I was joined by Victoria Olmo at The Studio Around the Corner in Brewster, NY to talk about feeling older, the benefits of a temp agency, and getting more confident as we age.
Frankie Becerra: Thank you for doing this.
Victoria Olmo: Absolutely.
FB: I’ve got some questions right here for you, you alright with getting right into it?
VO: Yeah, of course.
FB: Ok, so what’s one way you’ve changed since high school?
VO: Well I would say from the beginning of high school I think I started to really come into myself more towards the middle sometime. I gained a little bit more confidence. And now since high school my confidence is a thousand percent.
FB: Good, as it should be.
VO: It’s crazy. It shot up like crazy.
FB: That’s awesome I’m glad to hear that. That’s definitely the way you want it to go. Not fun for it to go in the other direction, that’s for sure.
VO: (Laughs) No, not at all.
FB: So what’s something you’ve accomplished in the last ten years that you’re proud of?
VO: Working on myself. Because I graduated from college and I did all that, but even that is still not a great accomplishment to me. Growing on who I am and beyond is one of my greatest accomplishments.
FB: Nice, that’s good. I definitely feel that with the college thing because I felt the same way when I graduated, and that’s to take it away from anyone who was proud of that, because don’t get me wrong I am proud of it, but at the time I was like “Alright, so what?”
VO: Exactly.
FB: I did the thing that they told me to, and now the thing happened that they said was happening. “So now what?” Is how I was left feeling.
VO: Right, yeah exactly. That’s kind of how I felt too. We were like you’re supposed to go to college, get a college degree, it’ll be worth something when you get out, and I have a pastry arts degree. I’m not in the pastry arts field. I’m not even in the restaurant industry anymore.
FB: Yeah that’s the hard part of having to make that decision at such when we’re so young because I’m not really using my degree for what I got it in either. I actually just started grad school in a completely different field. In a sense it’s good that I had it because I needed it to get to where I am now but at the same time it’s like did it really make sense for me to do it then?
VO: I probably should’ve taken a year off to actually figure out what I wanted to do and which direction I wanted to go in, but I felt so much pressure to just go to college (laughs).
FB: That’s such a big part of it too. I didn’t even want to go to college during my senior year of high school, and I really only did the whole process of it because it felt like it was what was expected of me. It was what everyone around me was doing, it was what my parents and teachers told me I should be doing, and I was like “well there’s no way they’ll all be wrong”, and I’m not saying they were, but I think it would’ve been beneficial to know there were other options out there, or at least to have them presented more openly than it felt like they were.
VO: Yeah because it felt like there were very limited options outside of going to college. Now there’s a lot more than I thought (laughs).
FB: Yeah for sure. So what’s something you hope to accomplish in the next ten years?
VO: In the next ten years I hope to establish a career. A stable career. Right now I just started as a medical receptionist in a cancer hospital, so from there I’m just hoping that I gain so much more knowledge on things that I have never even seen before. Like getting an eye into the medical field, especially this portion of it, is incredibly eye opening.
FB: I can only imagine.
VO: It’s crazy. I just want to continue with that, establish a career, and get a house.
FB: That’s awesome. So what if anything do you miss most about high school? And it’s ok if the answer is nothing.
VO: (Laughs) I miss the group of friends that I had, mostly towards senior year, but throughout high school obviously friendships come and go, but each one holds special memories you know? Even if those people are no longer in your life it still holds something special. So I definitely miss the friends, but besides that nothing (laughs).
FB: I believe that. Now do you think you left high school prepared for the next phase of your life?
VO: Absolutely not (laughs). Absolutely not. We didn’t have all of the things that we needed put in front of us. We didn’t have all of the cards put on the table. It was “here’s these three cards, pick from them” it kind of what it felt like. Even now conversations that I’ll have with other people from our grade, or even grades younger, we should have been learning how to do our taxes, we should’ve been learning how to properly save, and do things that would actually set us up for success as adults instead of kind of instilling in us like “oh well your teachers in college aren’t gonna let you get away with this”. Things like that kind of stick with us and kind of puts a bad taste in your mouth because you’re like instead of telling us all of the things that we shouldn’t be doing, how about you help us figure out the things that will get us where we need to go? If you’re trying to help us succeed, why don’t you do that?
FB: Right. And I always thought the whole “your college teachers aren’t gonna let you get away with this” was one of the funniest things in hindsight because, I don’t know what your experience was like, but I felt like my college teachers let me get away with a lot more. A lot more leniency involved.
VO: Yeah they were the biggest eye opener into the real world, of what it’s like because everybody- we’re human. Your teacher, he’s a human being. If they don’t feel like coming to class today, fine, they’re not gonna come to class today. And that’s ok. You get the day off too.
FB: I think part of that has to do with, and of course this is not excusing it, but once we’re in college, those professors see us more as adults. Where as the high school teachers are kind of wired to see us as kids.
VO: Absolutely.
FB: And I get that of course, we are kids. But it can be hard for us to feel the difference between being like seventeen and nineteen as far as how much we’ve grown. Like obviously society sees us differently between those two ages, but it’s very easy to feel like we’re more or less still the same.
VO: Yeah because I definitely don’t remember feeling much different from seventeen to nineteen.
FB: It’s like, and this is something I’ve always thought was so annoying, on your birthday when someone asks you “do you feel older?”. Nah dude. Of course not. This shit’s just a Tuesday.
VO: (Laughs) It’s the same thing.
FB: So if you could change one thing about your time in high school knowing what you know now, what would you change?
VO: I would probably try harder to give a shit. Try a little bit harder to give a shit. Because my situation is a little bit different. I cared, but I was also one of the few Black people in the school. So my experience with education was a lot different I feel because I feel like nobody really took the time to help me understand certain things. I’m also diagnosed with ADHD, so that didn’t really help. Feeling like everybody else was ahead of me, and I was stuck behind not really knowing, so then I stopped caring all together. So I feel like if I had just kind of pushed through that a little bit, and gave a little bit more of a shit about myself, I would’ve excelled a little bit higher than I did.
FB: I definitely get that, and obviously I understand that to the extent that I can. Like you said we’re obviously in different situations, but there is still that, you kind of as you get older have that little voice in the back of your head that makes you wonder like “what if I had just applied myself more? What if I had tried harder? What could have been?” And that shit’s not easy to deal with.
VO: No it’s not.
FB: So as a member of the Class of 2013, do you have any advice for the Class of 2023 as they enter the next phase of their lives?
VO: Just kind of stay true to what you believe in. Don’t stray too far, be open minded, but don’t follow other people unless it’s something that you truly believe in.
FB: Nice, I like that. So while we have the current seniors on our mind, do you think you would rather be a high schooler right now, or in the early 2010s when we were there?
VO: That’s a really hard question. Honestly, what’s done is done. You know? That part of my life is over. I’m good. I’m good where I am. Life experiences definitely helped.
FB: So one thing our school never did was senior quotes. Do you have one that you like that you would’ve used then or one that you like now?
VO: “Don’t make yourself small just to make others feel comfortable. Be big, proud, and comfortable with who you are, even if others aren’t”.
FB: I love that. I think that’s fantastic.
VO: Thank you.
FB: We’re almost done here, but before we finish up, do you have any questions for me? And it’s ok if you don’t.
VO: How do you feel like you’ve grown outside of high school?
FB: I think that I have become a lot more, kind of like how you said, a lot more confident, a lot more comfortable with who I am and in my own skin. And that’s something that I think kind of surprises people when I say because I feel like what I gave off in high school was kind of confident and comfortable.
VO: Yeah, you did.
FB: But I think it was confident in a different sense. I think the person that I was in high school was the way that I was because I really wanted everybody to like me. So I think that in my mind the easiest way to get everyone to like me was just to be nice to everyone. And I’m not gonna lie, for the most part, it worked. But it gets to a point where that shits exhausting.
VO: Of course.
FB: I think that’s one of the biggest things, I stopped trying to get everyone to like me and I started focusing more on me liking me. Because I’m stuck with me.
VO: Right.
FB: And it’s like you were saying, what’s gone is gone. I don’t see the people we went to high school with every day. So once I got to college it was this weird feeling of like I don’t think I can do this all again. I don’t think I can steal another school’s hearts. And it was tough. I dropped out of the first college I went to, and that first year of college was really tough for me because it was kind of like I felt like I had spent so much time solidifying these relationships and friendships that I had with people, and then it just felt like they were all of the sudden gone. So I think to kind of circle back to answer the original question, the biggest way that I’ve grown is that comfortability and confidence in myself where it’s like now I know what I bring to the table, and if you don’t want that, if you don’t like that, then there’s other tables. So that’s kind of where I’m at.
VO: I love that.
FB: Thank you.
VO: I love that.
FB: You have any more questions?
VO: No, not really.
FB: Well thank you so much for doing this.
VO: Absolutely. Thank you!
At this point I turned my audio recorder off. Victoria and I stayed and talked to each other for a little while longer, and after a few minutes I asked her if I could start recording again. She said yes.
FB: I’ll just circle back we were saying before because I thinking about it earlier too (if I could resume recording) but I was like fuck it if I still got here then I’m gonna ask.
VO: Yeah.
FB: Like you were saying we don’t really have the resources to help us get where we want to be when we need help, but you were saying you found a temp agency?
VO: Yeah the temp agency, nobody tells you “hey you give your resume to a temp agency and they’ll put you in a position that you’re qualified for”. You tell them your skills, you tell them all about stuff that you want to do, what you are qualified to do personally from your own experience, you tell them all that, they interview you, and then they find a position for you that they think you will fit best in. And they have hiring managers that will reach out to them and say “hey I’m looking for somebody who can do this, this, this, and this” and they’ll pull a couple resumes, and they’ll put them in front of the hiring manager, and then they’ll pick.
FB: Yeah, that’s awesome.
VO: It was between me and another person, and they went with the other person, and then that other person didn’t work out, so then I got the call. Which is more than fine with me, I’m not upset with it.
FB: You made your way in.
VO: I’m still in where I want to be working, I making more money than I was making before, and now I’m gaining even more experience, and more knowledge, so now I can go wherever I want to go to be a medical receptionist. They don’t really teach you that stuff. Honestly, our parents need to be teaching us this stuff, or our caregivers or our guardians or whoever was taking care of us when we were younger. They should’ve been teaching us this stuff.
FB: And that’s one of those things where you get to that age when you realize the adults that you thought knew everything don’t know nearly as much as you think. I remember when years ago when I was making an ok amount of money at this job I had, I told my mom that I did this thing where 10% of every one of my paychecks that gets direct deposited goes directly into my savings. And my mom was like “oh, that’s a good idea! I should start doing that”. And I was like “you’re the mom! What do you mean? Yeah start doing that”. Now ever since then she’s always saying “oh I’m so glad I started doing that” and I’m like “am I your financial advisor now? Is that what’s going on here?” But yeah man we need stuff like the temp agency, that’s how we can prevent ourselves from going back to being people with bachelors degrees working with high schoolers.
VO: Right honestly that’s kind of, being 27 working with 18, 19, 20 year olds I’m like shoot me in the face. And I don’t wanna talk shit about them, but it’s like their work ethic is nonexistent because they work for what they get, which I commend them for doing that but what was ingrained in us was just work. Work, work, work, work, work. Kind of rest.
FB: Sometimes, if you need to.
VO: But mostly just work until you fucking die (laughs). That’s kind of what we get drilled into our heads.
FB: I was in a similar situation right before covid, I was still working a job where most of my coworkers were either in college or high school. I had like one or two that also had degrees like me, but they were managers and in charge of me. So I noticed it for sure. I was working because I had legit bills to pay, and I’m sure everyone had their own situation, but I know some of the seventeen year olds were just working to have money to spend on the weekends and like I get that but it makes you feel a lot of different ways to be in that position at a point where you feel like you shouldn’t be. It’s hard out here.
VO: Yeah, its- covid really turned shit around for everybody I feel.
FB: I definitely had my shit turned upside down, and granted I would say most of my tumultuous times that were covid related were career and job related so I will say if that’s the worst of it then I’m thankful for that.
VO: Yeah, absolutely.
FB: But at the same time that really shifted the way comedy was going for me. I remember January of 2020 being in a really good place career-wise. I was getting booked all over Westchester, I was performing often, I had months where I was making more money doing standup than I was at my real jobs. And at 24, 25 years old I never thought that would be the case. I was actually supposed to headline and do a half hour for the first time in Pleasantville, on April 3rd, 2020. So obviously that didn’t happen. And now none of those venues that I was performing at in Westchester do comedy anymore, none of them survived covid. That was a big part of why I moved to the city.
VO: Yeah, I was working in restaurants.
FB: Yeah me too.
VO: Now it’s like ok I”m not doing that. Also no daycares either so I was like what am I supposed to do?
FB: Prior to covid I was working four jobs at the same time. Then once it hit the only one I was still doing was delivering pizza, and obviously that was busier than ever at that time. But it was stressful because I was going out to people’s homes and bringing them food. And part of me felt good that I was doing that. I was like ok this is me helping. Not saying I’m a hero of course, I’m just a guy with a car. But I actually had someone I was delivering food to in like April of 2020 who said to me “thank you so much, you’re a hero”. And I was like “I am a 25-year-old with a bachelors in communication and a certified pre-owned Hyundai, but I’ll take hero if that’s what you wanna say. Enjoy that pizza”.
VO: (Laughs) You are welcome.
FB: But yeah it’s just the whole just trying to get through it thing.
VO: Now we’re here, and we’re doing it to the best of our ability.
FB: That’s all you can do.
VO: With the skills that we were given, and also the ones we learned along the way. Without life skills I don’t know where I would be.
FB: Well I’m glad we’re here.
VO: Me too.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
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