Hey friends, this is the HardCourse Health Help Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Robert Duff.

In this episode, I have a very special interview for you.

I believe this is the first in-person on-site interview that I've done with somebody that I don't already know super well.

At least not yet.

This is an interview with a friend that I made actually while traveling, which we tell the whole story of.

Her name is Amy Andrea Martinez. She is a professor of sociology. And have a look at a few highlights or listen to a few highlights from this episode. Now that I'm a professor and like, you know, I get to travel the world and I have the luxury and privilege of doing that. Like there's no way I could ever forget where like my, my parents came from. Like, that, like, it definitely informs the way that I interact with people,

the way that I am at my job or whatever. Like, yeah. Because there's just no way. There's no way I

could be like, well, I'm a professor. And then my brother, my first quarter here at UCSB,

he ended up getting charged for attempted murder on gang-related charges. Mind you, I had no clue that my brother was evolved in the gang life back home. I knew I was young, but I didn't feel my youth yet. But looking back, I'm like, dang, I was only 18. And here my mom's like yanking me down on the floor. I'm holding her, bawling crying. My cousin tells me this. And then I'm like, wait a minute. I tell my professor, and he's just like, look, you could drop out and go back home and, yeah, be a translator and all of that. But then what? Like, you're not going to be able to do much more than that. Whereas if you stay here, like, he's like, I can make a really

good social worker out of you or I can make a really, um, bomb, like, professor out of you.

Being a professor never, like, crossed my mind ever. I just literally got thrown and I met all

these like guys who look just like my brother. Yeah. And like, so I felt really excited because I was like selfishly like, okay, I'm going to

understand how, why my brother got to where he's at right now. Yeah. Through these guys. Sure.

But then it just became so much more than that. I didn't really know that I was in a depression,

but like I do remember like sitting in graduate classes and like. Yeah. And it was so fucked up

because none of the professors took the time or care to see me.

And then one of them brings their housemate and they saw that I wrote that. And then they walked up to me and they said, I'm glad you're here. And I got choked up. I was like, I was like, I was like, what? What? One of the most profound therapy sessions that I've had my therapist, she was a black woman

from the Bay Area, but she was my therapist when I was a graduate student in New York.

She's like, I think that at the heart of your book is the theme of redemption.

So if those highlights sound good to you, please stick around for the whole episode.

It's about an hour of an interview, maybe a little bit longer.

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