Path Found
Path Found is the podcast for anyone who’s ever asked, “What now?”
This show explores the real, messy, and inspiring journeys people take to find fulfilling work—and themselves. From pivots and side hustles to mentorship and major career changes, Path Found reveals what college never taught and counselors never said.
Path Found
From High School Dropout to Harvard Law: How Discipline, Detours, and Doing the Work Built a Career
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Steven Kerns grew up in Long Beach, California, dropped out of high school at seventeen, and eventually made his way through the Army Infantry, Long Beach City College, Cal State Long Beach, Harvard Law School, and on to the California Department of Justice. Today, he works as a deputy attorney general, representing land-use and energy regulatory agencies, including California's oil and gas regulator. He also teaches environmental law at CSULB.
In this episode, Steven traces the surprisingly coherent through-line of a path that, from the outside, looked like a series of sharp right turns. We talk about what the military instills that classrooms can't, what it felt like to arrive at Harvard and wonder if he'd made a grave mistake, and how a polite follow-up email to a rejection changed the arc of his career.
We also get into the big picture — his "earn tomorrow" life mantra, how imposter syndrome functions as a signal rather than a warning, and what he tells students trying to figure out what to do in a world reshaped by AI.
Steven brings a lot of hard-earned wisdom to this conversation. He's also just genuinely funny and kind.
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I remember my platoon sergeant was quite frustrated with me and he goes, Currents, how come every time I ask you a question, you have to have an answer? And I didn't understand that. I was like, well, cause you asked me a question, like it seems it's my duty to give you an answer. And he goes, Yeah, but you always have to explain yourself. You can never just admit you're wrong. It's always had to be some reason or something happened. You thought you made the best decision at the time. Like, that's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you to be accountable. Say you messed up and say you're not gonna do it again. And boy, did I really need that. And I think that was an incredible life long person.
SPEAKER_01Hi everyone, and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Gandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. What does it take to go from dropping out of high school, selling weed to afford subway, to getting a phone call from Harvard Law School offering him admission and asking them in genuine disbelief, are you sure? Today's guest is Stephen Kearns, a deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice, an adjunct professor at Cal State Long Beach, and someone whose path has been anything but straight. He grew up in Long Beach, joined the Army infantry at 19, and deployed to one of the most dangerous corners of Afghanistan in 2007. He came home, earned his degree in environmental science, cold emailed a researcher who rejected him, and got a life-changing yes. Then he went to Harvard Law. Stephen talks about what the military actually taught him, and it wasn't what he expected. He talks about accountability, romantic idealism, the carbon budget he thinks about every day, and why he now believes imposter syndrome is a green light, not a stop sign. He also has something to say about following up and about being kinder. This one's worth the listen. Stephen, I'm so happy to have you as a guest. I've known you for quite a while now and really interested in getting into your story. So as I start with everybody, give us a little bit of background. What were you like growing up? Where did you grow up? What were you like as a student?
SPEAKER_00Everything I am saying today in every context is my personal opinion and in no way related to the opinions of the office. I'm speaking in my behalf as a person, on my behalf as uh an attorney at the California Department of Justice. Yeah, so interestingly enough, I was a high school dropout. So I grew up in Long Beach. I joked that I was raised by wolves. So learned how to bend for myself fairly early on, had like a kind of fierce independent streak. Sometime around seventh grade, my parents split, and I went from like very focused academically to like, I don't care. So I became a terrible student in like the span of a semester. And when it came to high school, I remember I had this big chip on my shoulder because I would do really well on tests, but I would do very poorly in class because I refused to do any kind of project or homework or anything like that. And my perspective at the time was like kind of cutting off your nose to spine your face, but you know, you're a teenager, so you think you know everything. And so I had this view that if school exists for me to understand knowledge and I can show that I know the knowledge because I do one on the tests, like the rest of it is theater. Why do I need to do this? And I didn't have the foresight to be like, okay, it's to get you to practice and build discipline. I pretty much dropped out out of spite at that point. I was like, this is a BS system, I don't agree with education, and then joined the army, which I'll put a pin in there. So it took me quite some time to learn how to be a good student again. So when I got out of the army, I started at Long Beach City College. And I remember I got out of the army on Friday, started city college on Monday, and was like borderline having a panic attack that Sunday night. Because I was like, oh my God, like this is gonna be like college, people are gonna be in like the quads puttespeare, like cold, and it's gonna be like incredible intellectual superpowers, which you know, I was in the army for the last four and a half years, I'm not equipped for this. And then I got there and I realized I had built the discipline and the practice that I refused to engage with as a high school student in the army. And so it was really easy for me to take like the ability to retain information in my curiosity, couple that with the discipline and the habits I had built in the military, and actually become a very good student.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I'm gonna go back a little bit. How old were you when you dropped out of high school?
SPEAKER_0017. I dropped out. I started working at Mimi's Cafe in Lake Forest, and I was living with like a whole bunch of people I had met over the internet, which was like at the time bizarre, but you know, now it seems kind of quaint. Yeah, and it was kind of like a real-world-esque situation. I was like sharing a room with a girl named Melissa. There was two couples in the house. It was a three-bedroom house, two bathrooms. There were six people in it, it was crazy. I was 17. I was selling weed on the side so I could afford to eat at Subway occasionally and like, you know, reliant on like the family meal that you get at restaurants. So I was scraping by, but it was wonderful. But yeah, it was an interesting way to do senior year, as it were.
SPEAKER_01So, how did you decide to go to the army?
SPEAKER_00I had always admired the military, and I, especially when I was younger, was very prone to romantic thinking and like grand notions. So I was like, you know, I want to make something of myself. I'm certainly not doing it right now. And I think there's something elemental to understanding like the martial spirit and what it is to engage in warfare, which was the romantic part. And so I kind of took stock of my life. I decided I didn't want to be where I was going. I was like, you know what, this is as good a time as any. So I walked to the recruiter's office, which was probably like a seminar walk, so I felt pretty committed. And I walked in and I was like, look, I want to join the infantry. What do I have to do? The rest was history after that.
SPEAKER_01So how long were you in the army?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think like four or four-ish years, four and a half, something like that.
SPEAKER_01So, can you talk about like that experience? Was it what you thought? What did you get out of it?
SPEAKER_00Great question. I feel like I got, I don't want to say everything, but I got most of I think my present identity from the military. So I went in a mix of like arrogant, which I feel like the counterbalance to arrogance is like a sense of like kind of wimpiness or cowardice. Like I feel like if you're being arrogant, you're usually compensating for something. So I was definitely that. I had this like stylized view of myself where I was like, you know, super smart and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the society is wrong, like, kind of like a Holden Caulfield from capture in the rye kind of perspective, right? Like pig 18-year-old. And so I joined, started on right after my 19th birthday, started boot camp, and it was challenging, but it wasn't quite like this like soul grinding experience that I expected at first. I was like, oh man, like this is if this is the best you can do, it's not that crazy, right? I got really lucky from boot camp, and I got stationed in Italy with an elite airborne unit called the 173rd, and I got there and it was incredible. I was 19. They were like, Well, we can't stop you guys from drinking. You're in Italy, you'd please go here. So it felt like kind of making up for the college years I wasn't getting in the sense of like, hey, drink the party. But it was interesting, and that there's a book written about it called The Chosen Few, which was the name of my company. Our company is about 110 guys in the infantry. The author of that book, Griggs Aurora, described it as a company of lost boys. So I was very much fitting in that regard. While it was challenging, I still felt like I was able to physically give more, but it really was the place where I learned how to cabin and curtail my arrogance and really like think about okay, I don't know everything and I really need to shut up and listen. I'm glossing over how much effort that took, and my squad leader and my platoon sergeant really were legendary in that. But yeah, I remember my platoon sergeant was quite frustrated with me. I was, you know, doing push-ups, he was yelling at me. And he goes, Current, how come every time I ask you a question, you have to have an answer? And I didn't understand that. I was like, Well, because you asked me a question, like it seems it's my duty to give you an answer. And he goes, Yeah, but you always have to explain yourself. You can never just admit you're wrong. Like it's always had to be some reason or something happened, or you know, you thought you made the best decision at the time. Like, that's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you to be accountable. Like, say you messed up and say you're not gonna do it again. And boy, did I really need that beaten into me. And I think that was an incredible lifelong lesson that was well client because that's about the time we deployed to Afghanistan. And, you know, setting context here, this is 2007. We'd actually been trained to go to Iraq. Iraq at the time was a hot zone, it was not where you wanted to be. And Afghanistan, by contrast, seemed relatively peaceful as far as things go. We deployed to northeastern Afghanistan in a province called Nuristan, which a lay perspective that I'm bringing to this seemed kind of like the West Virginia or like the rural Florida of Afghanistan. Our Afghan National Army partners kind of explained to us it was a punishment to be stationed there for them. So we're talking incredibly rural. It looked like you were stuck in the like a shark's tooth of mountains. And if the Roman Legion walked by, it would be like a technological improvement for like the day-to-day life of the Afghans. It ultimately became that we were on the tip of the spear defensively, tip of the spear of the resurgent Taliban that came pouring over the border from Pakistan. And it really became, and I think the correct word would be historic, but rough deployment. Two of the guys in my 110-man company received the Medal of Honor and are still alive to talk about it. In our 800-person battalion, we had a third medal of honor, still alive to talk about it. So just to kind of nutshell, it was extreme. And so the romanticism that I had in youth of like, oh, I want to understand like the martial spirit, that cup raneth over. Like it, I understood it, but I also understood the ugly parts of warfare that, like, if you read history, they really describe in detail the banality of it, the meaninglessness of it, the horrificness of it. And so that part came with it, and it was a really bitter cocktail, right? That said, if the perspective it gave me, the amount of gratitude it gave me, the focus, the purpose it gave me, I wouldn't trade that for anything. Like you could offer me, you know, to be 20 years younger or you know, 30 years further in my head or agree or a billion dollars, whatever. I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade that perspective because that really kind of became the nucleus in which my life was in valence around, right? Clarity of purpose, strong sense of discipline, teamwork, and the long-lasting view of how fleeting life can be. And like you really need to go after it, right? Later in life, I was challenged to come up with a life mantra and it would I came up with earn tomorrow because really, like you don't know what's going to happen, and like the worst days of your life are some random Tuesday you didn't have plans for, right? Like it's not like, oh, I had this arc of my life planned out and I just didn't do it or I didn't get the job I wanted. The real defining moments are these random Tuesdays that kind of just blindside you. So, you know, I had dreamt of going to special forces. A lot of my friends did, and I really respect that they had the commitment. But at that point, I was like, you know what? We've lost enough guys, I've seen enough violence, I'm good. And then I had already developed, guess it's from burn piss. This is my lay medical opinion, but uh it started developing a really bad asthma and like lifelong allergic conditions, which plagued me still. So those things together, I was like, okay, cool, got out of the army, and yeah, that brought me to Long Beach City College, which is taking a pin out of the story I'd mentioned earlier.
SPEAKER_01So you come at you were there four years, you come back. Did you know right away I'm going back to school?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, you know, I watched a lot of my friends graduate. I had stayed, and I think this really helped me with post-traumatic stress, which, you know, it can either go into like the disorder category or post-traumatic growth category. And I think the fork in the road for me was actually that I stayed really close to my friends from home. So I had like an identity to come back to. And many of them, if not most of them, had gone on to become like engineers and scientists, right? And I always really liked science. And my first semester of Long Beach City College, I took an environmental science class. And I was like, oh wow, it is actually quite bad out there. Like, I mean, I have like a loose understanding of climate change and you know, environmental degradation, but like, woof, it's tough. And seeing it quantified even back in 2010 was enough. I was like, oh wow. So that felt like a sense of purpose. I was like, you know, my community's given me so much I really felt that like the saving grace from being raised by rules was I had a really tight circle of friends. So I felt like they had given me much and I wanted to continue giving them something. So I was like, you know, I'll go fight climate change. This seems like a the battle of our generation. Why not? So really started to get into that, which I think also with the fact that I had PTSD and was like really struggling with it at the time, like the could kind of stropic nature of what climate change could be kind of really paired well with them. I need to catastrophize. Yeah, that was pretty much that. I was like, okay, I'm gonna be an environmental scientist and eventually, you know, explore multiple avenues of that, but we'll get there. But that was the transition out of the army into where I'm at now, as it were.
SPEAKER_01So then you go to Cal State Long Beach, you major in environmental science and policy.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_01The being at Long Beach, in how did you make the most of that? Like, what did you do while you were there?
SPEAKER_00So a lot of my friends went to Cal State Long Beach, and I grew up in Long Beach, so I really thought that was like the pinnacle of education. I was like, oh my god, like I got into Cal State Long Beach, I'm really stoked. You know, this is two years after I thought people were quoting Shakespeare in the quad. So I was like, I have to make the most of this, and it felt serious in a way that LBCC didn't, by virtue of it was a commuter school, and everyone was there generally to go somewhere else. And so, myself included, when I got to Cal State Long Beach, I was like, I am here, like this is it. And so I took it very seriously while I was there, while I was not at school, and I had the benefit of the GI Bill, so I didn't really have to worry about, you know, like maintaining uh like a part-time job. I had one, but I it wasn't like this is how I had to. So I had the luxury of also making sure my social cups stayed filled, which I think actually was equally important because it gave me a lot of opportunity to blow off steam and remain balanced, which led me to stay very focused on academics. So I remember one of the leadout classes for a major was biostats. And so there'd be times I'd wake up, I'm not a morning person, so this despite the military. So when I'm saying, like, really is a display of commitment, I would wake up like 6:30 in the morning, bike to school. So I'd get the endorphins going, have a cup of coffee, and I would just sit there and read my biostats book. And I was like, okay, I got to practice, I gotta do this. Like, if this is the weed out class, like I have to commit. You and the program, especially, would put out these opportunities that were pretty phenomenal, but seemed like a stretch. One of them was one other received, it was called a research experience for undergrads. One of the program that the National Science Foundation did is a series of grants. I hope they still do it. But basically, they would team up post-grad or PhD researchers with undergrads who were interested in becoming research scientists, be like, hey, like, let's have a sampling of this. And some of them, like, you had to be scuba certified, but you do like leaf research in the burr the Bahamas, and you get paid for this, and it's lovely. It's a great way to spend a summer. I got one in Costa Rica where we did rainforest research on medicinal plant species to help preserve their use. And I actually was rejected initially. And this is a kind of bottled lightning, I got lucky moment, but I followed up and I was like, hey, you know, understand that I got rejected, and but I'm grateful you reviewed my application. What could I do better? You know, I just want to keep at this and I wanted like take learning experiences when I can get them. The woman who was the head of that specific grant was a wonderful mentor of mine named Daniela Shebitz. She's um, I should say Dr. Daniela Shebitz. She's an ethobotanist, and she, I guess, was at a conference and just happened to pull up her phone at that time, was reading emails, had a bunch of them pick that one, was like, oh wow, that's a really nice email, and like read my application. She was like, we need to get this guy. I don't know who screened in, but like, I think we should get this guy. Had it not been for the polite follow-up, I would have been that would have changed the arc of my life because that gave me research momentum to apply to more difficult science programs. And let me be specific, I later used that momentum to apply for a NASA jet propulsion lab program where you did remote sensing, which was great because the ESP or Environmental Science and Policy Department at Cal State Long Beach was really close to the geography department. So I was able to like kind of carve out a later academic focus on remote sensing. But I wouldn't have been the competitive applicant had I not done that, and I wouldn't have gotten that had I not sent that email. So it really reminded me the importance, and I've used this lesson throughout my life. Professionals are busy, politeness goes a long way, and it's okay to be like, hey, look, sometimes your inbox is buried. I get it. Mine gets buried too. But to follow up and just be polite, show that you actually really care about this and be thoughtful in your pursuit of it. And, you know, sometimes not taking no for an answer when it comes to a professional opportunity can be to your benefit. And I think that works both ways. Like, I now mentor a lot of people, and I really like when people follow up. And sometimes I'll tell them, like, hey, you know, I'm really busy right now, but I'm just noting, like, hit me up next week if you haven't heard from me by Tuesday follow-up, right? So, yeah, all is to say that experience from Cal State Long Beach taught me that lesson. It taught me the volume of momentum, the value of, you know, politely not taking no for an answer sometimes when it comes to professional opportunities. And also the inverse of what I think a lot of college kids do, and part of that's their age. I happen to be in the military at the college, the 18 to 22 year mark, but inverting the, hey, I'm here to study and I will socialize to help that, versus I'm here to socialize and I'll study because that's what I'm here to do. And so I think that group of lessons was how I really succeeded at Cal State Long Beach.
SPEAKER_01Where did you pick that up to know, to follow up? You know, I always tell people after they do an interview, always send a thank you. It's so easy and quick and just takes a few minutes and it goes a long way. But where did you learn to do that?
SPEAKER_00I don't know exactly when I learned it, but I'm pretty sure it came from an office hours. And one of the benefits I have starting college a little bit later, again, all my friends have already graduated and we're fresh. You know, it's like dives, like you just finish in your year, I'm just starting. What do you wish you had done? And they're like, oh my god, good office hours. You go to office hours all the time. You're gonna want letters of recommendation later. Sometimes, you know, professors, if they're having a problem on uh an academic topic, they might be great at mentoring you, and they might also sometimes like give you a little insight into what the exam might be looking like. So, like, you know, being unafraid and I think being like, okay, cool. My friends told me that now I can go to office hours and they feel more comfortable talking to professors. Professors are telling me like they like when people do this, and I'm like, well, I have no reason to count you. And I'm pretty sure I picked up the like thank you after interview, be you know, politely insistent idea from those office hours.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, this is audio, but just a visual here. I am adamantly agreeing with you, shaking my head that yes, office hours. Go to office hours. All right, so you graduate. Do you know what you want to do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I at the time decided I wanted to go to law school for sure, around close, I think senior year, close to graduation. And what led me to that was actually that research experience to undergrad was kind of like the final, like, hey, this is really confirming this. We had a guy, Bill. Bill was awesome, really like Bill. So we're sitting in the jungle or the rainforest, and we're smoking cigars, drinking some bourbon at the very end of like the research experience. So it's a nice, like, you know, nightcap kind of situation. And I'm asking him what it's like at the NSF, because I still had this kind of science as religion view, or like, you know, these are modern-day priests, they're preaching the truth. This is fantastic. And he hit me with a bit of real-world experience that made me a little cynical. And he goes, you know, yeah, the NSF does a lot of wonderful things, but at the same time, sometimes when you're looking at grants, it's not the merits of the grant, it's just that we're talking before with each other about who's gonna get what, and you're worried about giving your presentation, so you're not really paying attention to someone else's presentation to get all the nuance because you're pepping for your presentation, and it kind of pulled back the veil of science isn't perfect, not because the scientific method itself is flawed, it's the best thing we have, but because it is laden with the messiness of humanity, as is every other industry. But I didn't have that sight yet, and I was like, oh wow, science is still. Human. Okay. And I had this concern that, hey, look, climate change, my willingness to catastrophize thing in the background. We have a limited time to do stuff with urgency, urgency, urgency. I was really afraid that if I became a research scientist, a lot of my thoughts would go into like the good idea binder, as I called it. It was like, oh man, that's a really good idea. And you know, policymakers were applauding that you guys did the work great. And then they'd put it on the good idea binder shelf with all the good other good ideas that are collecting dust, and it wouldn't get done. And I didn't want that. And I was really, and I still do, I try and measure my professional endeavors by what impact I think they're having, because I'm like, look, we got gotta move the needle. And so I was nervous that I might be screaming into the academic hallways where everyone's like, We know. And so I didn't want to do that as much as I really liked being a scientist or you know, moving in that direction. I should say I had officially become born again, prone to romantic thinking. I was like, oh my god, I should take what I know about science and go into the law so I can try and remove some of these policy, bureaucratic, and political roadblocks. Because I didn't feel like if I yelled about environmental science to environmental lawyers, they would be like, I know, like that's actually really helpful. So I, you know, pursued law school with that notion, which again, much like the military, started off with romantic and it was inspirational, and then kind of became tempered by the reality of the situation, putting a pin in that as well. So that was kind of my thinking there. And then my final semester of undergrad, I was probably like most undergrads burning the candle from both ends, and was studying for the LSAT, you know, finishing out that NASA thing, doing all this. So it was go, go, go, go, go, go, sprint to graduation, took the LSAT, didn't score as well as I wanted to, but so it goes. And then applied to law school and took a job at a marathon, which financially hurt, spiritually, and wonderfully fulfilling, uh, and taught me a lot about California water management, which is an incredibly rewarding experience intellectually. But I say all that because I remember graduating, I was like, I don't want to pull the rug under anybody in the environmental field because I was like, look, like we're all in this together, we need to be as good actors as we can to each other. And I don't want to be a tourist and say, hey, I'm here for a year. By the way, sorry, you're pit stop. I didn't think that was a great way to start a career. So I was like, MariCorps a one-year program. This is everybody's a winner here. I serve for a year, you know, they get good service. I continue my view of public service, like there was no drawback. So then I think I got paid like 17 grand, which we wow. Yeah, yeah. You can't see me, but I'm saluting to any and everyone who's ever done AmeriCorps. You're the salt of the earth. So yeah. And then, yeah, I then I had the good fortune of being accepted into Harvard for law school, which was okay. So, again, I dropped out of high school. So I remember they called me. Uh, first I got the interview, and I was like, Oh my god, this is amazing. I I took it at my office in AmeriCorps. They stationed us at various water utilities. I was a water fellow, so I was at the Inland Empire Utility Agency where I learned a lot. Wonderful place to work. Shut up to them. They do good stuff. But I had like this water systems map behind me, and I was like, Okay, like I'm going full bore. I was wearing my little NASA hoodie, and I was like, okay, like this is I gotta do the best that I can and signal every little thing I can to put like, you know, what death by a thousand cuts, like, let's go. So interviewed. I thought I did pretty well, wasn't sure. It was like, okay, this is fine. And yeah, they called me and they told me that I had been accepted. And I think if I recall correctly, I went, Are you sure? Like, really? And they're like, Yeah. So we did a double take. And then I'll say, like, one of the hardest decisions of my life, actually, was choosing between going to Harvard and leaving everything I knew behind. And I had a well-established life. At the time, I had a serious relationship. I'd, you know, been gone for a long time, but I was like finally in Nest back at my friends from home, which was you know pivotal, as I said earlier, for me going not down PTSD land, but post-traumatic growth path. And so really felt rooted, or I could go to UCLA. And UCLA has a phenomenal environmental law program, phenomenal professors. I had worked with one of them uh while under MariCorps and really admired them. So that was a really tough decision. But I received a lot of counsel. And while I don't agree with this paradigm, it seems here to stay, at least for the near future. And I'd already learned enough about cutting off my nose to spite my face. So everyone I knew who'd been a lawyer was like, dude, just go to Harvard, man. Like it's you choose the best law school you get into, whether you like it or not. Like that's just kind of the advice I was given. And it was uniform. And I was, you know, hey, when I was in office hours, professors told me to do X. And I'm like, you're further along. I have no reason to doubt you. So I was like, okay, X it is.
SPEAKER_01So you're there, you're at Harvard. Is law school what you think it is? Are you? I know this it hits into COVID time now, too, right?
SPEAKER_00So I finished law school my last semester in COVID, as COVID starting. So like the Tiger King era was like my closeout of law school. Okay. So I had an undergrad as part of that socializing. My friends and I really loved music. We a lot of my friends who I grew up with were musicians. And so we, as like a passion project, worked in like the nightlife and the music festival world, and a lot of my friends still are there professionally. And it was a lot of fun, but it was like a silly kind of place relative to the law. So, you know, I was having like the time of my life, I felt really balanced, and then I get to law school, right? And you did this thing called admitted students weekend that had a lot of places that you could admit it to, and the school tries to woo you, and you meet some of your future colleagues. Uh, I liked everyone I met. I was like, okay, this is the green light, green light, green light. And I remember the first week of law school, a few things happened. Well, I remember people from the law school saying, Hey, like, you're gonna meet some of your lifelong best friends here. And I was like, I don't know, man, I'm 30. I've already got lifelong best friends, and that's gonna happen. I probably have never been more wrong socially in my life. Some of the most wonderful people I've ever met in my life were at law school, so that happened. I was like, okay, another green light. Great, really liking these people. And then two, the day before we officially started, or maybe the day we officially started, I don't remember. We had like an orientation thing, right? And it was like when grades come out, let me back up. So in law school, you have all your grades are determined by a single final. There's no homework, there's no anything. It was kind of how I wanted to be in high school. Then I got what I wanted in ultimate, so that you can stay because that's it. You did one day, one final, that's your whole grade, doesn't matter. And so a lot of people in that community are one of my good friends had described it as kind of being like a racehorse on a track. They're bred and focused and they run really fast in their lane. You take them out to be like workhorse, that's not what they do, but they're really good at that. And so their identities are wrapped up in that. And I was like, okay, yeah, one here's an academic performer, sure. But this zero-day kind of orientation was like, when you get grades, if you are in the middle of the pack, do not kill yourself. Here is the suicide hotline. Here are the people you need just to talk to, just in case. Do not kill yourself. Really, don't kill yourself. And I was like, it's not that serious, like, my God. And you know, I was coming at this as a 30-year-old who'd been in the military, versus you know, some of these people who are like, I was a night league student, and I we went to private school and I had tutors, and my entire life, period, my self-worth is grades. Yes, so it was an interesting, like, oh, that's kind of a weird start. And our first class, 8 a.m., not again, not a morning person. Professor Rakoff, who taught Justice Selena Kegan, he was a lifelong Harvard law professor, just recently, brilliant guy, hard to read. Like when he's talking, you're like, I don't think this guy likes me, or if he's challenging me, or if he agrees with me. So hard to get a beat on him. And he asks a question, the cold call, you know, notorious among law students, where basically a professor just looks out across your entire section, ours was 80 people and goes, You you tell me about a thing in the case. Give me your legal opinion in front of everybody right now. And the first person he calls this guy Michael Mitchell. And at the time, I did not know who Michael Mitchell was. Now it turns out Michael Mitchell was a JD PhD and a lovely human being, really like the guy, and admire him a lot, but very academic. I didn't know anything about this dude, never met him before. And Professor Reykkoff asks him a question. First cold call, and this guy talks like a 19th century judge writes. And he goes, you know, accepting a few axioms, A, B, and C, from those positions, one might cost you. And I was like, Oh, I'm in college, like, I have made a severe mistake. I'm gonna be like dead last year, I'm gonna be an intellectual pariah, and like, oh my god, what have I done to myself? So I was like freaking out, I was like, play it cool, man. Like, you've been through the fire before, you'll get through this one. And again, I'm a person who needs, I'm an extrovert to the core, so I need socialization to charge. So me and the other extroverts that night are at a bar. We're drinking, we're having fun. And I think it was my friend Sabrina, kind of just abruptly says to a group, she goes, Did anyone else think Michael Mitchell's cold call was intimidating as hell? And everyone's like, Yeah, oh my god, that guy is a genius. And I was like, Oh, ooh, I can still feel the existential sigh let out like all these years later. So turns out not everybody speaks like a 19th-century Judge of Rights, not everyone's a JD PhD, and it took me quite some time to really wrestle with my first experience of with imposter syndrome since you know, walking onto LBCC and thinking everyone was like stone quoting Shakespeare or Plato or whatever. And I was like, oh, like, but these people actually might be able to do that, and this is actually quite scary. And I wrestled with imposter syndrome for like two solid years, which, as was everybody else, but you know, at the time, no one was really getting into the grid of it. And so I really had to put everything I knew into practice. And even then, and again, this is credit to my peers, I came in solidly middle of the pack, which I'm very proud of because I didn't drop below. Harvard has its own grading system, not getting to the weird letter structure, but I was a perfectly fine, occasionally good and rarely exceptional student. I was happy with that. Like, I was like, look, I made it, I'm cool, I'll get a job. Like, I thought, okay, you know, you got here strictly because you're a smart guy and that's it. There once was a time I was in the Bay Area and I talked to the dean of admissions for Stanford, and I was just dropping by. I got rejected by Stanford, and I kind of had like this nothing to lose moment at the end of our conversation. I was like, You're notorious for shooting down 4.0s from you know Yale or whatever, who have 180s on the LSAT, per back perfect application. What's why? Like, why do you do that? And she said something that was remarkable to me and really stuck with me. She goes, you know, my job as a dean of missions is to pick a well-balanced class such that the class learns more from each other than they do from the professor. That's my job. I want a bunch of racehorses because then like that's all we have. Like, I need life, right? And so it took me a bit to realize, like, okay, I'm not the racehorse. Like, that's I've never been that person, but I bring my own strengths to it. Like, right, like I done a lot of weird things, I've had a lot of pivots, and so you know, come job hunting time, I felt really comfortable because I was like, wow, like I have a resume that doesn't need to include like my high school clubs, I have these strengths, and I see now why I was brought into this situation and how I fit into the ecosystem here. And so, you know, I think that's true in a lot of places. You know, every team needs diversity in not just like you know, the traditional sense of different cultural makeups and backgrounds, but the reason that is a strength and why that matters so much is because you need a diversity of thought, you need people to see a problem differently, a solution differently, a pathway differently. And, you know, that's true as much in humanity as in nature, like monoculture crops aren't great, you know. Inbreeding is notoriously terrible. You get the Habsburgs, right? Like you need diversity from the DNA level up. And so I understood that in a different way when I was there. And that that really helped me find my stride and get into it.
SPEAKER_01Did that help you get over imposter syndrome?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that probably we did 60% of the heavy lifting. The other 10% was the professors being like, I too have imposter syndrome. And like you could hear that, but at that point, like the intensity of imposter syndrome is so strong that, like, even having, you know, uh a venerated law professor saying, I too have imposter syndrome, only gets to you about 10% of the way there. And I remember a woman I admire, great mentor as well. Her name's Jody Freeman, she's an environmental law professor. Shout out to her. She taught me how to be a great writer. And she was in my second year with doing something to send off third-year students, and I snuck into the auditorium and you know, it's like, hey, this is they have like Professor giving their kind of benediction to the class before you go out into the world. And she did something really interesting. She puts her cell phone number up on the whiteboard, and notoriously private person, Professor Freeman, puts her cell phone number up on the whiteboard. She goes, This is my cell phone number. Please don't save it. But text me what you're afraid of. Text me what you're afraid of. And, you know, give the room a minute, 90 seconds, whatever. And then she just starts reading them out. No numbers, just hey, you know, here's what it is. Here's what it is. And it was just so damn consistent. It's like, I'm afraid I'm not good enough. I'm afraid I'm not good enough. I'm afraid I'm not gonna be good at my job. I'm afraid I'm not gonna get a job. I'm afraid they're gonna find out I'm not good. I'm afraid they're gonna find out I was a really good student, but not a good practitioner. And it was just, I'm afraid I'm not good enough in some form, shape, and like, and it was it was just unical.
SPEAKER_01What a great exercise.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's brilliant. It was brilliant, and but I was like, wow, like it really freaking is everybody. And so, you know, there's this kind of idea when if everybody's guilty, nobody's guilty, kind of thing, right? If everybody has imposter syndrome, then like you're just normal. And so that exercise really was like eye-opening in a way a lived experience only could be. Where it's like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're the president of law review, it doesn't matter if you're a high school dropout, like everybody thinks they're not enough. And so I think a lot of imposter syndrome really only functions when you're pushing yourself, right? Like if you know you're being the big fish in a smaller pond, if you know you're not trying, you feel comfortable often because you're like, oh, I have extra capacity. I'm and you don't feel imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is actually, I think, a good signal that you're pushing yourself because you're like, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can do the equivalent of like the freeze solo up, you know, half dome or L capitan or whatever. I don't know if I can do it. And that's when you're actually growing, if you don't know. If you know you're not growing, and so I actually see imposter syndrome now. I was like green light. I'm like, good, it means I'm unsure of myself. I'm putting myself out there because once I started seeing like how low the bar could be, I felt a lot better. But then I was like, okay, I also know I'm not gonna learn standing off against some of these people. And like I've also fought incredibly effective attorneys and been like, okay, yeah, I'm learning a lot. I I've had incredibly wonderful mentors who've taught me a lot. I've been drowned in oceans of red lines where I was like, oh my God, okay, yeah, I gotta learn how to be better. But the ability to take the feedback, the ability to jog yourself and keep going, and the ability to know that you're not great at what you're doing, but you're getting there is scary. It's emotionally uncomfortable, but it's in the same way of like going to the intellectual gym, right? Like you don't run 800 feet and go, oh, I didn't break a sweat. I uh this counts. Like you really see the gains when you're like, man, I just want this to end when you're uncomfortable. And I think because humanity places so much intellect or value on intellect, it's much scarier to be uncomfortable based on your intellect than it is based on, like, say, running at the gym when you're by yourself. So it's a little scarier, but I think it's twice as worth it.
SPEAKER_01So, what do you do now? You graduate, you get a job, where do you land?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I was really lucky and really credit to a lifetime of mentors in this. I was picked as an honors attorney general or deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice. So back when she was attorney general, Kamala Harris had created this thing called the Honors Program, where basically we will hire a limited number of attorneys that year from law school. So normally you have to have like three to five years, carefully beyond the five-year side of experience before you can join the Department of Justice, because it's a litigation shop, right? Like you need to be pretty good at what you do because there's a winner kicks all component to this. And so I got really lucky, and I was one of those eight, and I got hired, and I joined the section in which I was the summer intern, which is the land use and conservation section. Our section represents the land use agency, so the state lands commission, the California parks, the Cal Correa Coastal Commission, and most importantly for the work I do, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, which is a mouthful, we call it CalGIM, and they do oil and gas regulation. So any time you're extracting energy, not refining or anything like that, extracting energy, they're the regulator. So the bulk of my work has been representing them. And so, you know, I don't obviously want to get too much into the matters I do, but you know, being a litigator has been really exciting because having this comes kind of comes full circle, like having scientific document really makes me comfortable with numbers. And so I don't have to flinch when I need to be engaged with the science or become smart quickly on something that's quantified rather than qualified. I once at a trial had to depose or excuse me, cross-examine two experts. One of them was a petroleum engineer, the other guy was actually a climate scientist. And so being able to be like, okay, what are you actually saying and what does that actually mean without it being like, you know, speaking some arcane language was incredibly helpful. And being able to have the comfort of knowing while first doing that in, you know, live at a trial was also really nice. It felt like I was standing on a rock instead of just like being thrown into the ocean. So it's been really helpful there. Same thing, diversity of thought. We have lawyers from every background, and I think that's been incredibly helpful. It's wonderful. I have an incredible team. I joke that if I could clone my boss and have her be my supervisor forever, I would. That's what I do now. And I also teach at Cal State Long Beach due to our relationship, which is another, you know, not to shark you out on your own podcast, but you have also been instrumental in my growth and my comfort in all this.
SPEAKER_01You've been doing this now six years?
SPEAKER_00Six years, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Six years. Do you look ahead? Is more teaching? I mean, you're a great instructor. You've also been a great mentor to our students. You've definitely given back what what's on your future agenda?
SPEAKER_00So it all comes back down to that idea of like impact, right? Like maybe I'm being a little grim, but hey, we're environments.
SPEAKER_01It goes with the territory.
SPEAKER_00Goes with the territory. I think frequently, probably once a day, about the carbon budget, right? And you know, grimsilver lining of the completely unnecessary award, if you're on, is at least like there's economic signals that are shifting us towards more sustainable and cleaner energy and away from oil and gas. There's an upshot there, I guess. But I think about the carbon budget and what my role is in trying to fix that. Now, I will say for environmentalists out there, it is important not to think you're the chosen one. Because if you do, and you're like, oh my God, I am responsible. You didn't create climate change, you didn't pollute the environment for decades before you were probably born. And it is not your responsibility to clean up the problem alone. Like you are but one parrot, and all you can do is do your best. And if you're not gonna do your best if you burden yourself with the like the moral weight of what happened. And I know this because I used to do that. I was like, oh my God, like I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough. That's an unhealthy place to be because it you're taking on the weight of the world that's not fair to you, and that's not going to make you the best advocate you can. The cousin of that, and I think the healthy cousin is what can I do in a fulfilling way that helps me move the needle in a way that's satisfactory to me? And so that's where I'm at in I as I think about the future of my career, is you know, what impact can I have in a way that's like I can live with and be happy with and actually works for me because I'm still doing my best to try my to do my part, right? I don't have to be like the single person who solves climate change. No one on this planet could be. Okay, so I'll start with teaching. Now, teaching surprised me, actually. I didn't think it was gonna be as an emotional of an experience. So I remember, you know, the first time I did it, I was terrified. I was like, oh my god, like I don't know if I can speak for three straight. Like, oh my, what do I what do I talk about? Uh do I actually even know? Of the things I know, so figure all that out. And that was the like first 70% of the semester. And I was like, how do I write a midterm? Oh my god. But I figured out the nuts and bolts of it, and now I'm quite comfortable with that. But the emotional payout, as it were, at the end, when I'm like, oh my god, like I help students, like I help people think about how to be a better environmental advocate. And you know, I've now mentored some of my students, and I had students give me a Lego set of Eva and Wally because I told them when you know the chips are down environmentally or you're feeling overwhelmed by despair, think about all the little things that you were hopeful in life and keep those close because that's the moment you build your what I call your hope Legos and you build your Lego fortress and you think about all the things you're hopeful for, and they gave me a Wally made of Legos. And I was like, that is like I was like moved. I was like, yeah, getting the lump in my thing to say, and so it is an incredibly fulfilling experience. And I actually found it to be probably more impactful than what I do as a lawyer. What I do as a lawyer seems somewhat additive, like I am one person on a team and I'm adding my weight to the team, and that's great. And could collectively we could have a multiplicative effort or results for the environment by virtue of being where we are, and that's wonderful, but I'm still additive to that process versus in the teaching context. I feel by nature of having multiple students that are going to go on to pursue environmental careers, I feel multiplicative and you know, so selfishly, even putting aside like the feeling of teaching, it's nice to be like, I have this impact. So, yeah, I would like to continue teaching. The tricky part of all that is I also see kind of the reality of litigation now, and that at some point has raised questions within me being quite candid. If I spend five years saying, right, arguing a case that may rule the needle incrementally, but it moves it, and I could lose that and make bad law and maybe push the needle back or keep it frozen in place, or I could win it and push it forward, and it maybe takes a go-up on appeal. And if it goes up on appeal, that might be another three years. And we have an eight-year timeline, right? And I think about the skills I have. Is that the best eight years of impact I can make in a way that's healthy and sustainable for me? And I don't know. And so there are times I have the question of what would the alternative be? And that's tricky for a number of reasons. The job market's terrible. One, two, I actually be quite happy with my job. And then three, like, pivots are interesting in that they take different shapes in different parts of your career, right? Like, and so mid-career, it's interesting exploration, but I do admittedly keep that door open to think about like if there's an opportunity where I feel like I could do a greater good in a way that works for me, I think I would have to take it, right? Because I'm still the same teenage idealist and romantic I was then, that like I do feel the need to take like these big swings and like believe in things, even if I know now that I'm probably gonna get the human mess at it once I'm involved in the soup of the whole thing. But I do want to pursue that impact factor. And so, if say, like, hey, you could be someone who helps have a role in creating carbon-free cement production or fusion energy or something that actually, like, regardless of political constraints, moves the needle dramatically, you know, I wouldn't say no to that, frankly. And so there's this kind of like ear-to-the-ground stance I have right now, which is frustrating, I'm sure, because it puts me in this position of like, well, I think I'm gonna continue doing things here, but like, you know, I would hate to miss an opportunity to like feel like ride a unicorn into the sunset romantically where we solve climate change and hold hands and kumbayo. So, yeah, that's the North Star I have. The magnetic north is my impact factor, where that places me on the map, still Southern California, with like a wistful kind of desire to see what else is out there.
SPEAKER_01So, looking back at your path, what would you, knowing what you know now, tell your pre-military self? So that year when between dropping out and joining the military, knowing what you know now, what would you tell that person?
SPEAKER_00Be kinder. I took risk and I'm proud of it, and it paid out. I wouldn't change that. I fought hard to get where I'm at, and you know, there was some exhaustion existentially that like came with that. And I feel like sometimes it's not the years, it's the miles, and I've like traveled quite a bit. I wouldn't change that. I feel like it took me maturity to understand that when you feel like you're on top of the world, be as kind as you can. Act as if you were at the bottom. When you feel at the bottom, stay acting kind even though you're hurt. I've always tried to be a nice person, and I think hopefully most of my friends and colleagues would consider me that, but it would have cost me nothing to be kinder, and I think it would have been better for everyone I ever come across. And then very happy with my career now. So I don't think I'd have any like real fundamental changes. I just I think everyone can be kinder. I wish I had been myself. There's times I know when I thought I was Mr. Awesome and I probably came off as arrogant and I shouldn't have. And there are times I've been hurt and I was probably snippy or dismissive or unwilling to like really meet people where they're at because I didn't have the capacity to travel there, and I wish I had been kinder in those moments.
SPEAKER_01So, what advice would you give college students today? Or and not just in the environmental world, I mean, just across the board. People graduating high school trying to figure it out. You mentioned the job market's not very good.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So I was actually talking with a friend through law school about this last night. If you're in college, I would say take daring risks, right? Apply to the programs you think you're not going to get into, apply to the wild internships, shink for Congress, shim for you know, presidential management fellows. Well, maybe not right now, but like that idea of like really glitzy things, you'll get rejected plenty, but you'll get really good at interviewing, you'll get really good at writing personal statements, so skillful carry with you, and eventually you'll get something. You'll get something. Roll with that, be the best thing you can. Don't be like, oh, I'm being an intern or a fellow or whatever because I want to be something else. No, be like, I want to be at this internship. This is the end of the rails for this internship. So I'm gonna be the best intern I can and really just swing for exhaust yourself, like swing for it. Like you, if you get it, you'll feel good. You'll have a reason to celebrate. If you don't, you'll have a reason to celebrate. You'll be like, oh, I didn't get it and go out with your friends. But swing for it, man. Like this is the time in your life where you're not, you don't have a mortgage, you don't have, you probably don't have kids, like you don't have the things that like kind of naturally make people a little bit more conservative, not politically, but conservative in like the risk taking. You have youth doing the heavy lifting, like swing, swing big and just see what happens. The reason you're probably not going to is because you're like, I'm not gonna get in, right? It's not worth my time. It is worth your time, even if you don't get it, because you're practicing, and that's a life skill that you'll need for the rest of your life. You learn to stand up for yourself professionally, you're learning the advocacy, but more importantly, what if you do get it? And if you scoot enough times, you're gonna get something, and then from that thing, you'll get more things. So, like, the truly that's what I would do. As I understand it, a lot of high schoolers will like, well, AI is actually pretty sophisticated right now. It is, it's not going away, it doesn't seem to be. What am I gonna do professionally? I don't know, but you don't need to know that right now either. And the economy will change as you are in training. What you can do is make yourself smart, disciplined, and skillful. So do those things. If you're gonna be a plumber, figure out how to actually get practice and do that meaningfully, like actually go for it. If you want to go to college, sometimes people say it's not worth it the way it was. I disagree with that. I think even if you don't get a job in your major in the intellectual rigor and actually like learning the discipline and the practices, as I mentioned earlier, that got me to where I am, also intrinsically valuable, even though you don't get to put it on a piece of paper in the same way you might a degree. Because what AI won't be able to do is in a lot of ways take the human out of the loop. Now, it might require someone to be like, hey, I'm the co-thinker with AI, right? Like I'm gonna work with AI, and we're using AI in the labor force as much as any other person. Make yourself the good co-thinker. Like you still have a human brain. The value of that is not diminishing, regardless of how good AI it gets. So refine your judgment. And that gets back to it, ain't gonna be coming from social media, it ain't gonna be coming from self-doubt, and it ain't gonna be coming from the existential dread and anxiety that social media forms.
SPEAKER_01Steven, thank you so much. That was all great advice, and thanks for sharing your story. Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. A Keystone Network, where helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Miner at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.