Office Hours

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi everybody. My name is Giselle Kowalski and I'm the digital content producer here at Texas State University. You're listening to Office Hours, and today, I'm here with AnaBelle. AnaBelle, what's up?

AnaBelle:
Hey.

Giselle Kowalski:
How's it going?

AnaBelle:
Pretty good. I'm feeling really excited after that interview.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah. So you got to speak with Dr. Louie Valencia here at Texas State. How was that conversation?

AnaBelle:
The way I feel after interviewing someone says a lot about the tone of the interview, and I'm feeling so excited. I'm feeling excited about the future. I'm feeling excited about everything that he shared. He's a very cool person and I can't wait for people to hear this interview. I think they're going to be feeling excited too.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah. He became popular over the last couple of years with his class on Harry Styles and youth culture, and his popularity definitely is living up to the hype. He's a very interesting guy and has a lot of advice and a lot of life experience. So yeah, we hope you enjoy this conversation between AnaBelle and Dr. Louie Valencia.

AnaBelle:
Could you start by telling us what you teach here and how long you've been at Texas State?

Louie Dean Valencia:
So I started in 2018 at Texas State, and I'm a historian of digital history. So the best way I like to describe it is, I use digital tools to study history. I study the digital era, and I also study how we can think about the ways that history can be thought about and the use of its technology. So how does technology affect our lives?

AnaBelle:
First of all, if you could just let us know a little bit about your personal background. So where are you from and then what was life like there?

Louie Dean Valencia:
The far off land of San Antonio? I always hate that question actually, because I think that a lot of people define themselves or are forced to define themselves by where they're from. I have lived in New York longer than I've lived there, in Texas even. I've spent a lot of time in Spain and a lot of time all over Europe. So I always think that that type of question almost is... This is my fear. Is people ask it to be able to put you in a box.

AnaBelle:
So if we were to rework that question a little bit, what are some concepts or some places, something a little more abstract that you put your identity in?

Louie Dean Valencia:
OK, I like that. I like to think of myself as the type of person who is from a lot of places, because a lot of places have affected me. So as much Texas, as Spain, as when I was a grad student living in New York. When I was 16 I backpacked through Europe, living in hostels for a summer for three months with basically $2,000. And that was probably more formative in my mind than any other period of my life, and I was basically living in random hostel with six people from all over the world. I like to think of myself as less anchored in one particular place and rather think of myself as the places I want to be or the places that I've been.

AnaBelle:
We'll go to the next question. So what was your first job?

Louie Dean Valencia:
This is kind of weird. I guess this counts as my first job. So in middle school I started making websites for boy bands that I was a fan of, but also local bands started asking me to make websites for them. I started just getting paid to make websites for bands. Eventually, I sold my webpage and they just kept paying me monthly to keep doing the thing that I was doing online anyway. That was my first job and that was like—

AnaBelle:
What year was this around?

Louie Dean Valencia:
This was 2004, '05.

AnaBelle:
So I know there were less presets of websites. Were you totally just coding all of this?

Louie Dean Valencia:
I was coding most of it myself, yeah. There was an email service. It was a little ridiculous. So I was just making websites, selling them to bands. A company out of San Francisco bought my website. Then I worked as a student worker in the Honors College doing basically publicity and social media for the Honors College when I was a student. And after that I worked for Gwyneth Paltrow, working on her website, Goop.

AnaBelle:
No way.

Louie Dean Valencia:
So I helped launch Goop, which is weird lore.

AnaBelle:
That's so cool.

Louie Dean Valencia:
So a lot of what I've done... My first jobs, I like to describe, are just like... They're very weird, but it's all making websites for famous people for the most part, or people who wanted to be famous.

AnaBelle:
Is there a common thread from that all the way up to what you're doing now, also mentioning the Harry Styles class that—

Louie Dean Valencia:
Absolutely.

AnaBelle:
... you're very well known for?

Louie Dean Valencia:
Yes, absolutely. So I would say what I'm interested in is youth culture and the ways that young people connect online. I research how young people use technology to connect with each other to either make social change or to just express themselves. Social change doesn't have to be at this level of, "We're going to organize a strike," or anything like that. It can be, "How do you express yourself online in a way that makes other people think?"

AnaBelle:
Would that be a good way to set the stage for the Harry Styles class? I'm so curious about that.

Louie Dean Valencia:
Yes. So the Harry Styles class... So I study youth culture and the ways young people make change. Sometimes it's terrible change that they make. So I do research on fascism. So most of fascist culture was youth culture, which sounds dark. But at the same time you can say, "Well, it's because there was somebody who rose who got a big fan base," for lack of a better word, "and was able to use that fan base for nefarious things." Simultaneously, I guess the Harry Styles class came out of, "Well, what happens if somebody has a large fan base, a platform and they try to use it for social good?" For me, that was Harry Styles. Was thinking, "OK, this is a person who, at all his concerts has voter registration, has some sort of environmental organization or actions that he asks for his fans. Is very involved in creating a more inclusive world." A lot of, I think what was interesting to me and is interesting to me is, how do people make social change using whatever platform they have? And I think that can be both for nefarious things or Harry Styles, whose motto is treat people with kindness.

AnaBelle:
Are you still teaching that class?

Louie Dean Valencia:
Not this year, but I will be teaching it again next year.

AnaBelle:
Did you always know you were going to go to college?

Louie Dean Valencia:
That was always a given. When I was a kid, my mom was working on her graduate work and she would literally just take me to the library almost every day. I was, slash, am still a super nerd, and so I never even thought anything different about it. But once I got to college, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I eventually was a European studies major. It was an interdisciplinary degree, still offered at Texas State, and it just gave me the opportunity to take classes in history, art history, literature, language, politics, geography, all of the above. And so for me it was just trying to figure out, well, what was my actual goal? There's this reporter on NPR, she just retired last year, Sylvia Poggioli. And she always was reporting from Italy. And she would have these stories about this great art exhibit or the local politics in Italy or some history take on the history of fascism or food. So she would just have all these great stories and I was like, "I want to be Sylvia Poggioli." And I was like, "I don't know what that really means," but I wanted that.

AnaBelle:
You knew what the end goal looks like.

Louie Dean Valencia:
Right. I knew what the end goal looks like. And so for me it was a question of, "How do I get what I need to be able to do that?"

AnaBelle:
Right. So sort of working backwards?

Louie Dean Valencia:
Kind of working backwards. And that's the thing that I always try to tell students now is, maybe not just have one goal, but think about what are different options that you would have? Your plan A, B, C, D. But don't have them be bad options. Make them all be like, "I would freaking love to do any one of these things." And then whichever paths start to open up for you, that gives you a choice out of that. So plan A is just as good as plan D.

AnaBelle:
Can you share a pivotal moment in your life that shaped your decision to study social change in activism?

Louie Dean Valencia:
This is going to sound a little weird, maybe a little dated, I don't know, but Occupy Wall Street. I was just out of school and was starting my master's program when Occupy Wall Street started. That was a very big moment where I saw young people not knowing what they were doing, why they were doing it, what they wanted, but they were out there. And for the most part, what they were just doing was vibing in a park and just talking. I'm really interested in the ways that young people try to do creative things. And that translates to TikTok today, that translates to ways that you maybe make an animated short film, or whatever it is. Maybe it's just creating a conversation or a place for conversation.
For me, Occupy Wall Street was this weird moment where a lot of people were just all over the country and all over the world, even, trying to think through what are the problems of the world today? That was where a lot of my questions came from. It was like, "OK, well when did this happen in the past?" Well, it happened in the ’60s. It happened in the ’80s during the HIV/AIDS crisis. It happened in a lot of moments where people were trying to think of creative ways to address these very big problems that nobody really knew how to fix. But you can do one little thing. And I think that part of it was really interesting to me.

AnaBelle:
So you're such a young professor. How did you get into the position you're in at such an early age?

Louie Dean Valencia:
I would say it's a couple of things. One, there's always dumb luck. Also, sometimes it's naivety in that you don't know what your limits are if nobody tells you. Being a professor kind of happened by accident. So when I was in my last semester of grad school, I applied for a job at Harvard not knowing really what that meant, and got it. So I was there for a year, and this position at Texas State opened up while I was there about three months into it and I was like, "That's freaking awesome." It was a professor in digital history. I'm a little bit obsessive compulsive, I think. Sometimes whenever it's like, "I want something," but not really knowing that it's hard. And it is legitimately difficult in the world to find a job as a professor at a university and get a tenure track position. The numbers say that it's hard. Nobody told me that and neither did I know, so I just did it.
And I think part of it was, just not knowing what everybody else tells you that you should be worried about. I think a lot of what I do is, and what I tell people is, "Be a little naive and dream big and don't ask for permission to do the thing." Trying to give people a place to be able to do that I think is where you're going to be more likely to succeed because you don't know what your limits are.

AnaBelle:
It seems like so many people wait and they feel like they have to get permission before they can. Why were you an exception to that?

Louie Dean Valencia:
I spend a lot of time at coffee shops. And this is going to sound a little out of left field. But I spent a lot of time at coffee shops, and you just talk to random people. So virtually every morning during the week, you'll find me at Joe's Cafe at 7 a.m. with a bunch of retirees. There's this one guy, he was a biologist at one point, owned a bar on Sixth Street in Austin, also does real estate, and at some point was a high school teacher. And you just talk to these people who have had long lives and you're like, "You did what?" If you start to meet people outside of your maybe immediate world, you start to see what the possibilities are out there and just like, it's OK to just do something ridiculous for a while, or it's OK just to not do anything for a little while too, to just take in ideas. I think that oftentimes we forget that it's OK to just have more input coming into your life than output, especially today. A lot of times people see their career as a trajectory. "This is the goal," rather than just sort of like, what are things that you want to do? How are ways to express that and how do you move forward within that and how do you make it possible?

AnaBelle:
My last question for you is what advice do you have for your 20-year-olds who are finding their footing in their careers?

Louie Dean Valencia:
Start now. If you're going into your junior year-ish, look for internships, look for jobs, talk to people. Even if you're not going to work at a place, say, "Hey, I saw your company, your nonprofit, your museum," whatever it is, "your research lab, and I thought it was really interesting. Would love to tour and get a better sense of what you guys do here so I can figure out what I want to do." And whenever you're a student, those doors are so much more open for you because everybody wants to help a student. Not everybody wants to help somebody who's unemployed, for whatever reason. But make those connections earlier on. Reach out to people and say, "This is what I'm interested in. I saw that you're doing this type of work. I'd love to learn more about it." And it doesn't even have to be a full-on internship. It could be. It doesn't have to be a full-on job, but just take that time to do it.
I always recommend students to think about is taking internship courses. So there's a lot of those that are offered at Texas State where you can take a class that's an internship and really just learn what a field is like, and you get course credit for it. So that's a really good opportunity. There's also the Career Services has a lot of good job shadowing opportunities, which are usually just one- or two-day things to get to experience what a job is, or a particular job in the field. Think of it as like a buffet. You're just going to try a little bit of everything, and then hopefully, by the end of it, one, you've got new connects with all these people fairly organically, but also it gives you the chance to just get out there, just start doing something.
And I think that a lot times people think that... It goes back to, I guess what I was saying earlier, they get imposter syndrome. You have every right to be in any place as anybody else. And also, you can always just leave. Literally, if something is not a job that you're like, "Oh, I thought it would be this. Maybe that's not what I want." It's better to learn that when you're 20 than when you're 40. Now is a better time to just try things out. Worst-case scenario, if you're polite and kind, you'll have a new contact, and that's not a bad thing.

AnaBelle:
Yeah. Well, that's all some really solid advice, and I think everyone listening, including myself, is going to go journal after this, make a little list, do some thinking about the future it. Well, Louie, thank you so much for being with us today—

Louie Dean Valencia:
Yeah, thank you.

AnaBelle:
... on Office Hours. Yeah.

Louie Dean Valencia:
I appreciate it.

AnaBelle:
This has been a great episode.

Louie Dean Valencia:
Yes, I'm glad to be here. Thank you.

AnaBelle:
Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Office Hours. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. And make sure to tune in next time to learn more about the experiences of our amazing Texas State faculty. Also, remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the host and the guest, not of Texas State University. Once again, I'm AnaBelle and I'll see you next time.