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A podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University about play and pop culture. Professors Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talk with educators, parents and kids about how they play in their work and their lives, and why play and pop culture matter.
The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.
Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play and pop culture and how it shapes our lives. I'm Nathan Holbert, and with me as always is Haeny, in da club, Yoon.
Haeny Yoon:
Awesome. Today we're popping off about, you heard it first, clubbing. But specifically extracurricular classes, after school activities, sports, the whole deal and not the clubbing deal.
Nathan Holbert:
So, clubs?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Meet me at the club.
Nathan Holbert:
I mean, shaking your booty may very well be part of it, but we're talking about school sanctioned educational, institution sanctioned booty shaking, which-
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, PG. PG podcast.
Nathan Holbert:
Sometimes the school sanctioned booty shaking is a little PG-13 and you're like, "Oh, am I old enough for this?"
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God.
Nathan Holbert:
But listen, we're going to be talking about clubs and extracurricular activities today. Maybe even elective classes, various kinds of places where, as part of school, as part of your educational training, you got a chance to really branch out from the basics.
Haeny Yoon:
And you make your own space.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right. I'll say part of what inspired this particular topic was, close listeners to the podcast will know. I have a couple kids both that have been guests on the show in various times.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yes.
Nathan Holbert:
A middle schooler and a high schooler, and they both are dabbling and have been dabbling in the after school club space. And I've been really fascinated with how incredibly different they approach this experience. Whereas Maisie just started middle school, my daughter, and every club that's available she's signing up for.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God, she's a joiner.
Nathan Holbert:
She's a joiner. She does everything. She comes home, she's like, "Yeah. I auditioned for the show and also I'm in piano class over here. I'm in a cooking class over there."
Haeny Yoon:
That's awesome. Oh my God, that's so great.
Nathan Holbert:
She's killing it. She's doing everything all the time.
Haeny Yoon:
That's awesome.
Nathan Holbert:
Whereas my older son, Emerson, who's a freshman in high school, I'm like, "Hey, you want to join some clubs? Just some pretty cool ones." And he's like, "Nah." I'm like, "Why not?" He's like, "I don't want to stay at school any longer."
Haeny Yoon:
You know what? I respect that.
Nathan Holbert:
I know.
Haeny Yoon:
I was like that too, and I respect the not joining.
Nathan Holbert:
He does what he wants to do. Then just the other day he told me he went to a debate club after school and I was like, "Oh, that's really great. How was it?" He's like, "Yeah, it's fine, but it's probably good for college, so that's why I did it."
Haeny Yoon:
Wow.
Nathan Holbert:
I'm like, "All right. Man, whatever."
Haeny Yoon:
But that's exactly how I thought for most of high school. There were some things that were fun, but I was like, "Is this good for college? Am I going to be able to put in my application?"
Nathan Holbert:
It was a resume line or something to say in your statement.
Haeny Yoon:
Totally.
Nathan Holbert:
They have very different approaches and I thought it'd be fun for us to maybe take a minute to think about our experiences with this. It sounds like already yours is mostly thinking about college.
Haeny Yoon:
It was. When you first talked about this topic of clubs, my first reaction was, does Princeton Review count as a club? Because, that is really the one thing that I remember doing as an extracurricular activity. I don't remember these fun things. I don't remember Maisie like cooking or sewing or whatever, I just remember going to Princeton Review and having a torturous time.
Nathan Holbert:
That was your primary, that can't be the only extracurricular after school club or even elective class that you did, right? There's got to be other things.
Haeny Yoon:
I do remember, so we had a community center that's close to my house.
Nathan Holbert:
Got it.
Haeny Yoon:
We would get a flyer every quarter or something when they have new classes. And my parents, they're immigrants. English is their second language. They don't really know the ins and outs of stuff like that. Because I do remember in school, all my friends were in these things that they did after school or in these activities or whatever, I was not that. I came home and I watched Bad News Bears and Nickelodeon.
Nathan Holbert:
As we have thoroughly covered on this.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. But I did remember, because my parents were so busy working, that they weren't necessarily trying to sign me up things. I signed myself up for something, and then I asked my parents to give me money.
Nathan Holbert:
Nice.
Haeny Yoon:
And I signed myself up for tap dancing. Because, at some point I was very into the dream of being a tap dancer. I was like, "I'm going to sign up for tap dancing and then my dream is going to be real."
Nathan Holbert:
I'm finally going to be... Well, we've talked about this before. You used to tape bottle caps to your shoes.
Haeny Yoon:
Bottle caps on my shoes. Yes. And we would go in the basement, because our basement was not concrete but hard.
Nathan Holbert:
Hard floor. Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
And we would just tap dance and it was so fun and we roller skate down there.
Nathan Holbert:
You signed up for tap dancing?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I signed up for tap dancing.
Nathan Holbert:
And that's when your international tap dancing crew started?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Watch it. I'm going to retire from here soon and then I'm going to be a tap dancer. I'm going to take the show on the road.
Nathan Holbert:
Perfect.
Haeny Yoon:
But the second thing I actually do remember is I was in marching band for one year. I know that's unbelievable to some people.
Nathan Holbert:
That is really revolutionary revelatory news for me.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, I played the clarinet. And so-
Nathan Holbert:
Had you been playing the clarinet before you started marching band of you just-
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, I played the clarinet in middle school. I actually wanted to play the flute because I was like, that's what girls do. It was because I was so basic, but then I really couldn't play the flute because it takes a lot of oxygen.
Nathan Holbert:
It's tough. That's a tough one.
Haeny Yoon:
So, I played the clarinet.
Nathan Holbert:
Can you still play the clarinet?
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, if you gave it to me, maybe I could play hot cross buns.
Nathan Holbert:
Well, as a big surprise, we have here a clarinet.
Haeny Yoon:
A clarinet. I was in it for one year in high school, and I remember we had to do local parades and things like that. So, they line you up based on your chairs, and so, I always sat next to this kid named... I was going to say his name, but let's not say his name.
Nathan Holbert:
Let's not say his name.
Haeny Yoon:
P. I sat next to... No, I don't want to say his name.
Nathan Holbert:
It's like, oh Pete. Pete. Let's say Pete.
Haeny Yoon:
I sat next to Paul. That's a very common name.
Nathan Holbert:
Paul.
Haeny Yoon:
His first name is Paul.
Nathan Holbert:
All right. Paul. Shout out to Paul.
Haeny Yoon:
I always sat next to Paul. Yes. And then during marching band, we had to line up and I swear Paul was in my mind, 6'0 tall, and I had to stand next to him, we looked ridiculous. Because it doesn't work well either because the design of that is not good. Because you have a 6'0 foot tall person and then this really short person and we're next to each other, trying to do some kind of dance move that neither of us can do.
Nathan Holbert:
Since this is an audio medium, we should let the listeners know that you're actually 7'1/2 foot tall, so that's why it was funny is Paul looked so short next to you.
Haeny Yoon:
Exactly. I know everybody listens to me and is like, that girl must be a giant. Just kidding.
Nathan Holbert:
So you and Paul would march through the streets?
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. Next to each other. It was not. I mean, it made [inaudible 00:06:54].
Nathan Holbert:
Through the streets at Naperville.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. What about you? What cool sports were you in?
Nathan Holbert:
Well, I mean, marching band always seemed very cool to me, but I cannot play any instruments. I've tried and I'm sure with enough practice I could tried get there.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, you tried? with enough practice, you could do anything.
Nathan Holbert:
Just never had the commitment to it. But no, when I was young, I did sports. Because I grew up in Missouri, in rural Missouri, and you had to do sports, otherwise you were definitely going to get beat up. I did a lot of sports, I played basketball, I ran track. I did try football once.
Haeny Yoon:
You did? What did you play?
Nathan Holbert:
That was, I think, it was in sixth grade and I was a corner, which is a defensive player. And I distinctly remember our team was terrible. I think we scored once the entire season. And I distinctly remember though, we had a game and it was 35 degrees outside and rainy. And so, it was just really cold and unpleasant.
Haeny Yoon:
And obviously you weren't on the bench, so you were actually warm the whole time.
Nathan Holbert:
No.
Haeny Yoon:
Because you played the whole game.
Nathan Holbert:
There wasn't enough people. So, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, you had to play?
Nathan Holbert:
Anytime the defense was out, I was out and-
Haeny Yoon:
Wait, you were a starter?
Nathan Holbert:
Only because we were all starters. But I was so miserable that I was like, "This will be the last time I do this." That was the end of my very illustrious football career. But, no, I did sports and then I realized sometime around my freshman year when it became really serious, I was like, "Oh, I'm not good at this." I liked it, but I just wasn't good enough to play, so I stopped doing most sports. But I did lots of other things. I did some of the other things that you described. I did remember in, I must've been a junior, I decided to try out for the play, and that was the first time I had thought about theater at all.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that was when you got the bug?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. I got the bug junior year of high school, and really then got into that and did that for quite a while. After that I had the opportunity to be on the Wichita Summer Shakespeare cast.
Haeny Yoon:
Wow.
Nathan Holbert:
And so, I got to do a city-wide play.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's really cool.
Nathan Holbert:
And it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was exciting. That was probably the one experience that really felt like it meant something.
Haeny Yoon:
What do you think makes some of those stick? What's the difference between dabbling with something and then how something becomes more interesting to you and then you want to do it?
Nathan Holbert:
I don't know the answer for sure, but for me, if we think about the theater thing, I was always, this is going to come as a shock to you as somebody who liked to perform for others when I was a kid.
Haeny Yoon:
Main character energy.
Nathan Holbert:
I was trying to be the smart ass in class. And I think when I did theater it was like, "Oh, this is the thing that I like to do."
Haeny Yoon:
Like an outlet.
Nathan Holbert:
And suddenly you realize there was this structure for it that you could really participate in. I don't know if that's part of it. These activities maybe connect with you in a way that you weren't aware that you were already doing this thing, but that there was another way to actually really go deep with it. But for me, that's what it was. And marching band didn't do that for you, I guess?
Haeny Yoon:
No, because I think about that same thing with your theater company or your theater route, and I realized that a lot of the things that I have on my list, like tap dancing, debate club, marching band, it was all very short-lived and none of them really had traction for me.
Nathan Holbert:
Well, is there anything in that list of activities, which you had a lot, you had a pretty big list there. Funny how you started this with saying, "I don't have any extracurriculars," and you had 15.
Haeny Yoon:
And then I think about it, think about Paul and our height difference.
Nathan Holbert:
Is there anything that, any aspect to these experiences, anything that you learned participating in these groups that maybe is a little unexpected? You think of when I join a sport, I'm going to learn about teamwork, I'm going to learn about structure, but there's all these other things you learned too, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Holbert:
Is there anything that maybe was an unexpected learning moment?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like I have an unexpected thing as I look back on it. As I reflect back as an adult and look back and as a kid, and I think, there's a part of me that is always afraid to commit wholeheartedly to something. Because I feel like if I start to say I am going to do something, then I have to go all the way. Which is why sometimes I feel like, I have a problem doing pop-offs, because I'm like, "Oh, I haven't thought about it for 10 years. Or I committed to this topic wholeheartedly, so I have to be completely in it." And I think about that with the clubs that I was in.
The reason why I didn't really want to try a lot of things, is because it seemed like I had to really commit wholeheartedly instead of just try things out. I didn't see extracurriculars as extra-curriculars, I saw them as a commitment for the rest of my life. I have to be a tap dancer now for the next 10 years, or I have to be in debate club for all of eternity. Or I have to march in the bandwidth next to Paul until I'm like 50. I feel like that-
Nathan Holbert:
Paul's still marching through the streets of Naperville.
Haeny Yoon:
Paul, are you still marching? But I like that aspect of extracurriculars as space to try something, and to be like, "I like the mazy mentality. You know what? I'm just going to join all these things. If I don't like it, I don't have to like it." And I think that's a hard thing for me to have to disentangle my mind from, because I'm like, if I say this could be interesting, it has to be interesting.
Nathan Holbert:
That's funny to hear because-
Haeny Yoon:
I'm different now.
Nathan Holbert:
I was going to say, knowing you, you don't seem like the type that feels like you have to...
Haeny Yoon:
No.
Nathan Holbert:
I mean, you are a very capable and very prepared person. I know that. But also you're very comfortable just rolling with the flow and all that stuff.
Haeny Yoon:
It's weird how life changes you.
Nathan Holbert:
You've grown. Well done.
Haeny Yoon:
Maybe extracurriculars did that for me.
Nathan Holbert:
Maybe it was Paul.
Haeny Yoon:
Maybe that's the unexpected lesson that I'm learning right now in real time.
Nathan Holbert:
Epiphany, you were all here for it.
Haeny Yoon:
What about you though? Because you had so many different experiences, right? The sports route and the theater route. If I think about high school, those are two very different groups of people.
Nathan Holbert:
Definitely. Different groups.
Haeny Yoon:
What do you think you learned from all this?
Nathan Holbert:
Part of the story maybe is that I had moved. I moved my sophomore year of high school. I went from the rural Missouri life to the suburban Kansas life, which is, surprisingly different. It might not seem that different, but it is surprisingly different.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yeah. We all know it's different. We've seen Travis's life.
Nathan Holbert:
It's probably a song about that somewhere. And that gave me an opportunity to make that switch a little more smoothly. Because if I had been at the same place, trying to become a different kid and it being in a different group might've been difficult, but it was pretty easy for me to make that shift. I don't know. I was trying to think about this. I also did a lot of, I remember taking a bunch of art classes in high school, because they were available and I didn't know anything about them. And I took some photography classes and things. And I was never, I've said this a few times now that I wasn't good, which, I don't mean that in a innateness, but I just didn't have the patience. I didn't have the technique to really excel in those areas. But I really, really, really liked them.
And I think the thing that was maybe surprising was, this openness to the idea that, oh, art couldn't be a thing that even though I don't think of myself as an art person, that I could get involved in and I could enjoy and I could appreciate. It didn't need to be reserved for the art kids. It didn't have to be reserved for the theater kids. You could just decide to participate. It's like what you were saying. You could decide to participate and then participate as much or as little as you want to, and you could still get something interesting out of it. And still, I love art and I love to see people do art, and I love to... I was complimenting you on your little book over there. Your little notebook. I was like, "Wow, it's so cool." But I also always have this feeling of, boy, I'd really have to put a lot of work in to achieve that in a way. And so, maybe the lesson I learned through this is just to let some of that go and enjoy.
Haeny Yoon:
I had that same problem. I think that if I join something, I feel like I have to be innately good at it. Or there has to be some kind of skill that I bring to it, rather than just come to it to learn something. And so, I appreciate that lesson because I feel like I'm constantly trying to convince myself of that. Is that, I don't have to be good at something to join it or to be part of this community.
Nathan Holbert:
That's a nice segue to another question, which, I wanted to ask you about. Was about the role of clubs and extracurriculars as an adult. This looks really different when you get older, right? School has a built-in structure for this. You get that pamphlet at the community center, you get the announcement at the beginning of the semester that we're going to have all these after-school clubs, and then you just join them. You jump right in. It's not the same as the adult.
Haeny Yoon:
And I wish there was actually more of that in adulthood. I think there's a lot of lessons about schooling that are terrible and that we could learn to critique and think about differently. But then there's also some aspects of school that are interesting and that play into our real lives. Not real lives, sorry, our adult lives. Sorry I misspoke. Adult lives right now. And I feel like we could always use a little bit more clubbing.
Nathan Holbert:
We got to have more club.
Haeny Yoon:
And I think about how adults crave that now and how we want to think about community. It's just so much harder to build community, because there isn't a structure for it. There isn't a school, there isn't a classroom that we go to. There isn't spaces where we're automatically have to meet new people. We can just stay in our comfortable places. I feel like clubs do that for you. I think about the adult version of that, like the meetups, you could actually go to a club. I think about Yoanna, shout out Yoanna, one of our podcast guests, how she joined a 90-day fiance meetup group, and they met in bars and they watched it together. And it was just these strangers that came together around something that they have a shared interest in. And I think that we can use some more of that.
Nathan Holbert:
That was, I believe, if I recall, organized through Reddit. You have these Reddit communities that emerge and then break free from the online structure to exist in the real world and in human form. That's pretty cool. I was thinking about this too and I think, you could say churches are probably some form of-
Haeny Yoon:
Community.
Nathan Holbert:
... organization that facilitate community and that people join other sub-activities at church. I'm sure many of them have the pamphlet for what are the different stuff we're doing this year? So there's that. And I was also thinking about local governments, activist organizations. Those feel like places where you could really feel a connection to your neighbors, to people that have similar interests, similar goals, similar values. But it is different, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Uh-huh. You have to put a lot of energy and effort, initiative into it.
Nathan Holbert:
You do.
Haeny Yoon:
You have to be the Maisie instead of the Emerson. Sorry.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, man. But I'm both, what do I do?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Which is nice too.
Nathan Holbert:
It also reminded me, this is maybe one of these references that gets brought up all the time, but the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone, right? About the ways in which that social interaction, that community building, that organized attempts to come together around shared interests, shared activities, can be such an important way to facilitate that community, facilitate that togetherness. And specifically to do that through an activity, where people that might not normally find themselves together are finding themselves together. And that's a thing I think is maybe a tension around, even if we looked to things like a community government organization, people are going to come to that, they're going to come from different walks of life, but they're organized around a particular ideology maybe. Or a religion.
You come together, certainly people from all different walks of life, but organized around a particular religious perspective. And that may be one thing that's missing here is, community gathering, community organization that are free of those larger frameworks, those larger ideologies. I don't know, maybe bowling was actually a pretty ideological.
Haeny Yoon:
I was in a bowling league and I actually won, so, I forgot about that.
Nathan Holbert:
Wait, weren't you in a bowling league with a famous person?
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. Arden from K-Pop, Demon Hunters. We won our bowling league tournament. I think as you're talking, I'm just thinking about how sometimes the extracurricular activity is the activity, and it's also about the community.
Nathan Holbert:
Yes, exactly.
Haeny Yoon:
That's an outgrowth of it. And I think that's what I hear you saying that it could be about the activity that brings people together, but what you think happens can morph into some semblance of a community that could be different. Because as you were talking, it made me think about, I've actually been in a lot of book clubs, and most of book clubs, we have not read the book. It's just an opportunity to come together and drink.
Nathan Holbert:
Hang out, have a glass of wine.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And so, I just think about how many times it's not really even about the thing that brought us together in the first place, but that was like the impetus and the charge to create this small sub-community.
Nathan Holbert:
That was so much better said than how I rambled.
Haeny Yoon:
No, no. That is what you said.
Nathan Holbert:
Perfect. I think the answer then is, we need more clubbing, right?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Maybe actual clubs are the thing. Maybe we need to go dancing more.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. 50 Cent was right.
Nathan Holbert:
50 Cent might've figured out. All right. Great. Well, it was fun to go through your history of clubs. Who knew? You didn't even know you were so interested in so many.
Haeny Yoon:
Who knew I was a club kid?
Nathan Holbert:
I look forward to the clarinet solo in our next episode.
Haeny Yoon:
Get ready people.
Nathan Holbert:
All right. Thanks everybody for being here. As always, find us online and wherever you get podcasts. If you have a chance, rate and comment on the show. Share an episode with your friends. We've released a lot of episodes this year that we're really proud of. And check those out and share them with others. And follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky and really, wherever you find the socials, we're probably there.
Haeny Yoon:
Maybe.
Nathan Holbert:
All right. We'll see you in a few weeks.
Haeny Yoon:
All right. Bye.
Nathan Holbert:
Bye.