Personal Experience: A Journey With A Shared Experience

Shared Experiences

Although we may not share many attributes of life with others, such as height, culture, educational background and etcetera, there is defiantly someone out there you share an experience with. As creatures of life we go through many ups and downs, trails and tribulations, lessons and learning experiences. At times it could be easy to think that you are the only person going through an event in life. But the truth is you are not the only one going through your experience. You are also not the only one thinking you are the only one experiencing a mishap. Day to day and worldwide people share similar experiences with each other. We can relate to one another more than you think. Especially when it comes to learning and language.

As I took call after call I realized I had improved language skills but also realized weak points in my skills that still lead to a low confidence in certain situations when answering the phone and in communicating period. Speaking to people with higher educational backgrounds than I had, I encountered a lot of words I did understand. Not understanding words made my job harder, frustrating and at times even embarrassing. I hated having to ask someone what they meant, basically asking them to dumb down their sentence. Asking them to "dumb down" their sentences made me feel dumb because I could not process their request efficiently. Then, periodically I had to handle people who knew I didn’t understand what they were asking for or knew that I had low confidence and they would take advantage of being superior and make things more difficult than they had to be. Me not having a huge word bank stored in my head, there were times where I would become very frustrated because I could not respond efficiently. I struggled to express myself in a professional manner which led to frustrated customers and me losing my temper from time to time, but not so bad were I had to be disciplined. When Malcom X said he became "Increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey"(X Pg.143) I felt as if that was myself writing that statement. Something needed to be