They say communication is key.
They say communication is at the heart of a successful romantic relationship.
But to treat communication as a unified phenomenon doesn’t really tell the whole story.
My communication skills have grown over the years in my personal life, and to be sure, that has had a positive impact on my professional communication skills. But communication is also unique to its particular venues. As a health care worker, I feel confident navigating the matrix of communication in that particular sphere…most of the time. The nuances of speaking and listening to patients, of varying personalities and walks of life in a humanistic, but professional way is something I’ve developed with experience. Whether the situation at hand requires a gentle firmness, overwhelming reassurance, simplistic explanations, swiftness, or silent acknowledgement comes with time. Similarly, dealing with peers or those with more power like physicians and administrators also has its own skill set. Knowing how to advocate for yourself or the patient while avoiding the mere suggestion that you need something, or think something needs to be done is a tricky thing.
In our personal lives, good communication is key, but style of communication varies. Certainly notions like active listening, validation and boundaries have become mainstream, but how do we enact those concepts? I tend towards casual but direct communication, but some prefer to sort out issues through non-verbal gestures and actions, some people prefer in person communication while others are more comfortable laying things on the table through written communication, and some people tend towards subtler, even more casual ways of negotiation or working through issues.
It was a humbling wake up call for me when I realized that I could not necessarily transfer the communication skills I had developed professionally and personally to academia. Academic communication is its own beast with its own nuances. In a world where the precision of words and nuances of an argument in a paper matter, the attention to detail in communications with faculty and supervisors often makes the difference in how it is received. The ability to make a written request in a concise but deferential way was not something I was accustomed to. I can be clear and deferential, but too many words makes for an overwhelming email in an already overflowing inbox. Add to this that the degree of formality required is different depending on who you’re speaking with, when is an appropriate time frame to send a follow up email, and you have a dizzying array of outcomes that has certainly left me paralyzed and spending thirty minutes overanalyzing every painstaking word in a short email of a single paragraph.
But I’m getting better. I try to keep in mind that academic communication is no different than communication in radiation therapy – it’s a skill, and it comes with time and experience. I have definitely stepped on some toes in this process and that’s to be expected. I try to keep in mind that the professor I’m emailing has stepped on toes and agonized over emails too – they’re just in a different position in the system now. Graduate students have different obstacles than professors, and if we ever end up on the other side of the fence, we will have a lot more insight into what those challenges feel like. I’ve also gained an appreciation for finding humour in my own faux-pas’. Instead of feeling mortified at what I’ve said in hindsight, I have to just chuckle – not in a self-deprecating way, but from a sense of indifference. Faux-pas’ don’t make you incompetent, they are a part of being an inherently flawed human. Sometimes sharing the humour in my own embarrassment with the faculty in question helps build a bridge and overcome the shame and anxiety – it adds levity to a situation and lets someone know you have the humility to laugh at yourself. And most of all, I have just learned to accept my own tangly neuroses. There will be times when I come home paralyzed with anxiety or in tears because of one of my faux pas’. But instead of trying to escape it or get over it cognitively, I just have to sleep it off, or sit with being an anxious and ridiculously silly hot mess.
I am not the typical graduate student in the sense that my studies are one of three priorities in my life, I spend very little time on campus, and spend far more time at work. I also only have one other person in my cohort, so I don’t have a lot of peers. I don’t know if, as a fellow blogger says, “I’m a wreck too”. But I suspect somehow that rather than exposing my own inadequacies and neuroses, that this is relatable. I suspect I am speaking to something that is actually quite common. If this is you, know that you are not alone – and that it’s ok to be a hot neurotic mess – just own it.