Whatever It Takes part 2

When a person understands what education can do for them, when they understand the opportunities it opens and its power to change lives, they will move heaven and earth to be able to pursue it. In this episode, we continue our conversation with John Wise who is currently studying data science at Indiana University. He was also briefly a student at Santa Fe College. John’s story, in many ways, is about his determination to do whatever it took to pursue his education both in and out of prison. While his journey is not without setbacks and frustrations, his resolve never wavered. 

Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Full transcripts can be found under each episode at https://freetolearn.buzzsprout.com/. 

Transcript

Jason:

Welcome to Free to Learn, a podcast exploring the stories of formerly incarcerated college students. My name is Jason Frank. I'm an instructional designer at Santa Fe College, and I'm interested in better understanding how we can create a learning environment that better meets the needs of these students. The first step to good design is listening to the people you're working to support. We're continuing our conversation with John Wise. If you haven't listened to part one of the interview, I'd recommend going back and listening to that first. John shared how a little bit of luck and a lot of determination made it possible to pursue some pivotal opportunities while incarcerated. Let's get back to the interview.

And you were at Santa Fe for one semester?

John:

One. One semester.

Jason:

Just one. Okay.

John:

The clinching question was you're just doing online classes, right? Yeah, just online classes. Okay.

Jason:

Okay. And what was your experience with classes like when you were here at Santa Fe? Did you connect with anyone on campus or any of the organizations on campus or just head down focus?

John:

Head down focus. I needed these classes.

Jason:

Just needed credits to move forward with your degree. So in terms of your family, do you have anyone else in your family who has gone to college?

John:

No.

Jason:

Oh, so you're first generation?

John:

Yeah.

Jason:

Okay. How has that affected your decision to go and your experience with it?

John:

I think that coming up, I had an understanding of what college was that was wholly incorrect because nobody in my family had ever been through college or had the experience. So I had the perspective of what is socialized into people in my socioeconomic status. And that college was something that you wasted money and time on and can't get out and get a real job. It's where you go to get $250,000 in debt on an art degree and not really thinking through that or understanding the value of what education could be. And my experience with education prior to incarceration certainly reinforced my undervaluing the education system, so.

Jason:

As you've been navigating education while incarcerated and then now post, have you had any mentors or any instructors that have been particularly helpful or supportive?

John:

Karen Jones has been amazing.

Jason:

What's made her so amazing?

John:

She has supported me to the best of her ability and the best of her understanding of the cercarial experience and how it has affected my engagement with education. I think that she understands that in a way that is really intuitive for her, but also took a lot of work on her part to really wrap her brain around what I've been through and how it affects what I'm doing now. As well as Andy Eisen, one of my professors with the Stetson program. I would absolutely consider him to be a mentor in this work. So Andy is, he was a history professor with the community education project, one of the initial founders. One day I was in his history class and I said something he mentioned Eugene Debs is somebody that I was slightly familiar with, big figure from the 1900s. And I just said something about Eugene Debs being like a personal hero to me. And the next day or the next time he came in, he brought me five inches worth of reading material on Eugene Debs.

After I was released, he's been continued to be engaged with me, helped me find employment for a short time with a project, a project with him and some other professors, COVID prison stories, trying to archive the experience of what the coronavirus for those who have been incarcerated, what that was like. Worked on that project for a short time. He also invited me to the higher education in prison conference with the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. And that was an amazing experience. I learned a ton there as well as was able to contribute to the conversation in ways that were really meaningful to me. And he's, again, invited me to, I was able to participate in a think tank on the value of higher education in prison for those who have life sentences. I just came back from that and we were in Vermont at Bennington College doing that. Andy he also sits on my board of directors for the nonprofit that I founded. So he's been absolutely amazing in that capacity as well.

Jason:

So just thinking back on your experiences with education as you're going through the cercarial system, is there anything that you would do differently knowing what you know now?

John:

No.

Jason:

No? In terms of the degree that you're working on now, do you have a specific timeline for finishing that degree?

John:

This time next year I should be getting ready to go up, go to graduation ceremony. I just started my senior year. I have nine courses left.

Jason:

Oh wow. Okay.

John:

So I'm doing three of them now. I just started [inaudible 00:05:11] and then three in the summer and three in the fall, and I'll be done.

Jason:

And then you'll be done. And so then what's the plan after that?

John:

So I have no idea. And I have no idea, but I know that the skills I'm gaining are incredible and that I'll be able to apply them in ways that are meaningful to me no matter what I do.

Jason:

Have you thought at all about going on with more education or just going right into the workforce?

John:

I intend to go into the workforce at that point, however, still continuing my education, but I'll tone it down quite a bit.

Jason:

Yeah, that makes sense. One of the other things, and there's just, so you talked about the cohort, the other students in your programs, have any of them been released and are you familiar with any stories and what they're experiencing right now?

John:

Yeah, I keep up with a lot of them. And it's not a magic bullet, education. Some of my friends are back in prison. My best friend's back in prison, the guy who slept right next to me for two and a half years, my study partner, he's back in prison. A couple of guys are back in prison. A couple of guys are dead. There's been overdoses, there's been incidents of violence. It hasn't been a cure all by any means, but they were different people.

Jason:

What are the factors that have contributed to your success so far?

John:

Oh, I'm not a success yet. I'm a mess.

Jason:

Well, but you're persisting, right?

John:

Yeah.

Jason:

You're working towards it. So what has kept you going?

John:

The classes. The value of the material recognition that I'm gaining. Skills that are important not just to myself, but to those who have the same perspective as me, who have had similar experiences. I don't know, when I picked up that very first math book, this is interesting, this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. This feels right, this is valuable. And I still get that when I do the next thing that I'm supposed to be doing. It's just one foot in front of the other still.

Jason:

But it's attractive to you, it just draws you?

John:

Oh, absolutely. Every day I cannot wait to open up my courses and fire up our studio and start programming and building visualizations and digging into raw data. It's amazing. So I would say that what is most appealing to me then is just the edification that I get from actually gaining skills and knowledge. It's still paying off.

Jason:

That's great, thank you. In working with other students or engaging with the community at large, how open have you decided to be about your prison experience?

John:

Probably too open.

Jason:

Okay.

John:

So I recently, within the last two, three days, had the opportunity, the requirement to do an introduction post in one of these online courses. And it's just like a canvas discussion post was introduce yourself and say your name and what program you're in and something interesting about you.

And it's like, okay, I handled that introduction the same way I do all of them. My name is John Wise. I'm a formerly incarcerated (2002 to 21 FDC). Formerly incarcerated individual. I am candid about this because we need to destigmatize crime and poverty. We need to do it now. Being open about this with everyone allows whatever success I do achieve in life to also be work dismantling those structures of stigmatization. So it's actively pushing back. It's wearing the label of formerly incarcerated individual, not excon, formally incarcerated individual. And speaking about how that affects my engagement with the world, I feel is a pushback against the forces that keep us quiet about our experience. And that I think that the more that we push back against those forces, the less damage they can do to everyone.

So I'm wide open about it and when you're doing a class on information representation on how to build databases, it's not really something people are accustomed to to just have that right up front, but it's going up front because that's important to me. My LinkedIn profile, formally incarcerated student of data science, I have to be upfront with it.

Jason:

And how do you find people react to that?

John:

I find that those who acknowledge that have a reaction to that that is perceptible or unanimously positive, supporting that train of thought and also that level of exposure or candidness.

Jason:

Candid. So what experiences have you had where you have been made to feel like you belonged? And have you had any experiences that have made you feel like you didn't belong?

John:

So the classes that I'm taking are really cut and dry. What makes you belong in those courses is your ability to engage with the material.

Jason:

Yeah, okay.

John:

That hasn't been that much of a... I've had problems, surely. In my classes in an online setting with me being so open about my cercarial history, I wouldn't say that belonging identification as a student is something that I struggle with, but I have put work into dealing with that personally to fight back against imposter syndrome. It would be much different if I were taking what are so-called soft classes or in an in-person setting. So American history in prison with a bunch of my peers inside would be a lot different than American history out here in a classroom. That would be a whole nother landscape for me to navigate. I can't speak on those troubles.

Jason:

And so that's almost a feature for you that the classes are so contingent on the skill, right?

John:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also, it can be disadvantages to... It's convenient for me, but it is important to recognize that my situation is a special case of somebody formally incarcerated, navigating the higher education experience and that those are concerns that are prevalent certainly for a lot of people. And it's not necessarily anything special about me that is allowing that to not be a problem. It's just the context of my journey. So I haven't had any problems feeling like I don't belong in school.

Jason:

So you're wearing your Indiana sweater today?

John:

Yeah.

Jason:

So do you have any other Indiana swag?

John:

No, I just wear this all the time. I got a bumper sticker I put on.

Jason:

And a bumper sticker. Okay. So how important is that for you to-

John:

I've never been a person to be motivated by affiliation, but I love this sweatshirt and I am now, I'm really proud to be a student of data science and the Indiana University was the only place I could do it, is really gives them a lot of glow in my eyes from them being the opportunity that I had. And also the way that they accepted me into the school was absolutely incredible. I mean, I've literally just offhanded phoned in, almost put very little effort into a paragraph that I fired off and they were just like, okay, well, are you under probation? No. Also, this was actually something that was really amazing. Right after I was accepted, the person who was my transfer advisor advised me to put in a scholarship application for community college transfer students, and they approved that scholarship like the next day.

Jason:

Wow.

John:

It was amazing. So that was two that I certainly really need to help me through that experience. But yeah, it's been great.

Jason:

Do you follow any of the sporting?

John:

No, I've never been into sports.

Jason:

No?

John:

I don't know what they're doing. People ask me about the team all the time and I have to disappoint them because I don't know anything.

Jason:

So apart from the advisor that you worked with, does the university offer any other type of support services that you've used?

John:

I'm sure they do. I have not used any other support services yet, and it's something that if I wasn't so wrapped up in the classes, I could probably start looking at what else they're doing. Indiana University as a whole, not necessarily my campus at Indiana University East, but Indiana University is heavily involved with higher education in prison. They're tied in with the BARD Initiative, which is a big, big program. And I'm not exactly familiar with what they're doing and where and I know that they do have work in that field, but I've just been so much on data science still.

Jason:

Yeah. So as a student, are there services or support that you would find particularly valuable?

John:

In the context of my situation?

Jason:

Yeah, context of your situation right now.

John:

I don't know what Indiana University could be doing to support me at this time more thoroughly than they are. Me specific, my situation is that the best thing for me is to focus on, I'm in a space, in a place where I can focus on the material in the classes. So that's what I'm doing. I'm fortunate to be in that space and since I'm in it, I'm not putting a lot of work into what the university could do to help me get to that space because I'm there.

Jason:

You're doing it and again, you have this sense of what you need to do to move forward and you're just doing that. So what kind of student would you describe yourself as?

John:

I'm engaged. Now, John Wise as a student after my initial exposure to higher education and the value of it, I have read the material before class. If the professor makes an error in class, I'm going to correct it. We're probably going to have that happen about once per class, but it's going to be an awesome class and I'm ready. So I would describe myself as an engaged student.

Jason:

Okay. What traits or characteristics of yours do you think have been most helpful?

John:

I have an exceptionally high tolerance for failure and mistakes. So in the work that I'm doing with data science particularly, I am going to make 20 mistakes before I start finding what the right path for me could potentially be. I have to flail around first in order to develop a strategy and a structure for proceeding, and I have to sit in that failure for sometimes hours and still manage to understand that there's value in dealing with that, but also the potential for resolution on through my understanding and with my skills. I'd say that that is something that is most beneficial to me. And also just the experience of powerlessness in my life. I'm almost 40 years old. I was incarcerated for almost 20 years. I'm still not really employable. I don't have a degree. And so I'm living on student loans and the support of my support network and understanding that what I'm doing will empower me to be an independent individual that can function in the world on my own terms. That's big motivating factor.

Jason:

Yeah, absolutely.

John:

So I think that failure.

Jason:

So you have any study habits that are particularly helpful to you?

John:

Not really. My study habits are atrocious. I essentially get up in the morning and go at it until I can't anymore. And it works in that I end up with a lot, but it's not the most efficient or best for me.

Jason:

That's Fantastic from my perspective. Is there anything that you think you could do to improve? What would you change?

John:

I have recognized and said that I need to change and that I need to engage more with the rest of my classmates in those classes. So oh my goodness, summer semester I did a data structures and algorithms course as six weeks. It was insane. It was absolutely insane. I had no idea what I was in for and the material was exceptionally challenging. And for the really first time in my life, I felt really overwhelmed and almost incapable. I had some imposter syndrome, but it was mostly just like I couldn't get what was happening.

But at one point, I think during the roughest point, I was able to link how I was feeling and how I was so frustrated and how I just didn't understand, I was able to link that to memories of me as a tutor while I was inside helping somebody who was struggling just as much as I was. They were trying to do something that was GED level math, and they were struggling just as much as I was. Their struggle was just as legitimate to them as my struggle was in that place. It was just as overwhelming. It was just as consuming. It was just as hurtful. Just as damaging and not being able to understand something is almost trauma. It can be a crisis. But memories of people that I was working with, overcoming that, getting through that, that actually one of my coworkers inside said that we didn't work for pay. He said he worked for ahas when a student had an aha, that was the best payment he could have.

And realizing that, remembering that I can struggle, people can struggle that hard, can be that consumed and still make it through within aha. And now it's all gone. Now, I understand, That's a big aid when you're trying to navigate learning because it's a challenge.

Jason:

So thinking about the different professors that you've had, what are the qualities in your mind of a good professor?

John:

Always willing to think about the context of your student. I don't know. Prisons fail a lot at most of the things they do, and they fail a lot when trying to administer higher education and prison programs. Academic institutions also fail in higher education and prison programs because they're not prepared often to understand the context of higher education in prison. It's knowing that the needs of your student are different than one, what the prison says the needs of your students are. Two, what society socializes you into believing the needs of your students are. And then they're also often different than what the student feels their needs are in that context. So we're told going into these programs that we're going to get these degrees so that we can get a job. A good professor understands that that might be why they're sitting in that chair, but there's a lot more value in this space, and the good professor finds ways to connect what value is there to what the person needs.

Jason:

That's a great, very thoughtful response. I really appreciate that. So we're coming towards the end, and again, I've had lots of questions, but as you're going through it's like, yep, no, I think we've got that. So I want to talk a little bit about your vision of after you graduate and what after college is going to look like. So first of all, how important is it for you to get a job in the field that you're

John:

Studying? So I'm studying data science, get a job in the field of data science is getting a job in the world. I can apply that to any field. So that's how I'm conceptualizing what opportunity exists is all of them.

Jason:

So taking that, in your mind, what makes a good job or career?

John:

It's challenging. It's got to really, in the same way that I'm excited to do a math book cover to cover because there's challenge, but then there's also ways that I can resolve and apply what I've... Actual

application of knowledge is important to me and also I do want to do work that benefits higher education in prison, it is something that it's so meaningful and it is just so important and there's not enough work being done.

Jason:

Sp you've talked a little bit about having started a nonprofit. So tell me a little bit about that.

John:

So after I went to the higher education conference up in Denver, the keynote speaker, Tarell Blau, he's an amazing person, worked for Vera. He also came into our program while I was incarcerated and was at our graduation ceremony. He gave the keynote address at that conference essentially was a call to action for those who are formerly incarcerated to participate in this work because we have so much to contribute. And really, my engagement at that conference was really indicative of that as well. I really wanted and understanding the value of higher education in prison, what it was for me, I really wanted to do work. I wanted to respond to that call to action.

So when I returned to Gainesville, I was working in a fellowship at the time at Community Spring. That was amazing. I told my boss in that fellowship that I wanted to start a nonprofit that helps work to increase access to an engagement with higher education for those who are incarcerated or formally incarcerated in Florida, the opportunity is huge right now in that Pell money was just reinstated and they're working through the administrative structure of what that could potentially look like.

I knew that these programs are going to start happening more. There was only one when I was fortunate to participate in the Second Chance Pell program. There's now I think three and the Pell funding really hasn't even opened up yet. So it's a huge opportunity. It's going to happen. There are going to be other higher education in prison programs, but I also knew that they were going to come online with a lot of the same structure and mentality as the Florida Gateway College Program, and that they weren't going to be as representative of what higher education could be. And then in some ways that they could be damaging and representing what higher education could, when they could be hurtful to those who participate in them.

So I really, in recognition of the work that needs done, I started the nonprofit. That was pretty easy. You just file some papers with the State of Florida.

Jason:

What is it called?

John:

It's called the Education Access Partnership, and I got an awesome board of directors. Andy, the one I spoke about earlier was on my board directors. My boss from Community Spring was all my board of directors as well as Kevin Scott, who is the director of the Just Income GMV, which is a guaranteed income program for those who are formerly incarcerated in Alachua County. So those are on my board of directors and I started engaging with the Department of Corrections at the Tallahassee, the state level. They were amazingly supportive and it was absolutely incredible. Started collaborating with a number of instructors here at Santa Fe as well as at UF and Stetson University coordinating what an initial establishment of what higher education in prison program could be. My initial vision was a lot in line with the Stetson program that started

from UF and Santa Fe. We're going to go in there and we're going to meet the students and we're going to start talking about school and it's going to be awesome. I wanted those relationships built.

So as a Trojan horse, I built a not for credit class, like college success, and I had a lot of volunteer professors that were going to go in and do individual sessions. I found some funding through the partnership for Reimagining Gainesville. They were going to support that work and everything was ready to go. I was very naive with what application for volunteer approval to go into the facilities, what that process was. In fairness, my perspective as an incarcerated person wasn't that they were the most formal or rigorous with any of their procedures. So I approached their volunteer approval process with the various professors that I had really with an understanding there was something that they would get done when that turned out to not be the case.

That's their procedures, that's their processes. That was very frustrating for me, coordinating a number of professors, like 12 or so volunteers, and then having the Department of Corrections actually switch the facility on me, and then they still hadn't managed to approve really anybody and weren't communicating with me in a way that I was able to find productive. I would remove myself from that psychologically and when two, three weeks into the course should have started, there was still no communication, no progress. That was incredibly frustrating for me.

One thing that also happened that I think is important to talk about is one of the things I did for the course was I made a syllabus and a course description, and I had that as well as a schedule for what professor's going in what day, what material we're going to be covering, and I had that publicly available. I was sharing that in good faith with the Department of Corrections, these are the volunteers I need on these days type of understanding. I had that publicly available and somebody in the Department of Corrections deleted half the documents, specifically the schedule that I had, and it could have been an accident. It was easy to fix, but psychologically that was a big deal for me because that brought back memories of being inside and waiting in line to get to the school building and just experiencing derision and disrespect from the Department of Corrections and maybe coming back to the dormitory after a shakedown and here's all my schoolwork on the floor and they've thrown somebody's soup on top of it and really just been a challenge for my entire incarceration. Experiencing the deletion of that document that was so important to me in that time, really just reverberated that experience.

But it was something that I had made myself so vulnerable to that they could actually reach out to me after my release and affect me psychologically in that way. It was way too much.

Jason:

Yeah.

John:

I quit. I quit. I'm not doing this. So I really haven't touched it since. My board of directors is amazing. They haven't been pressuring me about it. I found somebody else who was formally incarcerated and was familiar with the work I was doing, and he said that he might want to do it. So I've been in good faith hoping he'll take that up. He hasn't really done anything and I understand that. So I don't know what's going to happen with the Education Access Partnership. My hope is that I can get onto the board of directors and we can get somebody else in the position of executive director and get them paid and they'll start working and start contributing to higher education in prison in Florida in ways that are actually meaningful. But I don't know what that's going to look like going forward.

Jason:

Yeah, again, sounds like these are traumas that are really hard to prepare for.

John:

Yeah. And I knew that the DOC was going to be challenging for me.

Jason:

Yeah.

John:

I knew it. I knew that there was going to be bureaucracy and I knew that there was going to be resistance, and I knew that those two things would tangle up with each other, but I didn't know what it was going to feel like to be not only just involved with that situation, but professionally dependent on it as well. No, I can't do that. I can't do that. I'm just going to focus on my school for a while.

Jason:

Really, this has been such a great conversation and I've learned a lot through this and you said a couple of points throughout this that you don't see yourself as a success and I would challenge that a lot. What you've been able to do and what you've been able to, just in terms of how you have been able to express and articulate your story. That is a success.

John:

Thank you.

Jason:

There are many people who have gone through these types of things, but don't know, don't have the words and the ability, and again, I just want to, this is what you're doing here, sitting with us, this is a very courageous and very vulnerable thing, and I feel that, and I thank you because I know that what you're doing here, people will hear this and it will make a difference. So thank you. Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to share about your experience or anything that you think that people need to understand or hear or know about?

John:

I'm sure. I'm sure there is.

Jason:

Again, I want to thank John for coming in to talk with us and for sharing his insights on what made his success possible. Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities. This episode was produced by Ann Thebaut and Lex Shelton. Thank you for listening.