Tuff Talker Walks the Walk with Dr. Charlotte Pullins
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:20:41]
It’s not going to be advantageous at the end.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:20:45]
Not it’s not gonna help you graduate any sooner.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:20:47]
No, not at all. One word I would suggest dissertation learners learn is the word pivot. You need to pivot through this dissertation and pivot through what people’s responses are and make the changes is easier to make the changes than to say, no, I’m a stick to this. And this is what I said at the beginning of this process. It doesn’t work the same. It’s it’s different. You have to pivot. So I could actually put that word up on my little board in front of me the whole time. Sacramone, pivot through this and it’s OK to make changes.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:21:25]
And I like that word. I use a lot with my own students because it’s about taking where you are right now and making small changes that faculty committee members think are significant examples. But oftentimes a pivot is something you can do in thirty minutes or an hour and then get back to your committee and they’re like, OK, we’re fine. Or you keep messing with it for weeks and weeks and weeks and never get there. So it’s it’s kind of that notion of small hinges swinging big doors. You can make small changes in your dissertation that just acknowledge and and defer to what your committee members are asking you for. And they will appreciate that and allow you to keep moving forward. So I do, because I use that word pivot a lot myself.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:22:17]
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:20]
But certainly a word you have to the words that you have to to get rid of are things like perfectionism and passion, like your folks talk about that universities say find something you’re passionate about. And the answer is no, no, no, no, no, no can be professionally detached from so that you can look at it objectively. When someone says to change something, you can just say, OK, change, OK?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:22:46]
And I think that’s one of the main things you have to learn going in. You have to be willing to change to tell you that that’s not going to work. We’re not going to improve it. Changing it doesn’t hurt anything. But you if you don’t act.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:03]
And students will sometimes complain that, oh, I got all this feedback from my committee or something like that and think that’s good. Because what they’re doing is it’s like if you remember, you were talking about the statistics stuff. If you remember math in grade school, they used to have answers in the back of the book.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:23:18]
Yeah, they did give you the answers. They asked what I want to see, so I will approve it if you do what they ask you to do.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:28]
And sometimes the committee is not clear about what they want and then getting some help from someone that’s been there before and help with that. But if you just do what they ask you to do and then and then sometimes you have committee members that will vastly they’ll go back and forth on things. That’s when it gets tricky because you have to then start managing your committee, not just their expectations, but if they are giving you a moving target, you’re not going to hit that. So then you have to start figuring out when do I start challenging my committee and ask me to do this. Now you’re asking me to do something else?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:24:05]
Yes, we just and I found out in that process that you it’s OK to ask questions. I’m not sure you why you said this. Can you explain this more? Tell me more what you like, especially those vague questions that they might have or the things they want you to change and have committee meetings and say, I need a meeting because I’m not sure.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:24:28]
Yeah, I found that a lot of students can’t get those meetings that can that can be difficult. But you can certainly ask. And and if you are asking someone, I want to make sure that I’m doing what you want me to do. The committee members that you want to keep, committee members you. You don’t want to fire those are the type of people who are going to say this person is showing the respect, they’re showing an interest in what I’m asking them to do. They’re trying to do what I’m asking them to do. Exactly. We’ll try to accommodate you when they see that when they think you’re being stubborn and pigheaded and just doing it your way, that’s when they’re less likely to try to work with.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:25:04]
Right. They’re not going to work with you. Right, exactly.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:08]
Because you’ve got to understand, you’ve got to get these folks on your side. Where you’re doing their job is to make sure that when somebody from the university looks at your dissertation later on, they don’t come back to this committee member and say, what the heck were you doing? Passing by the standards? They just have to get up to the point. Most committee members, they just want to be able to tell you, yes, they’re not looking for a reason to say no. They want to make sure that there’s no reason they have to say no. And if there’s no reason they have to say no, then they’ll say yes.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:25:40]
Exactly. And yeah. Yeah. All right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:44]
Well, so these are like like you said, it’s kind of like reading your mind sometimes. I see these other things happening for you during this process because it’s a huge, big process. I mean, there’s all lots of things going on.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:25:59]
You have life. Yeah, life is going on. Like I said, this is a four year process. And within that four years, I lost my sister, my father and I was diagnosed with lupus. So archaeologist’s. Yeah, those were all that. Those were heavy challenges at the beginning of my doctoral process. And I was I was diagnosed with lupus. So if you know anything about lupus makes you very tired, you have some muscle difficulties at times. And so I was working full time with two children teaching a of.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:45]
That’s a lot.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:26:46]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So with that, I was always tired writing papers to the middle of the night and it was difficult. It was really difficult. And this process, as you know, is draining. It can be and it’s it’s arduous. So I had to actually stop working during this process, but I didn’t make the process less hard her it helped me because of my diagnosis.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:18]
And then illness, like you said, your your resources are diminished. There’s only so many ways you can spread yourself. Right. Right. For yourself. And you have to make those decisions.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:27:30]
It’s a hard decision, but you just have to do it. And then closer to the after classes. And we had two and a half years of classes and then after classes I started the dissertation writing process. I went home for my sister’s funeral on Saturday and on Monday while walking in the park with my father, he had a massive heart attack and died there in front of me. Yeah. So that was very tragic.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:08]
So that’s two losses, you know, so close together. Did you deal with that? What what what did you do immediately after that happened with everything you have going on with school, with with kids and everything, what did you do right after that?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:28:25]
I had to take some time off, contact my community to let them know what was happening. And they were very willing and flexible with me and and gave me the time that I needed to grieve.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:45]
How much time did you take?.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:28:45]
I took I took two weeks and two weeks.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:52]
And you establish that with your community from the beginning, or did you just say you were going to take some time?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:28:57]
I know I took I told my committee I was going to take some time. I didn’t establish how long I was going to take, but they told me to take as much time as I needed. If I needed, I could drop the class and then come back. But I knew within this process that my family, my father would have wanted me to continue.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:29:23]
I deal with something I wasn’t expecting when I started dissertation done is the number of people who had losses, close losses in their family during their doctoral degree program or during their dissertation particular. And that’s one of the things that tends to be a source of reassurance for folks, is I know this person that they they lost. Would be proud to see them finish and that it’s honoring their memory to to continue and to finish. So I’m glad that that was something that helped you to get through this. One of the things I’ve also noticed, and I’m glad that you did get through this, because it can be very difficult for people who take a leave of absence of any length of time to come back because it is so difficult. Right. You’re kind of jumping back into the fray again. And so what I always tell students is if you’re going to take a leave of absence, make sure you make the arrangement to come back at the same time as you’re making the arrangement to leave. So if it’s a month, if it’s six months, whatever it is for the situation you’re facing right now, that on the calendar already set up with the university already, that here’s what I’m going to do that because at least then you’ve got to take positive action to continue to quit. Basically, you’ve already decided this is when I come back. This is this is the end of my leave. So you have to take positive action to extend that or something along those lines. And for most folks, if they know they’ve got a deadline and here’s when I’m back in school, it makes it a lot easier to say. I’m really glad that you were able to to take the time you needed and come back without having that deadline at the beginning.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:31:01]
That’s that’s really good advice because you don’t know what the process is going to it’s going to be.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:31:07]
So I like how well it life gets a whole lot easier when you’re not working on your dissertation. So so jumping back into the fray, like I said, it can be difficult psychologically. I know since we’re that right now, it’s it’s fall of 2020. We’re still dealing with this pandemic thing. I have gotten to the point where I will go out to the garage and work out several times a week and I will look at some of those weights. I’m just like, you just have to go over there and you just have to lift this. And I’m like literally talking to myself about it, like literally talking about myself. Like, I just go over there, walk over there. When you walk over there, you have to lift because I didn’t like doing it the first time I did it and now I got to do it again. Right. Right. But that’s that’s what it takes. And and when you have that schedule of, OK, here’s exactly the time is doing this and going back, it makes it at least a little bit easier.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:32:10]
It does. It does.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:32:12]
OK, so you dealt with this passing. I’m assuming your family was there to help with this, the emotional side of that. But in terms of getting back into the fray and getting your dissertation, and that’s something that you had to handle for the most part, right?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:32:27]
Yeah. Yeah. Back in. Yeah, the thing about life, I had to I knew I had the goal to finish, I knew, like you said, my father would want me to finish or I did get back. I slowly got back into it, start working and start reading again and just try to remember that I wanted to get this done. I had invested the time to already.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:05]
And not a small amount of money,.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:33:06]
And a whole lot of money. So I know it was my goal to get it to go back to my mother. I saw her on the other side.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:16]
You mentioned your mom like instilling that value of education at an early age, but specifically when it comes to a doctoral degree program. I mean, you can say, hey, I I’ve earned a good education before you go in and get a doctoral degree. What did you see that doctoral degree doing for you? What was the the kind of carrot on the other end of that degree program for you?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:33:38]
Well, I. I know I have a passion for change and mission and and teachers and learning. It’s just always been I’ve been drawn to solve problems and figure out what’s what’s the better method. So with this degree, I really would love to do some curriculum development, work with teachers. Some consulting on those things really are part of the reason why I got this degree in organizational leadership.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:19]
A lot of it sounds like you want to have some more freedom and flexibility to do some of those things.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:34:24]
Yes, yes. Yes. So this degree really will allow me to do that. Right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:32]
And when you say it will allow, that’s because you have it. It’s been kind of recent that you finish this up. Right. Tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:34:41]
Yes, I just had my graduation ceremony on Saturday, so…
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:46]
Congratulations.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:34:46]
Thank you. So it’s a virtual ceremony, which in this day and age, we’re dealing with the pandemic. So it’s going to be virtual. But I kind of did something innovative. I kind of I had a backyard graduation ceremony was the social social distance backyard ceremony where everyone wore masks, of course. And we even the family that flew in had covid test before. But it was a celebration of years, hard work and accomplishment and overcoming. And it was great. It was great.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:35:25]
You’ve got to honor that in some way. You’ve got to celebrate. That’s something I have a little bit of trouble with that my business coach is constantly getting on me about like you got to plan the goal and you got to plan the celebration celebration. For me, kind of my celebration is OK and set another goal. I’ve got to get better at that. But but you’re right. I always recommend to all of our students definitely whatever you can do to get to to to experience commencement. It’s worth it. It’s cheesy. It’s corny.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:36:01]
But I earned it. Yeah, yeah. I did it because I had the whole podium. I had balloons. I did it all right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:36:13]
But even though obviously commencement has just happened. But you finished you earned the degree a while ago. That’s typical for my degrees. And you’ve been doing some really cool things. So tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:36:27]
I’ve been doing one thing is a podcast with my daughter. I have a that I have a teenage daughter who is soon to be going to college. So I decided to do a podcast called The Tuff Talks with her. It’s a mother and daughter podcast where we talk about the tough things that mother and daughters need to talk about. So we talk about a conflict resolution and we talk about we talking about grief this week and dating. So it’s really something different that I’m proud that I’m proud about. I’m glad I get to talk to her and really get the core ideas and values out there to young women.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:13]
Yes. And start to see those that message getting out there to more and more people. Yes. Yes. Getting those stories about how you change people’s lives than that. Really? Yeah. That really makes it hit home. And then I understand you also running your own not for profit, is that right?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:37:37]
Well, I am. I have I’m a founding member with some other members of my church is not for profit, it’s called Antioch Christian Academy. We are set up as a nonprofit to help community that we our church is based in with programs and summer things. And we’ve done a summer food program also with that. So, yeah, we’ve been doing it for a while now. It’s a great nonprofit.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:16]
It’s great to to be able to, again, like you said, have this flexibility now, because even though this is a fairly recent thing for you, having earned your doctoral degree, you’re already starting to see some of those opportunities that knock on some doors that open and in you. So exciting times to come.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:38:36]
Yeah, I’m looking forward.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:38]
But speaking of that and exciting times to come, what do you think is is next for Dr. Charlotte?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:38:45]
I think Dr. Charlotte Pullins is going to continue to work in education and in some sphere of leadership, of course, and and make some change. And I’m going to and I’m going to make some change. And so I’m looking forward to the opportunities that are coming. I know they’ll come. So, yeah, that’s what I’m hopeful for.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:08]
Awesome. Well, Dr. Pullins, how can folks reach out to you if they want to if they want to get your advice on some of these changes, if they want to to to maybe get some coaching on how to make changes themselves in their own communities if they want it to just continue this conversation we started today. How can folks reach out to you?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:39:28]
You can reach me at TheTuffTalks.com. It’s the t-u-f-f talks dot com. And my email address is on there at TheTuffTalks.com. So reach me there and I’ll get right back to you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:45]
That sounds great. And check it out. How often do you guys come out with new episodes for the podcast?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:39:50]
Come out every Tuesday we come out with a new episode, so they’ll be coming out with one tomorrow on grief and how to handle it.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:00]
All right. So definitely go out and check that out. By the time if you guys are releasing that tomorrow, then by the time people are listening to this, it’ll be out. So go check that out.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:40:11]
Yes, please do.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:12]
I want to thank you for joining me today, Dr. Pullins. And I want to remind everyone that this episode has been brought to you by a dissertation done. If you’re working on your dissertation, you maybe need some support and guidance, accountability. You need someone to help you edit. You need someone to help you figure out the statistics stuff. Go to DissertationDone.com/done. And we’ll set you up on our Fast-Track Your Dissertation coaching program to get you to graduation a year or two faster than you would have thought possible. And if you’re already out there living your unconventional life and you want to expand your authority to the next level, consider writing your own book. We help students who have earned their doctoral degrees and other experts to expand their authority through our Expand Your Authority program, helping you get from a blank page to a published book again in much less time than we thought possible. So you can check us out. Their DissertationDone.com/book. Dr. Pullins, I want to thank you once again so much for being here with us today. I enjoyed talking with you. What was it that that little thing you had again about being fearless?
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:41:17]
When my life when you’re fearless…
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:20]
I put you on the spot. Go ahead.
Dr. Charlotte Pullins [00:41:24]
I know you put me on the spot now. Life becomes limitless when you’re fearless.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:28]
I love it. I love it. So go out there, live your unconventional life, do it fearlessly so that you can live it limitlessly. Talk to you next time.
Outro [00:41:43]
This has been An Unconventional Life. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, subscribe now to keep getting inspirational stories of unconventional lives as soon as they’re released. Until then, go out and live your best unconventional life.
