Canvas Rebel Interview

Meet Tracy McHugh

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tracy McHugh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tracy below.

Hi Tracy, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

Something I believe our education systems could do better is preparing students for life and gearing to the child’s strength from a younger age. When I was coming up through K-12, I am sure there were vocational schools but it wasn’t really an option discussed, most kids just went to their public high school. I remember there were home-ec and wood shop classes and then there were more traditional academics such as math, history, science and English, but there weren’t classes on many necessities in adulthood that aren’t as easy to grasp. For instance, there were several math courses such as Algebra, Statistics, Calculus, and Geometry but what about a class to teach students about 401ks, savings, budgeting, interest rates on bank accounts, and investing for the average person. I didn’t learn about compounding until way later than I want to admit. When I was starting out professionally, all I knew was I wasn’t making a lot of money so I pushed off learning about investing and putting money towards my 401k until a point when I was making more money. But even if I put away $50 every pay period for 15 years, who knows what kind of earning potential that investment would have had.

Also, I went to a liberal arts college and my high school experience was very much the same so I was taking several maths, sciences, histories, and English courses. It was evident from pretty early on that I didn’t have an aptitude for the math and science courses. I think my high school might have modified this after I left to let kids have more of a focus in addition to a few foundation courses, but when I was going to school I wasted so much time on these classes that have played no part in my adult life. Since doing poorly in Geometry my Sophomore year of high school, I have not used it in my adult life. I always loved my writing and English courses and excelled in it. If only I had that structure and guidance in place to have mentors pointing me in that direction and the ability to take additional writing courses, I may have gotten into writing a lot sooner.

Lastly, I think we are doing a bit better at this now than when I was in school but teaching kids languages from a younger age. I didn’t start studying a second language until I was in high school. Little kids are like sponges and there is definitely benefit to implementing that at a younger age.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I never knew how to condense over 3 decades into a few lines, but here it goes. I grew up in a small town in North Jersey, just outside of NYC. I say this to set the tone as Broadway was a big part of my life growing up. Unfortunately, I don’t have a singing or dancing bone in my body but I am a regular patron of the theater and minored in theater in college. My shining moment on the small state was as a tree stump in my college production of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

I was pretty lost after college, I traveled around a bit and moved around a bit before it wasn’t cute anymore and did the one thing I never thought I would do: get a job in corporate America. This was a bit before Digital Nomads and Content Creators were known professions. I kept at that corporate life until the pandemic, when like many, I reassessed what I was doing and what I really wanted. Trying to fill the isolation with something positive as well as missing travel, I started a travel blog. When the world started opening back up, it was somewhat back to reality and for the next three years I ebbed and flowed with posting to my blog and social media. In the beginning of 2023, I reassessed again when realizing the corporate life still wasn’t fulfilling me but how much I really did love writing. So, I revamped my website and content, started collaborating with other bloggers, and even have done a few interviews such as this, and was featured on a podcast. While I still work full-time, now I ensure I carve out time for my writing and creative side.

For the rest of the conversation with CANVAS REBEL, check out the full post.