Mired In Mediocrity
Kim and I got into a text message discussion yesterday, which spilled over into today, over her current workload and her continued transition into her new position at work. I had told her that it’s going to take her a few months to become acclimated to what she’s doing. It’s going to take even longer before she becomes comfortable with it. Even then, there’s no telling whether she ever becomes fully comfortable with it or if the job ever really becomes second nature for her. Either way, she’s still sticking with it and for that, I applauded her. I know that she could just give up and a small part of her briefly did. As of this writing, she’s hanging in there. I assume that she’s at least doing a commendable job.
Our conversation centered on not only how she’s doing with the job and getting by, but she would also segue into talking about her new co-workers, as well as how well (or how poorly, in some instances) some of those co-workers write.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Our job entails a lot of writing and documentation. It’s just the nature of the beast and that’s never going to change. Some people absolutely love the writing part like I do, while others completely loathe it. I’d say that if we’re thinking of your traditional bell-shaped curve and related distribution tendencies, the majority of the department likely falls in the middle of that distribution, where most folks tend to be mediocre with their writing. You have a vast minority on either end, of course, which consists of those like me who write exceptionally well on one end and on the opposite end, you have those whose writing is so god-awful that this writing provides more than sufficient reason for modern-day English teachers across all levels of academia to want to break down, cry, and look to kill themselves with just how bad the writing is. I’m not quite there yet, but the bad writing that I’ve seen through the years has been at times comically bad, though also quite cringe-worthy.
Kim was focused on those people who are often tasked with helping her with her writing and documentation efforts. While Kim appreciates the help that they provide, she also questions the extent to which their help is actually that big of a help. Often, she finds herself having to go back and read what they’ve written. After realizing that their writing is bad and/or in need of significant correction, she has to go in and proofread everything that they’ve written. This takes up way too much of her time, because the proofreading that she does takes up more time than she’d like and it pulls her away from her own work and everything ends up taking that much more time out of her workday when she could be doing other things.
She also rambled on about the very basic and rudimentary vocabulary that her co-workers employ when they write. From the way she explained it, it’s as though these folks don’t know much in the way of synonyms or the varied ways of expressing certain ideas. Kim speculated that these challenges could have originated from their own educational experiences, starting at grade school, escalating through high school, and progressing all the way through the college ranks. If I’m throwing in my two cents, I’m wondering if a lot of Kim’s co-workers were or remain mired in mediocrity, without knowing it or perhaps without the motivation or ability to change it and improve.
I told Kim that if she preferred, I would be willing to take a look at the quality of the writing that she finds herself correcting. I wouldn’t mind taking the time to see what she’s seeing and make those same corrections that she does. I like taking bad writing and making miracles with what I’m given. I’ve done it before many, many times at work and I actually enjoy it. All it takes really, is time, desire, and at least for me, a decently vast vocabulary from which to work and create literary masterpieces.
Okay, maybe “literary masterpieces” is overdoing it, but at work, I stand behind everything I write. Similarly, I also stand behind everything that I proofread.
Kim will continue to get the hang of things. I don’t see her regressing much, if at all.
I think that if I were in her position, I would consider telling my management team that I would prefer to work on my own rather than rely on other people to write for me, because the quality of the writing that I’m seeing is atrocious, or perhaps, not too far off from being atrocious.
Mediocrity is okay, I suppose, in some facets of life, but when it comes to my professional life, mediocrity has no place in anything that I do, especially when we’re talking about the writing and documentation component on which this job relies heavily.
Sure, I might take a long time to get my writing done, but as I’ve said through the years in that office…
Quality takes time. I’m not going to be mediocre like much of this office tends to be.
I’m not. I refuse to be. I’m so much better than that.