Join Jocelyn Wright, our Director of Community and Market Development, for a conversation with Tiffany Chapman, SRM's Marketing Director, as part of our new Extra Credit series spotlighting working adults who are continuing (or starting) their education while working.
Our first spotlight is shining on Tiffany. In addition to directing our Marketing team, Tiffany is a lifelong learner who holds four degrees and is working on her fifth. Today, Tiffany is sharing why learning new things sparks joy, how she juggles work, life, and school, and how her continued pursuit of knowledge has shaped her worldview.
Jocelyn Wright
Tell me about your relationship with school. How long have you been juggling school and work?
Tiffany Chapman
When I started college, I knew going in that I'd have to be working while I did it. I didn't consider working to be a barrier to getting my schoolwork done. I've never seen it that way; I just saw it as "I need to go to school, and I need to work." It's a balance that's always been part of my adult life and even my high school life. Right now, I'm working on my fourth graduate degree and it will finish after this year. After that, I might do another PhD—that's what I'm talking to a trusted faculty member about right now.
Jocelyn Wright
Fourth graduate degree? What are all the degrees you have earned, and what are you working on right now?
Tiffany Chapman
My collection includes a Bachelor of Arts in English from Ohio University, a Master of Arts in Children's Literature from Hollins University, a PhD in Mass Communications from Ohio University, an MFA in Creative Writing – Fiction from Concordia University, St. Paul, and I'm working on a Master of Arts in Biography and Memoir from CUNY Graduate Center.
Jocelyn Wright
That's an impressively long and diverse list. How do you pick what you're going to study?
Tiffany Chapman
The way I pick what I'm going to study next has everything to do with my many neurodivergent ways of thinking and what I feel compelled to study at that time. It has nothing to do with advancing my career. It's all for joy for me. It's an investment I make in myself because I want to keep learning.
Jocelyn Wright
What about learning brings you joy?
Tiffany Chapman
When I started my first graduate degree, I started learning about things I didn't know people studied critically. I never realized you could academically study basically anything until I found out about the children's literature degree. It opened up this whole other way of thinking for me that just continued me down the path.
That's where the joy comes from. It's knowing that there are people out there in the world right now who are writing a dissertation on, say, Taylor Swift or a forgotten tomb in Egypt that someone found last year. I have read some fascinating research on things like how toothpicks were invented. It was from an academic journal; it was part of someone's thesis about everyday objects and that nobody had a sense of where they come from or how long they've been around. The joy comes from finding out there's so much we don't know that we can legitimately study if we have the right pathways to explore it. For me that pathway is simply continually going to school because having the structure helps me retain the information better.
Jocelyn Wright
How does what you learn connect back to your career, even if that's not your primary goal in continuing your education?
Tiffany Chapman
To me, marketing functions in my thought process and my working life as this extension of having an understanding of critical theory, literary theory, and the way that certain systems work. It's a lot to do with the post-structuralists and Jean Baudrillard and how much he talked about consumerism and Judith Butler and her approaches to consumerism through a feminist lens. It gets me excited about how we present what we do to an audience as marketing. My approach to marketing stems from everything I've studied because it's all an extension of this.
Jocelyn Wright
What's the most interesting thing you're learning in your current program?
Tiffany Chapman
It's a unique program. I don't think there's anything else like it. It's a master's degree in the study and writing of biography and/or memoir depending on who you are and what your focus is. I'm currently working on a biography that's about the two sisters who made up the Dixie Cups, the 1960s girl group. It's been amazing to learn about ways to write about peoples' lives and the ethics involved. My thesis, which I will turn into a publishable piece, is well underway. I'm hoping to have it done by December for the purpose of the degree and then spend the next year revising it and getting it out to publish. I want to get it into the world because these people are very understudied. I've learned some amazing and horrific things about the experience of being a songwriter and musical artist in the 60s, especially as a woman and especially as a Black woman.
Jocelyn Wright
How do you balance your studies with working full-time?
Tiffany Chapman
I do get asked that question a whole lot, and I want to be very honest with you. I don't know. I watch TV shows and make sure I'm current on stuff that I like, I go out and do things with my friends and family often, and I spend parts of every day doing things just with my pets to make sure they're happy or whatever. A lot of my stress relief is cooking and grocery shopping.
I honestly think it's just something to do with some way that I've always been wired. If there's something I want to accomplish or something I want to try, I make the time for it. I have people in my life who are like, "You can't make time!" but you can schedule out your time. Plus I don't have kids. That makes a big difference for a lot of people.
"So I am a childless pet-having cat lady (plus dog) who goes to school full-time, works full-time, and also writes novels, and I also have a life. How? I'm not quite sure, but I make it work."
Jocelyn Wright
Okay, I have to ask: Do you sleep?
Tiffany Chapman
I actively make sure to get sleep. I make sure to get a minimum of 6.5 hours a night, and I try for a full 8 hours. That's something I really had to work on in my grown-up adult life.
Jocelyn Wright
How has being a lifelong learner shaped you?
Tiffany Chapman
There's two ways. The first is I now recognize very clearly and fully that college is not for everyone. It's not necessarily a pathway to a career for everyone, and it's important to think about whether college is the move or whether a tech program or a skilled trades program or an apprenticeship is a better fit. That is something that took me a long time to learn. I always thought everyone should go to college because that's the only way you could get smart until someone called me "certified smart" or "smart on paper." I said, "I like that, I acknowledge what you're saying, and I know that people who do garbage pickup make more money than I do." There are things like skilled trades, apprenticeships, and entrepreneurship that have to be threaded differently than a traditional college path. People will succeed highly whether they go to college or not. That was important for me to learn because I had this stigma during undergrad that everyone should go to college. I know now that's not true.
The second most valuable thing I've gained is understanding underserved communities, whether it's teaching students who are at a local school because they couldn't afford to go anywhere else or through volunteering. I have dedicated a percentage of my time and energy to doing whatever I can to help incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people access education, whether that's completing a high school diploma or going to college or learning a skilled trade. It's really important to me to leverage anything I can from my experience to help these people feel less lost and like they have access to at least something while they're in this situation. Maybe they deserve to be in it; maybe they don't. There's a lot of statistics around innocent people in prison, a lot of statistics about people with heavier sentences than they ought to have. There's a whole lot of statistics around the positive outcomes that appear when incarcerated individuals have access to education. This includes getting out early, leaving and going on to a successful life, and reducing recidivism.
Those are the two things I have learned that are most important to me. It's not about organization, research, data—the things that are important to do well in a class. It's about the things I learned adjacent to being in so many different colleges for so many degrees. Those underserved communities are the ones that really stood out to me.
More from Extra Credit
Extra Credit will keep spotlighting working adults navigating education on their own terms, in their own words. If the question of whether continued education is worth it is on your mind from a different angle, Jocelyn's Is College Worth It? takes that question on directly, with more installments on the way.
About the Contributor
Tiffany Chapman
Marketing Director, Six Red Marbles
Tiffany Chapman, SRM's Marketing Director, has worked in higher ed and higher ed–adjacent roles since 2005, while she was an undergrad at Ohio University. She's a degree collector, a part-time professor, an amateur musician, a writer, and—at the heart of it all—a marketer. Jack, her dog pictured here, would tell you that in her spare time, Tiff finds time to be outside and deep in nature, loves to travel, advocates for incarcerated and recently released individuals seeking education, and volunteers with wildlife and feral cat support organizations.
