and committing fully to them.
Begin Now — And Begin Again
If there’s one mantra Dr. Glotzbach wants every student to remember, it’s Begin now. Your college career doesn’t start “later” — it starts the moment you arrive on campus. Don’t wait for the second semester or sophomore year to get serious.
That doesn’t mean you won’t face setbacks. Everyone stumbles. The key is to begin again — to get back up, recommit, and move forward. “The most important thing is not how many times you get knocked down,” he says, quoting Vince Lombardi, “but how many times you get back up.”
The Liberal Arts Advantage for Embracing Freedom
As a philosopher and liberal arts leader, Dr. Glotzbach believes deeply in the value of studying broadly. Liberal arts disciplines develop critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and the ability to synthesize perspectives — skills essential for solving the “wicked problems” of our time.
One of his favorite quotes, from Horace Mann, is a call to action: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” For Dr. Glotzbach, college is a privilege held by a small percentage of the global population, and with that privilege comes a responsibility to contribute to the greater good.
Relationships Over Transactions
Dr. Glotzbach warns against treating college as an “educational ATM,” where you deposit tuition and withdraw a diploma. That transactional mindset robs you of the deeper value of the experience. College is about relationships — with people, with ideas, and with the skills you are developing.
Friendships formed during college often become lifelong connections. These relationships — your first as an independent adult — are a key part of the transformation that happens during these years.
Learning in the Age of AI
Today’s students must also navigate the opportunities and challenges of new technologies, including AI. While AI can be a powerful tool, relying on it too heavily during your studies can short-circuit the development of critical thinking and analytical skills. Dr. Glotzbach stresses the importance of reading and thinking critically — whether the material was written by a human 200 years ago or generated by AI yesterday.
Advice for Students and Parents
For students: approach college as a unique opportunity for growth. Be open to new ideas, seek out mentors, engage in campus life, and treat every class, project, and relationship as a chance to find meaning.
For parents: remember that your child’s education is not only about employment prospects but also about becoming a thoughtful, engaged, and adaptable human being.
Get the Book
Embrace Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and other major booksellers, as well as through Dr. Glotzbach’s website: www.philipglotzbach.com.
Whether you’re a student, parent, educator, or simply someone who values lifelong learning, this book offers a thoughtful, inspiring, and practical guide to making the most of one of life’s most important chapters.
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Andi Simon 00:00:02 Welcome to On the Brink, a podcast designed for you to get off the brink. Hi, I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. So you have a bunch of ideas that are going to help you change. And people hate to change. Your brain hates to change, but unless you learn new things, you’re going to think that everything is just the way I think it is and it’s not. And every person I bring to interview and to share with you has some wisdom. And the wisdom is here for you to open your mind to new possibilities and new ways to think about things. I’m thrilled, today I have Phil or Philip Glotzbach, and Doctor Philip Glotzbach is going to talk to us about some important winning strategies to succeed in college. He’s got a new book out called Embrace Your Freedom. And thank you all for joining me today.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:00:54 Andi, thank you for inviting me. I’m very happy to be here.
Andi Simon 00:00:58 I remind our listeners I do have my doctorate. I am an anthropologist, and I taught for a decade, and I even was a visiting professor at Washington University teaching entrepreneurship. And so I remember a little bit of the administrative side, a little bit of the academic side. I love my students. And so but today we’re going to talk about what parents and students need to understand about higher education, how to choose wisely, how to use it wisely, how to succeed there. What’s the wisdom that can come out of being there? So let me tell you about Doctor Glotzbach. Well, Doctor Philip is a distinguished leader in American higher education and a passionate advocate for the liberal arts. He’s also a philosopher, which I love. He served as President of Skidmore College for 17 years, leading initiatives to strengthen the university’s academic programs, expanded access to financial aid, and deepened its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Prior to Skidmore, he held leadership roles at the University of Redlands and spent 15 years as a philosophy professor at Denison University.
I told you, we have a lot in common in different ways, philosopher and anthropologist. What are we going to share with you? He’s a lifelong educator. He’s been widely recognized for his insights into higher education, institutional governance. And that’s not simple. And the evolving role of colleges and universities in fostering critical thinking and engaged citizenship. And it’s interesting, as I watch and I date myself, I watch my grandkids entering college. These are important critical thinking and engage in citizenship. He has degrees from the University of Notre Dame and where he and his Yale University PhD in philosophy. His latest book we’re going to talk about Embrace Your Freedom Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life, which is so timely. It’s a guide for students navigating today’s complex educational landscape, asking sincere and deep questions: what is this all about and what am I doing here, and with a focus on intellectual freedom, personal responsibility and civic engagement. He champions the essential role of education in shaping informed and empowered citizens and our young people are our future. Let’s not let them wander around or leave them behind. Phil, thank you for joining me again.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:03:19 Thank you, Andi.
Andi Simon 00:03:20 Tell the listener about your own journey. I can read your bio. I must say I read them all the time, and then I say, that’s nice, but who is Phil? Who is this guy that we’re talking to today? And why should I listen to him? So a little bit about your own personal journey.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:03:37 Well, thank you for that invitation. I’ll try to keep it short. We can talk about ourselves for a long time. Well, as you said, I started at Notre Dame and went to Yale for graduate school in philosophy. I fell in love with philosophy as an undergraduate, something I just wanted to do. When I got to Yale, I fell in love with teaching because I did a number of different classes where I taught students, and then when I went to Denison, a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, I really, really learned what it was like to teach students and to care about them deeply. And so that’s something that’s been a guiding force in my life all the way through. I still love philosophy, but I love to teach. I moved into administration because it gave me the opportunity to have a broader influence than just with the students in my classes or colleagues in my department. And I found that very satisfying as well. And so finally, becoming a president, I was able to lead a liberal arts college, as you noted, for 17 years. So I found all that very satisfying. And all the way through I was thinking about the students. What is it that we can do to help those students succeed, to give them the best chance at a successful life, and not just financially successful or with jobs as important as those are, but for a meaningful life. And what is that entailed? So the book came out of that when I was at Skidmore. Every year we welcomed a new class of students in the fall. And we had an opening convocation and I gave a talk. There were others who spoke as well, and I gave a talk to the new students and their parents and tried to just be very focused on some things that I thought were important for them to understand and to get hold of, to start succeeding in college right away. And I felt good about those talks, and parents liked them. Even students sometimes ask for a copy. And so those talks became this book. It’s much expanded. It’s a passion project for me. It’s a work of love. Because I do think, as you said, that these students are our future, and it’s so important for them to get the best shot that they can at getting the most out of this wonderful opportunity. That comes one time in a person’s life. You get one shot at being an undergraduate and that’s it. So part of this book is to say, don’t blow it.
Andi Simon 00:05:53 I want to emphasize you have one shot. It’s interesting because I often work with lifelong learners. It’s different, and I have two leadership academies that I’ve been doing for clients for seven and eight years. And it’s interesting when you watch, when you get into a career or a job, that if you don’t continually upgrade your skills and both the philosophical ones, because very often leaders have to understand followers and how to motivate, mobilize and philosophically understand the situations they’re in. This is not simply tactical and practical. These are bigger questions. And the other thing that Phil said is that he just fell in love with philosophy. And people say, how did you find anthropology? I had a great professor in an undergraduate course, and as I sat there, I went, oh my gosh, this isn’t what I want to do, this is who I am. And those are different moments where the epiphany isn’t about a career or a job. It’s a way of seeing things in a way of feeling them. And I have a hunch that’s what happened to you. Change the way you see the world, am I right?
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:07:00 That’s very true. And you mentioned leadership and thinking about things and something I used to call conceptual leadership. I think it’s very important for leaders to be able to figure those kinds of things out. So yeah. And you mentioned lifelong learning. That’s one of the points I emphasize in my book to succeed today. I mean, think of the workplace today. People are changing careers, not just jobs, but careers nine times over the course of a working lifetime, a graduate, maybe doing a job 10 or 20 years out that hasn’t even been invented when they were in school. And so if you don’t continue to learn, you’re dead in the water. So it’s very important. But I would still go back to say that the undergraduate years are this unique moment when we’re both developing as human beings. We’re test driving our adult self, and we’re figuring out who this person is going to be. And that’s really the first question I think students should ask. Who do I want to be, what kind of person? And the second question that I also think they should be asking, especially today, is what kind of world do I want to live in? What kind of country do I want here? And what’s going to be my role in helping to shape that thing? And so, in an undergraduate career, you get to study a wide range of subjects. You get to, as you said, explore lots of different ways of looking at the world, and then you find out ideally, how to put those together, because the world today is confronting us not just with easy problems, but with wicked problems, problems that that aren’t straightforward, problems that require thinking from a whole different range. Excuse me, of subject matters. not being approached, not approaching them linearly, but, you know, being creative. And so those are the kind of things that one needs to learn as an undergraduate, regardless of what you end up doing. And again, even like in my career, I started off as a teacher, but I became a department chair, I became a dean, I became a president, and did a lot of different things, and that’s not unusual.
Andi Simon 00:08:57 Now, as you were doing this. I’m just one thing to reflect on for our listeners, is that something you were striving for others saw in you? I can’t tell you how many folks who I’ve coached get moved up and moved up, not because they were desirous of moving up, but others came and pulled them up. What did you experience?
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:09:19 That’s a great question. It was a journey, to use the word, your word of self-discovery. Again, I loved teaching, and I never lost that love. But along the way, one does different things. I became a department chair, and I really enjoyed doing that. I really helped my department think about curriculum and all the different things we were doing. And then I started getting involved in governance at Denison, which meant I was on committees that thought of even broader things. We instituted a new first year curriculum, for example, and I really enjoyed thinking about those kinds of larger questions about the whole college, not just about my department. And so I sort of learned that I enjoyed that work and seemed to be good at it. And so the next, at a certain point in my life, I had to decide, am I going to be a philosophy professor for the rest of my life, or am I going to try something different? And we took the risk of trying something different and becoming an academic dean. And I enjoyed it. And I think I was good at it.
Andi Simon 00:10:19 But, you know, you’re saying a word that I think is important, I enjoyed it. And I do think that part of this is less about position but purpose, it’s about significance. And it’s about bringing the wisdom that you carry with you. Because each one of those things you spoke about was bringing my wisdom to a bigger context and not doing more of the same that I had done, but seeing it all in a different fashion. This is all about visualizing a different role for myself in the institution that is so important to us. So this is so interesting when you got to Skidmore and you are now president, how was the transformation? I’m curious.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:11:01 Well, it was an extension of some of the administrative work that I had done before. But of course, it was very different. And all of a sudden I was responsible for every aspect of the college in a certain way. I had to think about it. Of course, all that work got done by a lot of other people. Thank goodness. But it was a transition. And, you know, each of these roles has its own demands. And the president is a little bit more outward facing than being an academic dean, for example, dealing more with alumni and certainly trustees and people like that. And then all the people who reported to me, and there were quite a few, but it was, you know, it was enjoyable, I found it meaningful. And I think that’s another word I would use here. And I would encourage students as they approach their undergraduate career to keep that in mind. It’s not just about getting a job someplace. What do you find meaningful? What is it that sparks joy in your own life? And how do you relate that to whatever the opportunities are in the curriculum in the college or university where you are? And then as you start thinking about going out into the world and working, you don’t have to answer all those questions right away.
Your first job, maybe just that, a first job or first step. But, over a career, it’s really very important and helpful to do things that you find to be meaningful so that you don’t turn around at the end of a 40 year professional career and say, gee, now I can start my life. Well, you’ve lived that life.
Andi Simon 00:12:32 Well, that’s an important point, because, you know, too many of our colleagues or friends are at that retirement moment, and they can’t wait to stop what they’ve been doing. And they say, when are you going to retire? I said, I did 30 years ago. I’m not sure what retirement means. You know, if doing good and doing well are the things that interest you and give you purpose and meaning. Then what? Am I going to stop? I’m not quite sure, but to your point, when you’re an undergraduate, you’re beginning that part of your journey to discover who you are, what makes you find purpose and meaning in life, and the kinds of ways in which you want to contribute to both. And you said it well, at the beginning. Society as well as to your family and to yourself. I mean, what is it that matters? And these are philosophical questions and the practical and actionable, but they’re philosophy. Can you share with us a little bit about the philosophy part of this book that we’re going to talk about in a second? Because I want to emphasize that the liberal arts today have gotten a bad rap, and I’m a big fan of studying humanities and social sciences and the liberal parts of liberal arts, but philosophy is extremely important. What wisdom can you bring to the audience about, how you woven it into all of these moves that you’ve been making. I have a hunch you still think philosophically.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:13:59 I’d like to think that I do. In fact, for years, I would say administration, the work that I did was just applied philosophy. Philosophy is really figuring things out. It’s trying to understand how conceptual systems work. It’s trying to think rigorously and critically. And, you can apply those skills to anything. And so I do think that that’s important. One of the chapters in my book is called Do the Right Thing. It’s encouraging students to think about again, what are their values? What does it mean? What why? Why should you think about ethics and not just be selfish and think only of yourself? Why should you think of other people? I think there are arguments for that. I try to make some in the book and there are others. Another chapter talks about it. It starts with a quote from the American educator Horace Mann, who said, be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. I love that sentence. What’s your victory for humanity? What’s it going to be? You know, somebody who goes to college is really in a very privileged position. Only about 40% of people in this country have college degrees. And if you expand it to the world, you know, maybe 10% of the world’s population holds an undergraduate degree. It’s a very privileged position, regardless of how hard you had to work or how much debt you had to go into to get it. And with that kind of privilege comes responsibility. So what can you do to give back and to pay it forward? So I think those are very important questions. back to the one I said before. What sort of human being do you want to be? What are your values? Those are philosophical questions that people have asked for thousands of years. And I do think every generation needs to ask those questions again.
Andi Simon 00:15:39 Well, you know, human beings are quite unique in that we do ask those questions. Talk to us about the book. Embrace Your Freedom is the title Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in life. So in some ways that embracing your freedom has one position to it. And then the winning strategies are subhead on how to do that. So talk to us a little bit about the many chapters in there, the speaking that you did, but also this idea of embracing your freedom. It’s sort of a cool idea. Please.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:16:10 And that is a motif that runs through the book. Well, we talk about freedom a lot, don’t we, in our society. And usually when we do, I think we mean it in a kind of what I call a negative interpretation of freedom. Freedom is the absence of external constraints. You know, I’m going to college now. I’m going to be free. Nobody’s going to be telling me what to do. All right, fair enough. And that negative concept of freedom is certainly important, but it’s not the whole story. And what I try to emphasize in this book is what I call the positive conception of freedom is not freedom from. It’s freedom for what you are, what are you going to do with your freedom. And to be focused on the positive part of this really takes us to the notion of a project. You know, what do I want to do here, whether it’s with my undergraduate career or this particular class, to take on an objective of a goal that you set for yourself. Means that you have to accept certain constraints. I mean, running a marathon. You know, if you’re going to run that 26.2 miles, you have to start a long time before that. You have to do a lot of running. You have to eat well, you have to sleep well. You have to give up a lot of things. There are a lot of things you don’t get to do, like sleeping in late instead of going for that ten mile run in the morning. But at the end of the process when you run the marathon and I can speak from experience here, you have a sense of achievement that’s unlike anything you’ve ever done before, and that’s what you’ve paid for it. you’ve paid it to yourself to embrace that set of structures that have informed your part of your life for this period of time. And that’s the payoff and that’s really true for anything we want to do. You know, we face an infinite number of choices at any minute in our life. There’s a good philosophical claim. There are a lot of things we can do and to do one thing is to say no to all those other things. Well, positive freedom is to understand that sense of structure and what one has to put into it, again based on one’s own decisions. And that creates meaning for us. You’re this work that you put into doing something, whether it’s succeeding in this class or succeeding in your major or getting that first job or going to law school, whatever it is. So that’s to embrace that process of creating value for yourself and doing what you need to do to achieve your goals. That’s what it is to embrace your freedom. So the book has that as a motif that runs through it. And there are a lot of different, more specific things that I talk about, strategies to implement that and to try to help give students a sense of what they need to do, as they go through their undergraduate career that can leave them with pride when they walk across that stage at graduation and not regrets. You don’t want people to have regrets. I wish there were.
Andi Simon 00:19:01 Two or three things that you had mentioned a couple, but, I’m sort of probing a little bit further that over the years you had spoken about there, each of you a little different entering class, and particularly in the timeliness of today, two or three things to emphasize.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:19:18 Well, aside from what we talked about before, and that is the value of, of the, the cognitive skills that you get through, the liberal education part of what you do. And as a corollary of that, I would just say in today’s rapidly evolving professional world, even if what you’re just focused on as a job, the narrower your preparation, the shorter the shelf life. I mean, the more you can think broadly, in all the ways we’ve been talking about, the better equipped you are to deal with the changes that you’ll find in your career. But here’s something very specific that I talk about every year. In fact, for a while it was the working title of the book.
I just said to students, you know, one thing you need to say as you step foot on campus is to begin now. Your college career doesn’t start next semester or next year. It starts now. And I can’t tell you how many students I’ve talked with over my career who kind of wished that they had done that, who didn’t necessarily put that full attention and effort into their first semester. So begin now is a great mantra to have. And there are times I talk in the book about failures and setbacks. We all have them as human beings, right? We screw up. Things happen. Things go against us. Well, you need to start over. You need to pick yourself up. Vince Lombardi once said that the most important thing is not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get back up. Yeah, you get back up and you say, okay, I’m going to begin now. Again, I’m going to begin with this next thing to start. So those are a couple of things. There are others.
Andi Simon 00:20:55 You know, I’m looking back at my own college experience. I went to Penn State, until I was ready to finish my anthropology and then I went to Columbia. Very different cultures. but as a student, my father sent me off. He had not gone to college, and he said, this is the last time you’re going to be totally irresponsible. So I like your embrace, your freedom and then the responsibility was mine. To be totally irresponsible or without responsibilities puts an enormous burden on you to be responsible. You know, nobody was expecting anything. So if you’re going to do something with this, do it for yourself. And I think that’s how I interpreted it. But, you know, the things that I explored there changed me. I was a whole different person by the time I realized I wanted to go someplace with more anthropology and Colombia was close to home. But what was interesting to me is I ran for a women’s president. We had a women’s government and a men’s government. You know, I’ll date myself. And the day running, running for that position was traumatic. I had never really run that way. I’d always been, you know, chair of this or a director of that or an undergraduate program in high school. But, you know, that was not my strong suit or my comfort zone, but I did it. And, then I was president of my sorority, and I wasn’t ever going to join one, much less be president of it. And so much of the mirror that I saw was of a woman who didn’t expect and got startled. The reason I asked you about who pulls you in, rather whether you intended it and I’ve been sort of fascinated by the, as you reflect back on it, how much of that was serendipity and how much was by design and how much was people you met and how was it that that things just happened? I’m still a good friend of my roommate from college, and we were just in Washington, D.C. together for a week. I’m reminiscing a lot, you know, going to museums a lot, living life. But we pick up the conversation as if we haven’t been apart for a day. And those are intimacies that are difficult to create in any other workplace or friendship or other things. You’re going through the same transformation. And what’s so ironic is that she said, I really didn’t like Penn State at all. I liked you, and I really loved having a roommate like you. But the school itself did nothing for me, and I said, how interesting. I loved Penn State, and it gave me opportunities to find myself. And I have so many memories. and it’s been an interesting, reminiscent journey. and I have no regrets, but it is a time of discovery for a young person, to really, you know, patiently participate and understand why they have this opportunity. And it’s a gift. Don’t waste it.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:23:53 It is. It is totally a gift. And you know, I talk a lot about planning and organization and all that. It’s true enough. But it’s also important to say, as you’re saying, that, to be alert to things that just come up. Serendipity. And also, I’d say to have fun. I mean, you know, college shouldn’t all be just serious stuff. It should be having fun. And what you said about roommates is so, so true. And I’ve just seen that over the years, so many times with our alumni and in my own life, I’m still very close friends with someone who was my first year roommate and with people I met that first year. I still get together with them every year. I still see them. And that’s not unusual at all. Those friendships that you form in college really are your first adult friendships. I mean, I’m still friends with people I knew in high school, too. But those friendships have evolved, so it’s being open to new possibilities and new experiences that come up. I’ll just tell one little anecdote. When I was about being pulled up when I was a junior in college, and I had already fallen in love with philosophy, as I said, I was thinking of applying to graduate schools and all that and I asked an academic advisor, a guy who I had had a course from, I respected him, I said, how do I know if I’m good enough to do this? Is this going to be something I can do? And he said, he said, think about what people you respect think of you. I thought, okay, that was really helpful. There’s other professors that I respect. What have they said? Have they been positive? They’ve been encouraging. They’ve been not and I think that’s a wonderful little guidepost. What do people you respect think of you?.
Andi Simon 00:25:34 A piece that’s important, and I always preach this is not what they said. It’s what you heard. Be careful that you are parsing out the words in a way that is true. There is no truth. Let me also say the only truth is there’s no truth. Very philosophical, but it is a very interesting opportunity for you to hone in your hearing skills so that, as things are said, you understand that you’re filtering them through your own story. But make sure you open your mind. I love to think through life as a door that opens. You can walk through it or not, and if you don’t, then you don’t know what you’ve missed or not missed. And if you do and it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. It’s okay to take a step through that door and learn something from it. And there is no failure, there’s just learning and everything is a guided tour through your journey. It’s a great time. I do have two questions though. One of which is I’m fascinated by the fourth Industrial Revolution and about all the new technologies. Humans are crazy technology builders. And as humans, that freedom is here to, remember, you know, we created and adopted fire. It changed our diet, changed our brains. I don’t know whether it’s 40,000 years ago. 50,000 100,000 years ago. We had a quantum leap in our brain that let us see the meaning of things, not just the hard thing. You can give it meaning. And so when you give it meaning, it’s like your own life now. It’s a great time to reflect on that. Our ability to do that and not simply, you know, fall into a box. It’s your time to create your own sandbox. And that becomes a great responsibility and a great opportunity for you. But it’s a really cool thing that we’re humans, isn’t it, that we can do this?
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:27:28 It’s absolutely amazing. And, what you said, I think is very important. One of the things that we should be learning in college and in life is to listen, to open our minds and to use our creative imagination to be able to explore things that we haven’t experienced ourselves necessarily through novels or through history or whatever, but also to be open to what other people are saying. We may not agree with them. They may be off putting when we first meet them. And I have some good stories in my book about students who had those experiences. You know, it’s not always easy to be open minded as a human being, it’s something we need to work on. And goodness gracious, our society could use a little bit of that, couldn’t we? I mean, we are so quick to demonize other people and to see ourselves as victims and have grievances and to cut out the other or to define people as the other. And because they’re others, they’re bad or evil. We’re all human beings here, and we all share the same planet as so many people have said in the past. So how can we get past our own parochial limits and what we’ve experienced to find value in other human beings, ascribe dignity to them as well, not just to ourselves and value. So those are important things that students will work on and learn while they’re in college.
Andi Simon 00:28:50 And I think that that is extremely important. So those of you who are listening, we’re about ready to wrap up. But I’m fascinated. I guess I really do like being philosophical as an anthropologist about humans because we are unique species. Although I’m beginning to think my Labrador retriever is pretty unique as well. And as she talks to me sometimes I’ll sit here and she’ll have conversations. I just can’t understand her. But there’s something meaningful in what she’s doing. One or two things you’d like the audience to remember, because I do think this book is really a profound one for both parents and students. Please, some things not to forget.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:29:31 Well, thank you. I think one of the reasons I wrote this book is that there are a lot of misconceptions about college floating around out there, and I’ve touched upon them. One of the strongest misconceptions is that it’s really just all about getting a job. Yeah, jobs are important. But again, if you’re going to prepare yourself for the workforce of the 21st century, you need to be very broadly educated. You were mentioning technology. Artificial intelligence is such a huge topic these days, and students in college need to understand how it works because they’re going to be using it in their professional lives and so on. And we do need to understand and think and you mentioned philosophical questions, you know, what should we allow artificial intelligence to do and not to do? And one trap that’s becoming increasingly easy for students to fall into is to rely too much on artificial intelligence apps while they’re undergraduates and to turn over, what they should be learning about how to think and read and be critical about, that’s really a trap, because you have to carry away those skills that you can develop only by working through them. So that’s one thing. The other misconception that I hope people can just avoid, we have a conception of college today. I call it colleges ATM. You know, you come up and you deposit your tuition and fees for four years, and at the end you withdraw a certificate and then you go out and get a job.
Andi Simon 00:30:53 I haven’t heard that, but I remember it.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:30:56 Well, we don’t have relationships with our ATM, right? It’s purely transactional. We live in a very transactional time. And ATMs are boring. They should be boring. They should just work. But students who approach college as an educational ATM can have a very boring and unfulfilling experience. And really, what college is about is relationships. It’s about relationships with the other people you meet. Relationships to all these different areas of knowledge that you can explore. Relationships to the skills that you should be developing. It’s not just a deposit and withdrawal. And so I would challenge students today to get past that educational ATM mindset and really find the kind of things we’ve been talking about, find something meaningful in everything that you’re doing, whether it’s a class or whether it’s a club or friends that you’re meeting, whatever. Find that meaning.
Andi Simon 00:31:46 Yep. And be comfortable growing. It’s not going to be perfect, but you’re going to find yourself a different person at the end of the first semester and at the end of the first year. And the only person who can fix that, who can enable that is you. So let the growth come with joy and just keep talking to people. Last thought and then we’ll wrap up. I said I use I a good deal for my business and I’m saying to myself, because I had a copywriter and I had a copy editor and I had all kinds of human support, and I liked them. Like, quite frankly, the AI is more efficient and doesn’t argue with me. Sometimes I miss the arguments, but I said, what’s the difference between reading a book that someone wrote and an I published thing that was written, and I’m trying to think through the differences because they are different. But is it a meaningful difference, or is it still up to me to interpret the human written book and interpret the AI written material? And I don’t know if you have a perspective on it, but it’s profound for me. So I work hard to make sure my AI reflects what I would like it to say, and I rewrite it, and we use it as an editor instead of a writer. But it’s an interesting theme for me. Thoughts?
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:33:02 Yeah, well, you’re right. And one of the things that we have to learn how to do is be critical of these products that we get through AI. As you just said, we need to edit. We need to challenge ourselves. We need to find out whether the AI program has invented something that isn’t even true, isn’t even real. You can’t just rely on it without thinking. So that’s part of it. And yeah, I mean, it provides text. And as AI continues to be developed. It’s going to continue to produce texts that are more like those that human beings produce, and so we interpret them and so on. I think that one of the things that we need to learn how to do in college is to read critically.
Andi Simon 00:33:40 Yes.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:33:40 And so anything we are reading if it’s important. I mean, if you’re just reading it for fun, great. But if you’re reading something because it’s somehow important, one way or other was political or for work or whatever you need to read actively, you need to think about it. You need to be critical. You need to ask those questions and whether it’s generated by AI or the person in the next room or somebody was writing 200 years ago, you asked the same questions.
Andi Simon 00:34:04 You know, and it doesn’t stop. I’m reading a book now on Apple and China and, how much I don’t know about how much I don’t know. And I feel like I’m on a cruise to more wisdom. And I keep saying I will never know enough. Sort of a journey of continuously filling one’s mind with wisdoms of all kinds, making sense out of stuff, which I can’t figure out. It’s been a pleasure. If they want to get your book, what’s the best way to get the book?
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:34:31 Well, they can order it from Amazon. It’s available at Barnes and Noble. You can order it through Target. It’s available at a lot of bookstores. You can ask your local Barnes and Noble bookstore if they don’t have it to order it for you. So it’s pretty available. And my website: https://www.philipglotzbach.com/ has links, so you can order it through that. And that website also has some reviews of the book and other information I’ve written, speeches, and so on.
Andi Simon 00:35:00 Lovely website is widely available and it’s a lovely book. I’ll repeat the name Embrace Your Freedom Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life. And I will make sure that it’s on the podcast, blog and the last page of the video and, and put it on the first page of the video so they can see the book. It’s a great book for everyone to read because it’s philosophical about things that matter to me, it’s also practical. I don’t know anything I don’t know is philosophy not practical? Also, for all of you who come all the time. Thank you so much. You’ve made us the top 5% of global podcasts. There are only millions of podcasts, but I’m honored. You come and you bring us ideas about who else we should interview. Because you’re curious. I like curious people that open your mind to possibilities, but I bet today you’ve become philosophical too, and you’re interested in thinking about things through a new mindset, a fresh lens. My books are all available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so forth. I’m On the Brink, which, you know, was a kick off for this podcast. It’s about how a little anthropology can help your business group, and we’ve been doing workshops recently with great numbers on blue ocean strategy and culture change and interesting topics and times for rethinking what you’re doing and where you want to go. So I want to get you off the break. Thanks for coming today, remember. Take your observations. Turn them into innovations like Phil did. Talks have turned into a book, and he’s going to keep telling you more and more interesting things about how to see, feel and think in new ways. Phil, thank you for joining me today.
Philip A. Glotzbach 00:36:35 Thank you very much, Andi.
Andi Simon 00:36:37 Bye bye everybody. Have a great day!
