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“I couldn’t even talk to my team.”
A working professional's story #7 :
“I came from a small village and studied in a Hindi medium school. When I joined college, it was very difficult for me to settle in an environment where people were fluent in English and I could barely speak. I started to take this as an excuse to tell myself that I am unable to do ‘this task’ or ‘that’ because I didn’t know how to speak English.
Once, while solving a question in Physics, I told myself that I wasn’t capable of solving the question because it was written in English. I was a good student, but my grades started degrading because I didn’t even attempt. Looking back now, had I tried even to read the questions, I think I could have made meaning out of them.
I soon became underconfident. I didn’t talk to many people because I couldn’t contribute to their conversation in English. I couldn’t keep up with the lectures too. Fast forward some years, and I got a good job. However, even here I could hardly converse with people. Most of my clientele consists of native English speakers. Since I talk to my team and labor in Hindi, I could never talk to my clients directly. This led to a lot of issues with my manager.
I couldn’t even talk to my team swiftly. It led to misunderstandings in workplace communication too. Soon I realized that my fear of speaking a language should not stop me from doing my job to the best of my powers.
Spending my entire adulthood being shy and underconfident, I had to take a step in order to improve myself.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos in English, I read papers, I joined your company(Blackboard Radio (BBR)) and I have been practicing every day since.
I still sometimes falter in trying to find words, but at least now I know my powers. I can directly talk to my clients now which has also increased my work quality. If we put our minds to something, we can slowly achieve it.”
Patel’s story is not uncommon. It’s actually one issue most of our students have. What do you have to say for Patel?