## Introduction

Tom: Hey everyone. Welcome to the pod. I'm Tom Barry.

Antonia: I'm Antonia Lopes.

Lorenzo: And I'm Lorenzo Lopes, and this is The Reality Gap. This is the show where we talk about the spaces between paychecks and purpose, between the hustle and the burnout, and what work promises and what it actually really feels like. Today's just introducing ourselves. We're gonna have a quick segment about each of our stories with a little bit of sprinkling for future episodes. Welcome.

Tom: Thanks Lorenzo.

Lorenzo: Well, I'm excited to talk to you all today. Present you all to the listeners out there. We're pretty interesting. Antonia is my little sister and she has her own unique journey out here. And Tom, you also have 10 years of career experience.

Tom: Almost. It's a decade. I mean, that's like a tenth of a century.

---

## What is "The Gap"?

Lorenzo: I want to also preface this that the main theme of each episode will be addressing a gap. And what a gap is—it's an area that we find to be a little bit gray, understanding ourselves in the work culture, figuring out our place where work and life is actually balanced. We're exploring those things throughout this whole podcast. We might bring in a unique guest to bring a different perspective or have small episodes talking about networking.

Tom: I'll say also, I think the original reality gap that we were thinking about when we started this was the gap between what we all were told work would be for us, especially when we were younger, maybe in college or early career, and what we realize it is. Not that that's bad, but there's a gap between a lot of what we expect and what we're told will happen and what really comes to pass.

---

## Meet Tom Barry

Tom: A little bit about me. I'm 33 years old. I live in Boston. We all went to the same college—we all went to GW. Antonia, you're graduating this spring, right?

Antonia: Yes, I am in May.

Tom: So yeah, I've been working for 10 years. I've had five different jobs at different companies. I thought I was going to do one thing when I was in college and ended up doing another, and it's kind of evolved. I don't think that's too unique because these days people have many different careers. We job hop, we do all that, and I've done all that.

I'm really excited because Lorenzo, you're at a pivotal point in your journey and Antonia, you're at another point in your journey. If there's anything that I hope people get out of this podcast, it's a greater sense of agency. It's a sense that you can do it. It may not be the performative kind of LinkedIn hype, hustle, grindset culture that everyone sees these days, or the TikTok influencer or Instagram entrepreneur that's so cringe.

Lorenzo: They're great videos though.

Tom: You gotta get jacked, right?

Lorenzo: Yeah, you got to go to boot camp. You got to get jacked. You got to only surround yourself with negativity so you can grow.

Tom: The negative reinforcement—we're gonna do a whole episode on how to use negative self-talk. No, I'm kidding.

Lorenzo: Yeah, it will be filmed in the woods shirtless and we're going to be carrying logs the whole time.

Tom: Yeah, chopping wood is gonna be a big part of this podcast.

Antonia: Exactly.

Tom: Anyway, I just want people to get agency out of it. If someone writes in in six months and says, "You really helped me," or "You made me laugh about something I was going through," then I think it'll be rewarding.

---

## What Does "Work" Mean to You?

Lorenzo: Tom, in a phrase, what comes to mind when you think of the word work?

Tom: Like rapid immediate thing that comes to mind? Paycheck.

Lorenzo: Do you think it's always money-driven?

Tom: No, but I don't think I'd be working in the same way I would if I didn't need to make money to live. So I might be doing something else. I might still be doing something entrepreneurial or creative, but I might not be doing it as much as nine to five, five days a week. There's an economic element to this. We all got to pay rent and we all got to be somewhat motivated about what we do. Otherwise it's going to be hard—you're going to kind of dread getting up. We spend a lot of time at work, and that's okay, but how do you make it worthwhile? How do you go beyond just the old cliche of "follow your passions"?

The reality gap for me—I thought work was going to be one thing. I was very fixed on making sure that I did the right thing, a job that people would go, "Ooh, that's impressive." And it didn't necessarily work out because it put me in this performative cycle for the first two years of my career that ruined a relationship I was in, a long-term relationship with my boyfriend at the time. Made me very unhappy, made me very stressed, and then gained weight—the whole thing.

There's a certain amount of agency that comes with eventually making enough money that you're able to feel okay. You're able to save. Hopefully people see that and they're able to go from there.

Lorenzo: I think it's valid, especially in these times where uncertainty is so high. That ability of just being okay is something that's undervalued. I think we are in this era of everyone needing to be the best that they can be so that they can post on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook and show that they are the exception.

Tom: It's like this optimization culture.

---

## Meet Antonia Lopes

Tom: Antonia, tell us about yourself. Give the audience what they want.

Antonia: I'm a senior in college, studying marketing with a concentration in hospitality, event management, and tourism studies. I love what I do, but right now I'm at this point where I'm figuring out what I want to do. There's a lot of uncertainty ahead of me. As much as I try to be someone who's very "live in the moment" and free spirited, I'm very much not like that to my core. I like to have a plan and I don't like that I don't know where my destination is currently.

I relate a lot to you, Tom, in the sense that it's really difficult not to compare yourself. That's kind of what I've been suffering with because Tom mentors some of my roommates, and I have five other roommates who are all barracudas within their own fields of study.

Lorenzo: But you're a shark, you know?

Tom: I think you're right up there with them.

Antonia: I hope so, but it's hard not to compare yourself to your roommates. I try to use it as motivation too. I want people to hear what I do and think that my job is awesome. I want people to think, "Damn, she has an awesome job" or "She's a badass." But it doesn't come without its challenges. Right now I'm in this rut where I feel like everyone else is moving at 100 miles an hour, and I'm just kind of stuck in the mud a little bit. But we're figuring it out.

Lorenzo: What brought you to be part of this podcast?

Antonia: Initially it wasn't about my career path. I love podcasts. I had a podcast in high school that took up my entire second semester of senior year. I'm super passionate about it because I just love people. I love chatting with people and hearing people's stories. What we're doing here is sharing that—learning about people's stories and talking about it in a professional setting. That's what drew me to working with Tom and then later with you, Lo. But yeah, it will be really nice on my resume for sure.

---

## Finding Balance: Career Anxiety vs. Real Connection

Tom: What do you want people to take away from this?

Antonia: I hope people listen and feel like they're not alone. But we have to be careful about navigating this conversation because it is really stressful and can be very anxiety inducing. Oftentimes people just stay away from this conversation. My roommates—although they're all barracudas in their own right—we've made this rule that we don't talk about what's next together because it's anxiety inducing for all of us. When we're together, we don't want to talk about that.

That sometimes makes me worried for the future of this pod. Will people want to listen? Will they feel like they're gaining knowledge versus just finishing an episode and being stressed out and worried that they're not doing enough?

Tom: You want to make sure we don't fall into that trap. I think if we don't make people laugh, or at least internally giggle, we're not doing our job. The reality gap is also kind of ridiculous. We come in with all these expectations put on ourselves by ourselves, by other people, or what we think should be the way it is, and it doesn't turn out to be. It's not a straight line. Forget whether you're at the same job forever or the same career forever—it's just not a straight line. And it's kind of absurd and funny when you think about it.

---

## Passion vs. Professionalism

Antonia: A gap I'd want to talk about is passion versus professionalism. My generation focuses a lot on mental health, and I think a lot of people in my generation believe that life should be enjoyed—it's not all about sitting at a desk job. There's a big rise now in people deciding to quit their jobs and go soul searching and travel the world. As much as I think that's awesome, I also think—do we stop to think about what we need to be able to do that? For better or worse, it's money.

Tom: Or agency. I always think of money as agency. But this is not a financial podcast.

Antonia: It would be interesting to talk about the gap between people who focus on that paycheck and getting jobs that maybe aren't their passion but pay well, versus the people who say, "You know what, money isn't everything. I'm just gonna backpack with $100 in my bank account and see where that gets me."

Tom: Not everyone's job is corporate. Not everyone's job is white collar. But yeah, I think that's totally legitimate.

---

## Meet Lorenzo Lopes

Lorenzo: As Tom said, I'm 24. I just finished my master's at Tufts, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. My master's was in nutrition science. I triple concentrated in research methods, epidemiology, and nutrition innovation.

Tom: God, the faces you're making as he's talking about this.

Antonia: He practices every day in the mirror.

Tom: Are you dressed up in a little suit, Lorenzo, when you do this?

Lorenzo: Yes, actually I'm in a lab coat this whole time.

---

## Job Searching in a Tough Economy

Lorenzo: I'm in a current job search right now. I've been job searching for the last six months. I had a federal fellowship back in February that got axed in March due to the current climate in the United States.

Tom: It got DOGEd. I mean, we don't have to dance around it. The government—you got dumped. Elon Musk came in and axed those fellowships and you were one of the tens of thousands of people whose federal jobs have been impacted. That's legitimate and you shouldn't shy away from that.

Lorenzo: That happened and I've been kind of scrambling just to figure out my career. I went to the food corporation side and that has been a great learning experience for me, and also the consulting side. Right now I'm just trying to figure out where my next step is.

I'm taking this podcast as kind of like a guinea pig experience—trying to preach what I'm also practicing, but also trying to learn as much. As Antonia hinted, her roommates are being mentored by Tom. I'm also being mentored by Tom and it is extremely helpful.

Tom: God, this Tom guy sounds really great.

Lorenzo: Trust me, this episode that we're going to only have for an hour that we're praising you is going to be delightful for the listeners.

Antonia: Too bad if any of them actually meet you, it's gonna be such a letdown.

Tom: The checks are in the mail, guys. Keep going. That's good job. No, they're not in the mail. Sorry. No checks right now.

---

## Why This Podcast Matters

Lorenzo: This podcast is intriguing to me because I love listening to podcasts and both of these two people I'm co-hosting with say that I have a podcasting voice. So why not put it to use?

Tom: You do have a podcasting voice. People say I have a podcasting voice and I do not believe that. You've got the best voice out of the three of us, I gotta say, Lorenzo.

Lorenzo: This podcast that I'm excited to work on—the research has actually given me a lot of perspective on my own life. I also hope to lay down the foundation for people that are in the same situation that I am in, which is job searching at this pivotal time in the United States. And it's weird.

Tom: It's a hard economy.

Lorenzo: It's a hard economy, but it's also such a weird time because you think you come to the United States, you listen about how you can always find a job and there's always work to be done. Then you apply for those positions and they're limited or they're ghost positions. There's so much background to applying to a job that is not told to you upfront—you have to figure it out throughout this journey.

This is where I think the listener will benefit the most. We're trying to uncover that backroom talk, that networking connection, trying to figure out if a position's real or fake, or even understanding how to fit yourself into positions—how to market yourself, how to create a portfolio. This podcast is opinion-based and we're giving our advice as much as possible, but we're also trying to make the listener think about how to go about their journey in finding a job. Because let me tell you, it is a long one. It's a difficult one. And it's practically like having a job.

Tom: Finding a job is a job, 100%.

---

## Work, Life, and Identity

Lorenzo: When I think of work, I think nine to five. Some people either live for work or work to live.

Tom: I live to eat. That's not work related.

Lorenzo: I'm someone who attaches really easily. So if I do something, I get really honed in and just do it. I'm a person that lives for work if work needs to be lived for.

Tom: Careful of that though. That's what happened to me in my first two years. I lived for work and it did not work out.

Lorenzo: I think this is an area I'd like to venture into—exploring future gaps like how do you find your purpose in work? I'm trying to figure out my positioning and what I want to do for the rest of my life. I have a mind map and a 30-year plan of what I'd like to achieve, but for this first four years post-masters, what do I need to focus on? That's scary to me. I want to talk to people who have found positions that they've absolutely hated and how they grew from that.

Tom: What we've all kind of touched on without saying it is identity. Work, identity—work is a big part of everyone's lives. Time-wise, energy-wise, motivation, the reward, what you put into it, what you get out of it. A lot of us are told that it should be a big part of our identity. You were hinting at this, Antonia—Gen Z, with no disparagement on my part, is questioning that. And I actually agree. I think millennials are starting to wake up to that fact too.

A lot of times I respect the Gen Z folks I've worked with at the office who are willing to put something down and walk away to go to a yoga class, because they saw from maybe their older siblings or their parents that—2008 recession—work was not a guarantee and they'll drop you as quickly as they want.

---

## Looking Ahead: Economic Uncertainty and Resilience

Antonia: Whether or not we're nearing another recession is kind of a conversation that's on the table right now. I think Gen Z, because of this mentality, will survive. We will surpass this phase if another recession occurs.

Tom: You'll survive. It's not the end of the world.

Antonia: I also think it will help that we have this base of putting mental health first. We want to be successful and work hard, but we also understand that work isn't everything. If people start to lose their jobs, maybe they won't think of it as "Oh my gosh, my life is over" but instead use a growth mindset: "This happened out of my control. How can I pivot from this, continue to be successful, and potentially exercise something I've been wanting to do forever but couldn't because of my previous job?"

Tom: You're right, but it's also scary. And I think Lorenzo can relate to that.

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Ep02. Healthy Crying, SSRIs, And Federal Prison

Ep01. The Gap Between Career Expectations And Reality