Episode 12: Matt Holstein

February 18, 2019

A lot of my life has been fighting against learned helplessness. In middle school and high school, kids just like to rip on you for being who you are [laughs maniacally], so my response to that was just to be quiet and hardly make myself stand out. Just be in the corner. And eventually you just start becoming the person people see you as. I had a hugely external locus of control. At some point, I just made a decision on whether I was either going to keep being someone I knew I wasn’t, or I was going to do something about it. In the last couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time setting the foundation to become a more honest version of myself. Getting involved in stuff, doing my best, you know. I just want to be a dependable, happy person. I want to be a rock for other people. Seeing other people happy genuinely makes me happy.

I’ve come to terms with a lot of things by being here. Med school just makes you come to terms with things you do and don’t like about yourself. Like, I’ve learned that I will put in the work to get up early, go to the gym, do the things I need to do for the day, get things moving, whatever. I’ve learned that I need to surround myself with people and ideas that are different from mine. People seem to think that their ideas, like politics and so on, are something like an extension of who they are, and they’re afraid to have any ideas challenged, but I don’t think that should be the case. You have to question yourself, you have to interrogate your ideas. You have to let the rubber hit the road. But I’ve also learned that if it’s in the middle of the day and everyone’s in the library and I’m studying and I’m bored, I’m going to get up and go talk to somebody [insanely loud laughter].I’ve learned that it’s worthwhile for me to readjust my heart and my study habits, knowing that I’m going to want to talk to people. I’m going to be by the red couches, laughing, fooling around, getting to know you. I don’t know if that’s a testament to me or the people here, but it’s worth it every time.

Family is one of the most important things to me, but my own relationships with my family took a lot of time to reach where it is now. In the past, there was a lot of tension on my dad’s side, between him and his parents. There was like no contact, and they lived literally two minutes away from my home. They put in a lot of work to bury the hatchet. It taught me some serious life lessons about forgiveness, and just how strong of a force that is. If they can work past that, if they can look past all the misgivings and see what’s really valuable in each other, then I can work past issues in my own relationships. And now I have such a great relationship with them. So I don’t believe in holding grudges. You can always find a way.

What are your 5 Most Recently Played Artists?
Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mayer, LVTHER, Led Zeppelin, Dispatch

If you could have any superpower, which one would you choose?
Never needing to sleep - think of how much you can get done if you had seven or eight extra hours in a day.

Pick someone or something from NYMC to give a shoutout too!
I want to shout out all the people that I get to work with on Senate and Scribe. They really hold it down and put in work. They deserve to be recognized for that.

If someone wanted to talk to you, they should lead with…:
Honestly, anything, but if you really want to get me going, let’s talk fitness or video games.