Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Aaron Tillman. I serve as the Assistant Director of Student Athlete Development here at Florida State University. I work with all of our student athletes doing career readiness programming, really geared from a social emotional approach. And we really just try to prepare our student athletes for life after college. I started at FSU in 2018 as an academic advisor just transitioning from FAMU into the same position. The work that I do is unlike anything else. It is creative. It is a place where you can meet student athletes where they are, but really, truly, intentionally create opportunities for their development and their awareness. The challenging part of being a student athlete is that you're always around your team and you're always around others that are like you. We try to break up the monotony, if you will, of what they experience, so that they can engage with others that make them uncomfortable. How can we make them more uncomfortable so that they can be comfortable in the future, if you will? I would want people to normalize who they are. And I think that they want to know that they are very great at what they do, but they're also people and want to be seen as that. They're intersectional identity. There's more that meets the eye as Transformers would say. For me, it is the ability to see someone's life changed and transformed, seeing someone who is having challenges, may not know what direction they want to go and being able to just walk with them through their journey. That keeps me encouraged to know that this is only a season of their life. And though it's just a season, it is such an important season that is preparing and building the foundation for the rest of their life. This is Aaron Tillman, also known as AT and so thankful for this conversation. Thank you for having me. You're listening to voices that inspire.