Connective Cube

I have a speech disorder. It has made transitioning to UX and design a unique journey for me, one where what I have to overcome to communicate is a little different than my more verbal peers.

It started at five when I almost got held back in kindergarten because the teacher thought I didn’t know how to count. Even though I hate standardized tests – they test how well you take the test, not all the different forms of intelligence – I can thank the Iowa Skills Test for Basic Skills for helping me pass Kindergarten with some high percentile score.

Apparently, I wouldn’t tell my teacher my name and address on command, even though I had known it since I was 3 (according to my mom). I hated talking in front of people. Or to people I didn’t connect with, the ones who proclaimed their judgments so openly, clearly, and easily. I would daydream, nap at my desk, and feel bored most of the time. So, there are the bad social skills.

There was also the fact that my mom was single at the time, and the kindergarten teacher gave that empty empathy teachers do when parents challenge them. Don’t get me wrong; teachers are awesome. My beef is with the teachers that do that empty empathy voice so well. No teacher, you are crushing dreams! And underestimating what some parents know, especially if they don’t come from apparent means.

Working on data and verbal communication is more of a means to an end of my career goals. If I want to be a designer and researcher, then I have to think analytically and present my ideas in a cogent manner that is digestible to wide audiences. I didn’t have the luxury of starting this career path when I was 15; we didn’t have a graphic design or robust computer arts program where I went to high school, and gender discrimination expressed itself differently in the Southeast than it did across the rest of the country in the late-90s. 

Anyhow, I know way more than I let on, especially for folks who primarily look for verbal and spoken cues.

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Why is my background so topsy-turvy, a story that meanders, one where the rising action still feels like it is happening?

The main difference between me now and me in my 20s is I can string together a sentence or question that is cogent, most of the time. I can also organize, and do it well enough that people think I am good at it. It takes more effort for me than others to do this kind of work, to string a logical sentence together or organize data. Attention to detail and organization are hard learned, and not innate, skills for me because both do require making sense of patterns. And pattern making is how I can make sense of what goes where.

As someone who went to speech classes as a kid because I remained non-verbal at apparently inappropriate times, I find this is ultimately what holds me back in career matters. It is why I love pre-scheduled meetings, collaboration, and organizational order. Some of this helps me be more creative, to know what sentences I have to string together, to not be in the constant anxiety of surprise. Writing jobs are hard for me without a visual component, mostly because all the jargon and structure start to overwhelm me.

And the surprises, and having to react minimally to new information. As I have learned to speak, or have practiced speech, I find rambling, trying to cover every point of the story, gets to me. Sometimes the story just has to cover the arc, and nothing more.

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I HATED improv in high school; give me a script, and I will give you an artful performance. I loved scripts because I could speak within them, through them, and just play to emotion without being overwhelmed with the intake of new speech. Creating these contained spaces, and telling a story through script, can still move me to this day.

Even though TED Talks kind of make me grumble, I appreciate the sense of theater, and the storytelling aspect.

Of course, I took improv in my adult life, and get what people think listening is. I have come to realize I listen vastly differently because of my experiences, but can mimic listening to the last word said quite well now. It is just one form of listening, a normative one, and one with benefits.  Yet I find those who have that innate proclivity to logically string sentences together to be quite judgmental of folks who struggle with logical verbal communication. And I am drained if I have to communicate that way for long stretches of time. Sometimes listening happens beyond the last thing said.

People who don’t have non-verbal tendencies find people like me to overthink, to be aloof, calculating, etc. If I am vocal about inclusion, it is because my ability to express myself becomes a lot easier in environments that care about efforts to difference, and do not have the expectation that women are innately bubbly, effervescent, and smile all the time and good at organization. 

If I get passionate about education, then some of it comes from attending NYU and seeing the vast difference in quality of schooling my peers received. While the high school I went to is now award winning, it was still a country school when I attended, rooted in agriculture. Digging deeper beyond my own experiences, the injustices and inequity of the education system became more apparent. Hauntingly apparent, and I am still seeing what I left behind struggle today. I found teaching exhausting; too much of the verbal communication that made me feel alienated in my schooling years. 

I guess I have enough experience in both to be good enough at my jobs. I often feel frustrated that UX work seems to come easier to others, and that others find this work so ‘straightforward’. It seems like an abstract puzzle, one that feels like the answers are so simple, but all I see is depth and complexity. People often don’t come to me for straight shooter and smooth talking tendencies. I prefer less talking so I can take in all the ambiguity. Maybe I have fortitude, and I am happy that I am pushing into the skills I need to excel at designing things that help people like me who get overwhelmed with all the vocalization.