Dumbing Down

The feedback I keep getting in my job is that I need to communicate better.

I'm told that I explain things too much, that my emails are too long and detailed, that I need to "consider my audience" when I write things.

Here's what I actually do when I write things: I think about what my audience needs to know, I express my opinions, and I back up my opinions with facts and best practices I've learned about from other schools. I learned a long time ago that my opinions will not be taken seriously if I don't back them up with evidence from other places -- it is not enough for me to think something.

I know that I'm not good on my feet. When I go to meetings, I sometimes stutter and over-explain myself. I ask a lot of questions to try to really understand what's being discussed. I know I annoy people when I do those things, but I feel like I'm not doing my job if I don't fully understand something that affects my work. I've seen some technical people gloss over a detail that will affect the non-techies in the room, and I ask questions to clarify. A mixed blessing of this is that I don't get invited to a whole lot of meetings.

So I prefer to write. Emails, memos, documentation -- I can order my thoughts and, most importantly, go back and edit what I say before anyone can see it. I can't do that when I run my mouth. I write out what I'm going to say on my outgoing voicemail message, for crying out loud.

When I write, I try to hew to the middle of a broad spectrum of understanding. I try to back up what I'm saying without getting too far into the weeds, but I also don't want to insult anyone's intelligence by getting too simplistic. We are all adults here, after all. I feel like anyone can extract what they need from my writing and leave the rest, but I don't want to miss anything. The feedback I'm getting, though, is that I'm not making things simple enough. I'm making people read too much.

I'm willing to dumb-down my writing only to a point. For better or for worse, I will continue to demand a certain level of attention to what I have to say, at least from the people who are allegedly my supervisors. If I can't talk about my work in great detail with the people who stand in judgement of my performance, then I don't see how either of us can be effective. Currently, I work for and with people who are not technical, so I have no one with whom I can really talk about my work. This is incredibly isolating and frustrating.

I remember a long time ago, listening to Slate's Culture Gabfest, when they got correspondence from a listener who said they should stop using so many big words. They got a good chuckle out of that, said, "Yeah, that's not happening," and moved on to the next missive. Suddenly I realized that there are workplaces (outside academia) where using big words and explaining things in detail are considered good, perhaps even encouraged.

Unfortunately, despite the Rise of the Nerd, most of the world is still like junior high, where it's not cool to be smart, and no one wants to hear any interesting words. I just can't believe it took me this long to realize that.

Blood is thicker...

I am an only child.

I am acutely aware of this as I grow older, as do my parents. They are all I have of my personal history, the only people who have been there from the beginning. And they are aging at an alarming rate. My parents never thought it terribly important for me to get to know my extended family, and my father's alcoholism and my mother's need for a perfect family facade kept them from socializing much at all. I didn't meet my great-uncle, who lived only half an hour from me my whole childhood, until I was in college. It just never occurred to my dad to take me along when he visited. I have cousins, but they remember me as a precocious six-year-old about whom my mother would babble on and on ad nauseam.

What I do have is very close family friends who lived across the street from us, starting when I was ten years old. They haven't been there from the very beginning, but they've been around the longest. When I think of my family, they and their relatives are part of it, and the children of that family are the closest things I have to siblings. We've rolled our eyes about our parents, wandered freely between our two houses, seen each other through important milestones. They were my best friends, and I'm happy to say that they're still in my life. My children and I spent an afternoon with them two weeks ago, celebrating birthdays.

Oddly, though, when I come home after one of these visits, I feel sad. They are complete in themselves; they don't need me. My "pseudo-sister" has a real brother; my "pseudo-brother" has a real sister. Our children get along like cousins, and we do call them cousins/nieces/nephews even though there is no blood relation. It is clear to me, though, that I see our relationship differently, more intensely. They don't seem to mind, but they don't seem to share the intensity. That's what makes me sad.

One day, my parents will pass, and I will be alone. I have a husband, of course, and children, and in-laws, but that can't take the place of people who knew you when, who can bring up that embarrassing moment that you thought you'd forgotten and share a giggle. I have brothers-and sisters-in-law, but they are mostly Indian, so we've never been on the same wavelength (I feel the strongest connection with my only American brother-in-law -- we can joke about our spouses' odd habits and be reassured that we're not the ones who are weird). We do things differently -- approach life differently, and it's frustrating when my own assumptions, based on a life spent in the United States, clash with my husband's assumptions, and we both feel we're right. I always want to call dibs because we live in my country, after all, and I wasn't the one who chose to immigrate, but I don't want to be completely insensitive. Just, you know, moderately so.

Mostly, that day, I was struck by how comfortable PB's own family and his wife's family were with each other, and how nice it would be to be married to someone from my own country, where our families of origin would have common ground. Now, I feel like I'm constantly on the outside looking in. My mother doesn't much care for my mother-in-law, though of course both are nice to each other. My father doesn't much care for anybody anymore, so he tends to sit in the corner and fall asleep. My mother-in-law and I get along fine now that we don't live under the same roof, and she has stopped pointing out my flaws -- which are legion, I grant, but I don't need to be reminded. I know that she thinks of me as a daughter, and I would do anything for her, as she would for me, but there will always be a gulf between us. We will never understand each other, not in a million years. I and my family can't sit companionably with them on a lazy spring afternoon and talk of nothing at all.

What it comes down to, in the end, though, is this: my husband is a good man, the right one for me. We agree on a lot of things, from tree-hugging to politics to books and movies. We have our ups and downs like everyone else, and we have as many disagreements as everyone else. Everyone has to work through their different expectations, and it never ends. Despite my own feelings of alienation (which are my own problem, dammit!) I do have a husband and children who love me and whom I love. I will not be alone.

Right?

Supermarket hell

Okay, it's an oxymoron. All supermarkets are hell.

It's not just the old people who seem to think they own the middle of each and every aisle. Or the ones who hold kaffee klatsches with their myriad little friends right in front of my brand of applesauce. It's not even the small screaming children that parents are so often forced to bring with them (I used to do this, so I don't really have any right to complain). No.

It's the tile floor.

I went to Wegman's today, as a change from my usual Giant run. I keep hearing such wonderful things about Wegman's, and I'm always so underwhelmed, that I feel like I have to keep visiting the store in different moods so I can see what magical secrets it holds. Is there a secret handshake that gets you into a special room filled with chocolate brownies? 'Cause that would do it for me.

Tell me why supermarket designers, knowing that 95% of their customers will push a wheeled cart on their floors, put tile down on them. Tile, with cracks between them. Cracks, which make the cart vibrate and rumble no matter how carefully you move over them. Multiply it by the dozen or so carts that happen to be in your vicinity, and it becomes a deafening roar.

Now, I'm one of those who find grocery-shopping so mind-numbing that I listen to my iPod throughout. You may find me anti-social, and that's fine with me: I am anti-social in the supermarket. I listen to podcasts, not music, which means my listening is a bit more active than it might otherwise be.

Now, Giant has a tile floor, but only in the produce department. I cruise through there as fast as I can and get the hell onto the smooth floor. They have the usual odious muzak playing, but I can pretty effectively tune it out by raising the volume on the iPod a bit, not enough to ruin my hearing, but enough to keep me in my comfortable bubble.

But Wegman's has a tile floor throughout the whole fucking place! Everywhere I go, the cart makes an awful noise, duplicated and resonated by all the carts around it, until I feel like I would welcome the godawful muzak at Giant. This, plus all the luscious food they display all over the place -- these people know their marketing! -- that makes me want to buy tons of things I don't need; I finally put back the one thing I had in my cart and left Wegman's behind. I drove to the nearby Giant, picked up the things I needed, avoided the things I didn't need (I committed the cardinal sin of going to the grocery store hungry and on the verge of a PMS chocolate craving), and got out of there in record time.

Where is it written that grocery shopping must be an "experience"? I want to get in, cross things off my list, and get the hell out. I don't want to sit and have a cup of coffee. I don't want to try this and try that. I don't want the senior citizens to be further encouraged to hang around, blocking the aisles, chatting about the cheese samples they just had at the deli. And I really don't want to push my cart over tiles, no matter how much they add to the decor.

Call me a supermarket curmudgeon. Bah, humbug!