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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- I can tell you straight up, I did not apply for it. I actually wasn't very involved in reality TV at all. I wasn't like a consistent viewer or consumer of reality TV, but they approached me for it, and I'm just kind of a naturally like an adventurous person. I wanna go out into the world. I wanna do new things.
- You joined the Marines at 17, of course you are.
- Exactly, so I was like, "Absolutely, this sounds, you know, terrifyingly exciting. So let's give it a shot." And I was going through the casting process while I was juggling going to school full time. You know, doing classes, studying, going to the library, but then also trying to find time to hop on a Zoom call to then, honestly, use the interviewing skills that they prepped me for in the business school to figure out how to sell myself.
- Hey, Bobcats. Kelly Damphousse here, president of Texas State University. Welcome back to "The Current", where we talk to faculty, staff, alumni, students, and friends of the university about what's going on at Texas State. And today, I'm super excited, I'm fanboying a little bit here by having my friend Yeremi Hykel join us here. We never met, I shook your hand at graduation, but Beth and I are watching one of our favorite reality TV shows and you and your brother are on it, "The Amazing Race". I said, "I got to have this guy on." Mostly just for me, but I think our viewers would love to hear about your story and how you got to Texas State, your experience while you're here, the experience of being in these two reality shows, and what the future looks like for you. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your Texas State story? Like I know you're from Kyle, originally, right?
- Yes.
- So start there and kind of work your way up to being a student here at Texas State.
- First of all, it's an honor to be here. It's awesome talking to you. I've seen the work that you've done over the last couple years here and I love it. I wish I could have spent more time here in the university while you were here. But my story really starts, I'm actually originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm not a native born Texan, but I moved here when I was 12 years old, and I moved to Buda, and I grew up in Buda, grew up in Buda, Kyle, and San Marcos, going to high school there, and then I joined the Marine Corps when I was 17 years old.
- Which high school did you graduate from?
- I went to Hays.
- From Hays, okay, yeah.
- Hays High School. I joined the Marine Corps when I was 17 years old, when I got enlisted.
- Did you graduate at 17 from high school?
- I did.
- Yeah, wow, me too, yeah.
- Yeah, here you go.
- Yeah, and so I started early, I skipped kindergarten.
- There you go.
- So I just aged the right way. So anyways
- Yes, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of people always ask me like, "How did you join the Marine Corps at 17?" I'm like, "It's possible."
- It can happen, right?
- Yes, it can happen. So I went off to do that. I enlisted in the Marine Corps and I became an artillery cannoneer. So I shot artillery for the Marines and was stationed in California, and Oklahoma, and Japan. And after four years of that experience, I finally decided that I wanted to exit the service and pursue higher education. My mother still lived here in New Braunfels, and the reason that I decided to come back to San Marcos was because I wanted to be near her. So naturally the, you know, first choice for me was Texas State. I grew up around the school. I grew up in this area. I've been playing at Sewell since I was like 15 or 16 years old. And I wanted to be near her to support her, because she was going through some pretty heavy like mental health conditions at the time, so I went ahead and I got out of the Marine Corps in 2020 and moved down to San Marcos and it was amazing. I enrolled into Texas State and I started off my, I guess it would've been like my freshman year.
- We actually talk a lot. We have a lot of veterans, and even current service members, and family members come to Texas State, but that transition from having been in the service to college is actually, I think, harder than high school to college because college seems like a continuum for high school, but if you've been in the military, you're trained a certain way about how to interact with your higher-echelon people, and that transition can be really hard. Did you face some of that?
- Yeah, absolutely. The transition itself, it is very difficult, because, you know, for four years, since I was a young man, you know, almost a child still, 17 years old, I was conditioned and I was molded into a war fighter, that's what Marines are. That's what we're supposed to be.
- Back to the wall, always looking at the doors.
- You know, always looking at how to fight the nation's battles the best way that you can, right? With tenacity, and ferocity, and everything like that, but then you exit, right? And everything that you though about yourself, everything that you knew, everything that you were is now gone. And I remember my last year, when I was in the Marine Corps, I was looking to exit, and the culture that is in the Marine Corps, you know, once they figure out that you're trying to leave, they don't want you to leave. So they start making it a little more difficult for you to be comfortable with leaving. And I remember I was getting ready and I was telling them, I was like, "You know, I wanna leave. I wanna pursue higher education." And I was trying to get into Texas State at the time, but when I was in high school, I didn't take an SAT. I didn't take an ACT.
- Because you weren't going to go to college.
- I wasn't gonna go to college. It wasn't an option for me, so I felt kind of stuck, and I was like, "Well, what are my options?" After talking to, it was like a Texas State recruiter or something, and they were like, "You know, you can get in by retaking your SAT," but I told them, I was like, "I don't think I can score high enough."
- That's right.
- I was like, "I haven't worked-"
- Taken math in four years.
- I know, and I wasn't good at it originally. So I was like, "I don't know what that's gonna look like." And they were like, "Well, instead, you can get all the transfer credits that you need and come in to Texas State as a transfer student." And I was like, "Okay." And that's what I did. I enrolled in a community college while I was still in active duty. And I got, I think it's 16 transfer credits, and I got them in the last eight months of my Marine Corps career, and I was able to enroll into Texas State as a transfer student.
- You know, I think there's a lesson there that, if you wanna go to Texas State, and sometimes people like they discover they're kind of late, and they may not have prepared themselves very well in 9th and 10th grade, and maybe, the 12th grade, they're kind of like getting more serious, and they've got this halo, this kind of like baggage of not having done well before, that our admissions counselors will think of every way they can to get you in. If you seriously want to get in, we'll get you in, and then our goal is to get you out with a degree.
- I think growing up, and especially being a Marine, you're not really like... The atmosphere isn't very giving to like asking for help and looking for how to accomplish something that you want. So when I was starting to learn how to do that towards the end of the Marine Corps career, I just had this ideology where I was like, you know, "If I want this, I don't care who I'm going to have to ask. I will ask everybody and anybody for help on how to do it. What's my next step? How long is it gonna take? What do I have to do? What emails do I have to send? Who do I gotta call to get it done?" And I remember talking to people here. I mean, they would lay out like four or five different routes on how you can get here, what you need, "This might be the best for you. This might work differently for you." I mean, they provided such a route for me to be able to get in here and accomplish the things that I was wanting to get into and it made my life easier as I was going through one of the biggest transitions of my life.
- Did you have a plan for what degree you wanted or did you change along the way? Because you ended up with a business degree, didn't you?
- Yes, I did. When I was getting out of the Marine Corps, I had in my head that I wanted to get a business degree and my overarching plan of my life at that time was like I wanted to get a business degree, and then I wanted to get a job in my field, and then I wanted to use that to fund collecting real estate property, and I wanted to start building my wealth from real estate. So then, eventually, I could get to a point where I could achieve my dreams by doing that. And I thought the business school in my head was one of the better schools of this region. The business school has a ton of accolades throughout the entire state of Texas and it really pulled me into wanting to do that. But I started my undergrad here.
- I think, in our business school, a lot of our faculty members actually come from the business world in banking, or finance, or sales, or whatever, so they bring real-world experience in addition to the book learning part of it.
- Yes, they absolutely do.
- I just had a meeting today with some of my senior staff, and we're talking about Career Services and so on, and I said, "One of the problems that many students and many programs do is they wait till they're graduating and they start looking for a job." And one of the strengths of our business program is that's kind of wired in, baked into the bread of the College of Business to start doing internships and interviewing, going to Career Services, and so on, before they graduate. Many of them have jobs before they leave. Yeah. I think the timeline is you're still a student when "The Amazing Race" happens. Is that right?
- That is right.
- Yeah, so talk us through that, because, you know, Jeff Probst's always trying to get people to come to "Survivor", right?
- Oh, yeah.
- And I'm like, "Man, I should do it. I'm getting too old now."
- Yeah, it's never too late.
- I always wonder about this. There's old people in "The Amazing Race".
- You can do any of the things that you ever wanna do if you're just-
- I'm not going to do "The Challenge". That too much.
- I don't know about "The Challenge", bro. I don't know about that one. That one's tough, but "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" altogether. But this is actually a really funny story, because it, in a way, stems from Texas State, because I had just finished my second semester of my freshman year at Texas State, and I decided to join a program that Texas State has called the National Student Exchange Program.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- And I looked into it, I met all the qualifications, I filled out my application, and I qualified to join it, and because I was a veteran as well, I had a different route that the counselors within that program helped me to figure out in being able to go to like my number one of three schools that I wanted to go to. And I had a good friend of mine, who was a buddy of mine from the Marine Corps, who was in a struggling situation out in Hawaii. So I decided to join this program and exchange with the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. So I went over there and I did an entire semester there, being there for my friend as well as going through the experience of attending a brand new school. And while I was there, I actually connected with a guy from Austin, who was on a different reality TV show called "Big Brother". And that show was the first to scout me to go for their show.
- Really?
- Yes, and it was "Big Brother", and I went through the casting process, and, like many things in life, it didn't work out, and I didn't end up getting cast for that show, but, a year later, I think it was in 2023 is when I went on "The Amazing Race", they came back for "The Amazing Race" when I was still in school.
- So they just call you and say, "Hey, we talked to you about this show, but we really think that this would be good for you." And you hadn't already applied for it?
- No, I hadn't already applied for it.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Well, now I'm disappointed.
- Yeah, I can tell you straight up. I did not apply for it. I actually wasn't very involved in reality TV at all. I wasn't like a consistent viewer or consumer of reality TV, but they approached me for it. And I'm just kind of a naturally like an adventurous person. I wanna go out into the world. I wanna do new things.
- You joined the Marines at 17, of course you are.
- Exactly, so I was like, "Absolutely, this sounds, you know, terrifyingly exciting, so let's give it a shot." And I was going through the casting process while I was juggling going to school full time. You know, doing classes, studying, going to the library, but then also trying to find time to hop on a Zoom call to then, honestly, use the interviewing skills that they prepped me for in the business school to figure out how to sell myself. "How do I sell myself in a way that this network will want to bring me on and cast me as a participant and a competitor in this show?" And it ended up working out.
- And the show is typically like best friends or, in your case, brothers, and family members, and so on. Did you like right from the beginning say, "I want to do this with my brother," or how did he get involved?
- Yeah, well, actually from the beginning, I had to sift through people.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, could be a girlfriend.
- Yeah, I had to meet a bunch of different people, but my casting producer was basically like, you know, "Who do you have like a really good dynamic with?" And I was like, "Definitely my brother, my younger brother." But, at the time, we had a very rocky relationship, we weren't really talking. So I decided to go out on a limb and reach out to him. You know, we hadn't talked in a while, but I was like, "Hey dude, I know this is crazy because where we're at right now, but would you be open and willing to maybe cast on the show with me? And you know, if we get it, on the off chance we get it, it would be an incredible adventure for us."
- And what a way to bring you guys closer together.
- Yes, and that's exactly what it did.
- That's amazing. So where are you when you get the call that you're in?
- I was in my living room. It was about a week after the final interview stage for the show, and they called, and they had me and Liam, my brother, on a Zoom call, and they told us, they were like, "Hey, you know, you guys got main cast and you're gonna to be on the next season of 'The Amazing Race'."
- So I'm curious, I'm just such a fan, so I got to figure this out. So how long does it take from the first time they talk to you to that moment?
- How long?
- It's about five months.
- Okay, and then from the moment that they tell you you're on till you're actually standing on a carpet about to go take off around the world. How long is that?
- About two months.
- Okay, two months. I always though it was like a lot quicker like-
- Yeah.
- on Thursday, you got to be in Utah.
- Yeah, you would think so. But no, that is, to date, is the longest casting process that I've had to go through. It was very, very stringent. There was a lot of levels of interviewing that you had to go through to end up getting to the final stage of it.
- So I think one of the great arcs was that you and your brother kind of come in together. What is your favorite experience of you and him kind of doing something like you couldn't have imagined doing like a year earlier with him?
- As we were going through that show, we kind of had a conversation because we had gone through a lot in our life together and had caused a lot of speed bumps in our relationship because we hadn't talked about it. And I told him this. I was like, "Hey, dude." I was like, "We absolutely need to talk through everything that's happened between us, because we can't talk about it for the first time in front of millions of people. You know, you just can't do it. The emotions will choke you up, because it's the first time ever that you're seeing your brother talk about something that happened that was very painful and vice versa." So we ended up having to have that conversation, and it almost felt like the simplest thing in the world to just have that conversation, something that felt looming for years like it was a mountain, it was gonna take so much to do it, but it wasn't that hard. You just had the conversation. I got his perspective. He got my perspective. We apologized and took accountability for both of our parts and we moved forward with a better relationship that we've had in the last like three years.
- You know, I think there's something to be said there about you imagine the worst-case scenario about what might happen if you say this or do this one thing, and then, when you do it, you kind of go, "Oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. In fact, I should have done this long time ago." So yeah, a great lesson there. So you go through "Amazing Race". You don't win. I was pulling for you, man. I appreciate it.
- And I hate all those other people, but so then you leave there and some people say, "I'm gonna keep doing this kind of thing." And you got like a obvious charisma, and you're comfortable in front of camera, so you say, "I'm gonna go for something else." So did you try other things before "The Challenge", or was there a series of things, or was "The Challenge" the next thing?
- "The Challenge" was the next thing. And basically, how it happened is I did "The Amazing Race", and then I had one year left of college to graduate, and I took the entire year to just absorb school. Just to absorb, not just school, but I have a mentor, he used to be a dean of students at a college in Ohio, and one thing that he told me is he was like, "Look, you've got academics down." He said, "Now, in these last couple semesters," he said, "just soak it up." He said, "Take the long walk. You know, walk through all-"
- "Don't rush this. Enjoy it."
- "Don't rush any of it." He said, "Absorb everything."
- Go to Sewell Park.
- "Go to Sewell. Look at everything. Do your work outside. Don't do it in your room. Take everything in because-"
- Because you'll never get a chance to do this again. Someday, you're going to be 35 years old, you're going to have a wife and kids, and you're gonna have a job, and you won't be able to do anything, right?
- Absolutely. Absolutely, and that's what I was doing. And as graduation was approaching, I was making the decision that I think that I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to immediately jump into the corporate world. I think I'm gonna take my time and I think I'm gonna explore a kind of a different, non-traditional avenue that I've been kind of trying to look at doing." And I decided to do that once I graduate. I spent the next six months traveling the world. And I was traveling the world going to see all these places that I've always wanted to see and just investing in myself and my life to that point that I wanted to do. And the challenge since "The Amazing Race" had become like my dream show to be on. After I saw it, I was like, "This is one of the most amazing competitions to ever..."
- It's so physical, right? And you're out climbing mountains and kind of outdoor stuff and so.
- And you can do anything. I mean, they put you through anything and everything that you can think of while you're there. And I already do a lot of these types of physical challenges and high-endurance events in my life. And then, about six months after I graduated, I was just in this period where I now lost my identity again as an academic student, and I had this entire life for four years where I'm doing class, and I have somewhere to be, and I have structure, and now it's all gone, and now I'm in the world, and sometimes I don't know what to do, and I don't know where to go, and life's your oyster, but it's so big it can be overwhelming. And then MTV calls me for "The Challenge" and they ask if I was interested.
- So they reach out to you again. Man, you're the luckiest guy in the world.
- I know, and I think about it all the time. I'm like, "How and why did this come to fruition?" Like, "How did you see me? How did you choose me? Why did you choose me?" But I think it's just because, as uncomfortable of a life as I've chosen to live, I've chosen to lean into the discomfort of doing it because I'm chasing the things that I've always wanted to do. Yeah, and you're willing to say yes to things, right?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, a lot of people live their whole life just saying, "No, I'm afraid to take a chance." And you're clearly not that person. So in "The Challenge", you're actually pretty challenged throughout the whole process. Like you're not doing well at the very end, right? Like you're in the last place, and you're not going to get anything for that, and then you like crush it and end up winning the thing.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so how did that feel?
- It felt difficult and discouraging at the time, you know, when we were having to summit a mountain peak in the Andes in the final of "The Challenge" and we had just gotten knocked down to fourth, we were going to win nothing, only the first, second, and third win prizes, and I tell my partner Olivia at the time, I was like, "Hey, it's do or die."
- Do or die, gotta to do it.
- "It's do or die, let's go." Like, "This is what we're going to have to do." And she was like, "Okay." And I told her, I was like, "I'm not going to kill you, but it's gonna hurt and I'm going to push you." And we just sucked it up, we gritted our teeth, and we just hiked all the way to the top. And every team that I saw, everybody was moving so slow because the conditions out there were treacherous, but, as I was going, we would pass one, and I would just be amazed and be like, "Oh my God, well, let's see if we can pass another." And then we pass another, and then we're fighting for second place, and then we pass second place, and I am just flabbergasted. I can't believe that we are now approaching the summit of this mountain in first place after everything that just happened, and it really solidified the idea in my head that, when it comes down to it, like how much can you endure truly? And when it hits the fan and things get really, really hard, can you pull that part out of you?
- You know, I think people tell me this a lot about Texas State graduates. And these are business people who are hiring people and they can hire all kinds of people. And when they hire our students, a lot of them talk about the grit that our students have, that somewhere along the line, they've taken on this like, there's a humility, I think, and maybe an uncertainty, a belief that maybe they don't belong at first. But once they get in, like they're gonna be your best employees, because their makeup is just different from other people. And so that kind of plays out in your life as well. So what's next?
- To be brutally honest with you, I'm still trying to figure that out. Right now, walking around like certain NDAs, there is something next. And I'm very excited for what it's gonna be, but I'm also scared. I'm always scared. Everything that I go, and I pursue, and I do-
- That's natural.
- Yes.
- Yeah, I've been scared my whole life.
- Yeah, and it feels like that.
- You know, the fear, though, keeps driving you, though. You get too comfortable, it's easy to get like, "I'm just going to watch TV for the rest of my life." And the fear, if you have fear, especially, in my case, I was fearful about being able to provide for my wife, and my kids, and so on. So wherever the motivation comes from, you don't want a paralyzing fear, but you wanna live a little bit on the edge and you want to know that, "Boy, I'm not sure I can do this thing." If you only do the things you're sure you can do, that doesn't sound very exciting.
- Do you ever grow?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Of course.
- Great question.
- And that's my idea too is I'm like everything that I go and what's next, all of it scares me, all of these physical things, I have 100-mile ultra marathon that's coming up in June and I am terrified of it. I know it's going to be one of the hardest things in my entire life, and for the next things that are coming from my career up, I'm scared for them as well, but, in my head, I'm just like, "Man, if I can just show anybody in the world that you can be scared and you can think of yourself as one way, but if you can push past that fear, you can discover a whole new person that you are and things that you're capable of doing if you're able to just overcome."
- Wow, what an uplifting podcast episode. Thank you for coming here, Yeremi, and sharing your story.
- Of course.
- I'm glad we finally got to meet. We shook hands before, but we didn't really meet. It's pretty a fleeting moment here, but I'm super proud of you,
- Thank you.
- and I can't wait to watch what's next for you. All right, Yeremi, now, we have something we do here in the podcast. We let you be the podcast host and you get to ask me a question. I haven't seen the questions, so I don't know what's on there, but fire away.
- All right. What fictional universe would you most like to spend a day in?
- I don't even know what fictional universe is. What does that mean?
- I don't know. I'm just thinking of like, I don't know, maybe a movie, like the setting of a different imaginary land that you might wanna just...
- You know, I grew up being a huge fan of "Raiders of Lost Ark". And you know, it's set in World War II era. And you know, you're fighting the real bad guys, because the Nazis are a big part of that, and I kind of grew up, I was born in the '60s, and so I grew up kind of idolizing people that, my uncles all fought in World War II, and so I always loved that era. Winston Churchill, his leadership for England during the Battle for Britain and so on. And so I guess that era, things just seem simpler, and black and white, you know, right and wrong, evil and good, and so on. I kind of wish I lived there sometimes. I really love that era. What about you?
- I like it.
- I don't know if it's an alternate universe, but it's a different era.
- No, that's a great answer. I like that, yeah. For me, the fictional universe, so I've been reading a new book series that some of the viewers might know about or maybe they don't, but it's called "Red Rising".
- Okay, no, I don't know it.
- And you follow the story of this young man who's discovering many things about his society that he didn't know, and he's a miner on Mars. And I think that I would like, it's not a good universe, let me just say that. It's not a good universe to live in, especially for him. But I think with like the technological advancement that they have in all the different the types of characters that they have and the flying vehicles, the city landscapes, like the clothing design that they wear and it's a book, right, so all of this is just in my imagination, because I have no idea what it looks like.
- Good writing will do that for you.
- It absolutely.
- That's what I love. I tell people all the time, if you read non-fiction, it teaches you to empathize, because you got to put yourself in the, that's the power of being able to read and to enjoy reading. You build a skill that then, when you're interacting with people, you can empathize with them better, I think.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, because you have to draw the picture with your brain. Now, the good writer will bring that out, but you actually have to do the work.
- And it's amazing because, when you meet other people who do the exact same thing, you get to discuss with them like, "What is your perspective of imagination look like for this? 'Cause mine looks like this."
- It's not always the same.
- It's not always the same, it's not always the same, and it's just so much fun to discuss through, and I love it. But I would choose "Red Rising", that universe.
- All right, I got to check that out now. Thanks.
- You got to.
- Well, thanks so much for joining us, and thank you for joining us as well here on "The Current". It's always great to hear from our alumni, even if they're recent alumni, hear about what they're going about, how Texas State prepared them for life after Texas State. So thank you, Yeremi, for joining us. Thank you for joining us as well. States up, everyone.