La comunicación

I went to Visit Emory! for accepted students on Thursday and Friday of this week.  The campus was absolutely incredible and the combination of awesome resources and really welcoming people has basically convinced me to go there for my Master's in Public Health.  It's weird to think about living in Georgia for another two years, but what was even stranger was the way I forgot that I was still in the south while I was in Atlanta.  Not only did I find such wonders as a city skyline and Dunkin Donuts; one of the biggest surprises was the way literally no one had a southern drawl.  It actually caught me off guard- I guess I didn't realize how accustomed I've grown to the Savannah accent.

Communication has grown increasingly important to me since I've been in Savannah.  My job involves a lot of time on the phone, which is great because I love talking, but it is also challenging at times.  When I first started my job, I'd get really nervous picking up the Spanish phone line.  Phone Spanish always seems significantly faster than in-person Spanish, and when you add things like bad cell phone connections, conversations are sometimes challenging.  I also felt like since I didn't know the answers to a lot of peoples' questions at first, the Spanish-speakers would assume I just didn't understand what they were saying.  Anyway, I was at least comfortable picking up the English line until one incident that still stands out.  I was talking to a woman, and she was clearly in an area that had terrible cell phone service.  She had a very thick Georgian accent, and in the middle of my sentence she said "Ma'am?"  I responded with "What?" and she repeated "Ma'am?"  This went on for about a minute before I said "Hold on" and transferred her call to one of my co-workers (who happens to be from the south).  After they finished the conversation, I was taught that people here say "Ma'am?" or "Sir?" instead of "Can you repeat that?"  This was the first of what has become several English language mishaps that has resulted from me speaking "Yankee English" and almost everyone around me speaking what my roommates and I have affectionately named "Georgian."

I've come to realize that a person's ability to communicate seems to correspond very highly with how successful they are in a lot of ways.  I've noticed that I'm less likely to go the extra mile for clients who mumble and who can't answer my questions clearly and concisely.  I've also noticed that our medical practitioners tend to be much less thorough with people who can't explain their problems in a way that is normally called "logically".  I know it doesn't seem fair, but the reality is that it's a lot harder to help people who aren't good at communicating.  I sometimes poke fun at my Hispanics because the way they describe everything is very circular (i.e. "Well my head hurts and sometimes I sneeze and this one time I got a really bad stomach cramp and I noticed that at least once a week I have a pain in my left knee but anyway I hate when I have headaches."), but to be honest, my English-speakers are often just as convoluted when they talk.

Even in terms of the "professional" side of my job, I've noticed how much communication really does matter.  There are a few notorious departments of the health system that I work in that have gained reputations for not communicating with others, whether it's keeping secrets, talking behind peoples' backs, being extremely passive-aggressive, or just being completely incommunicado for a frustrating amount of time.  And among those who do try to communicate, there seems to be a big problem with clarity.  Things like directions and instructions are often given in an incomprehensible manner, leaving the listener with so many questions that he or she may not even be able to articulate them.

There are a lot of major social problems, especially relating to health, that I think can be somewhat lessened if people are trained on how to better communicate important messages.  And now that Hispanics are by far the second largest group in the U.S., it would be all the better if more people could communicate effectively in more than one language.