Mediocrely Mature

Imagine you went to the doctor’s office to get medical advice about a rash that you’ve developed - sounds weird but go with it. Instead of a properly trained, educated doctor treating you, an electrical engineer comes in to take care of you. Does this sound plausible? Not at all. Of course the electrical engineer is well educated, but not in the field you were looking for, and therefore would not trust their judgement very much, because they haven’t established authority in the specified field. This is exactly what I thought of while reading Ann Johns “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice.”   Johns discusses that an individual acquires authority by expressing the language that the community shares. Therefore, in order to express the same language, you need to have at least some sort of education on the matter. I think of the ‘authority’ that Johns discusses goes hand-in-hand with trustworthiness. An individual gains respect and trustworthiness by showing ...

My first job was server at a small cafe that I still work at now. I had to learn skills such as, working the register, writing down orders, and most importantly, customer service skills. Within the customer service skills , I had to learn to be patient with everybody, time management, and even though the customer is wrong - “the customer is always right.” Some of these were difficult to learn, I quickly learned I work well under pressure, but as an introvert, it took a while to get used to the fact that I will be seeing customers that day and I will have to talk to them even though I don’t want to. It was also slightly difficult to learn how to please every single customer even when they are completely rude to me or obnoxiously wrong. Eventually, I got the hang of things and although at times it gets rough, I manage it.   Mirabelli’s discussion states how service workers do have a standard of literacy and how they have to have a standard of understanding their customers ...