Alex

In the last episode, we considered the support structures for students with IEPs, 504s, and the like in college. This episode we’ll extend the concept of support to the general student population. What are the best ways to support students at college in their stress so they can get better grades, feel energetic and focused, and actually enjoy the college experience? I’m joined today by college success coach Dale Troy.

Dale founded her company, Crush College Stress, in 2018 to help transform the college experience for students who are experiencing difficulty by providing them new habits and tools to be able to thrive in higher education. With an expert college coach in place, students can learn to manage their stress, be more productive, get better grades, enjoy extracurricular life, and excel in their social lives. She provides peace of mind to parents, ease of access to students, an array of strategies for students to best manage their time, including a depth of knowledge on wellness practices such as healthy eating, exercise, and time management. Dale has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a graduate degree from Yale Law School and brings a decade’s worth of experience in coaching and a lifetime’s worth of experience in raising her three daughters. 

Alex

Dale, welcome to the show. 

Dale

Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here. 

Alex

So tell me a little bit about your career history and how you got into coaching. You have kind of an interesting career trajectory as you went to Yale Law School and now find yourself in consulting. So tell me a little bit about that. 

Dale

Okay. Well, it does sound a little odd if you just looked on paper, but I kind of view it as the natural progression because I really wanted to go to law school. I worked really hard in college, so I know all about the stress of the college experience, and in fact, I was super stressful. My mom tells me now that she doesn’t know how I made it to college, so I know how to overcome a lot of challenges. 

So I went to law school thinking that was it. And I did not like practicing law because it was all about documents, and I really like helping people. From there, I became a headhunter for helping lawyers find jobs that they really liked more, and that was really a coaching job. So then I was really in a coaching role, and I loved that. I did that for ten years. 

Then I was having my kids, and it became obvious to me that I could not be a headhunter that was requiring so much of my time. And I decided to do something I could do from home. But I also cared a lot about and I became a health coach because I cared so much about how you live your life, how it affects everything. And I knew that I was a stressed person, and I wanted to figure out how to be less stressed and how to just feel better physically, and I wanted to also be able to impart that to my kids. 

So as they went to college, as you know, there’s this increase in stress and anxiety on college campuses, and I was kind of inserting myself into that and helping them get through college. All three of my daughters went to Yale. 

Alex

Oh, really? I didn’t know that. 

Dale

Yeah, we’re a total Yale family. I met my husband there. Anyway, so some friends of mine said, no, your daughters are doing okay, but my daughter is not. I know you’re a coach. Can you help them? I said, sure, I’ll try. It was before Zoom. I was on the phone with this one particular girl from Boston College, and I loved working with her. It just felt so good about being able to help her just tweak something that to me were so simple, but to her, she had no idea. She wanted to be a vegan, and she wasn’t eating enough protein, and she didn’t know what to do, and so she wasn’t feeling well. She also wasn’t getting enough sleep. I mean, nothing was really working very well. 

So from that experience, which only lasted maybe a month or so, she started feeling so much better. I felt good about what I was doing, and it occurred to me that there are a lot of kids on college campus that don’t have access to my background, and they’re kind of floundering, not feeling well, not knowing what to do. Maybe they don’t feel bad enough to look for a doctor. So that’s when I decided, you know what? Maybe I can feel a need. So, I was focused really on the healthy living aspect because of my health coach background. But over time, as I work with more kids, I realize it’s more than that.

 So now I have a whole program called College Success Formula where one part is healthy living. 

Alex

Got it. Wow. So, that’s a very interesting track. So you have a checklist that you have on your website that I saw as far as wellness, and it seems to be almost like a first step for you. Do you consider that kind of a foundational piece of your coaching for college students? 

Dale

Well, as we were just talking about, I started out really focusing on the healthy habits. So that’s what this really is. Like Seven Habits to Crush College Stress. So that was, like, one of my original freebies to give people, because I thought, you know, this will at least get them in the right frame of mind to realize that what they’re doing daily is going to really affect how they feel.

So in terms of my whole program, The College Success Formula, it’s only really one part of it, but it’s an important part. So I’ve kept it on my website. 

Alex

Okay, so, I mean, you know, you got this checklist, but what do you sort of do when you encounter a new student, take me through the sort of the first steps when you start off with a new client like that. 

Dale

Well, I market, so to speak, to parents. I have a Facebook group for parents that’s called College Parent Support Community. I have something like 580 maybe people now, so it’s grown  over time. I love the group. So I’m in there helping parents deal with what they’re dealing with, with the college students. But I work with the college students, not with the parents. So what basically happens if a parent decides they want to talk to me about what’s going on with their child? I will help them understand how I can work with the child and then I meet the child to make sure the child is on board and they want to work with me. Luckily, that has never been a problem, but you never know.