Yesterday I sat through an all-day training on things my boss has heard a bazillion times but I'm new enough to to appreciate. This training gives us a certification that allows our company to appear on a website list of companies who, by virtue of having sat through the training, are supposed to know more than what the average building company knows, which is little, about energy efficiency.
Since we are The Original Green Builder, we'd better know.
There are actually a heck of a lot of construction details that never get done, that are simple to do, that you cannot really access to fix once the building is completed so you ought to attend to them first, that make a heck of an energy efficiency difference. But more on that later.
One of the speakers was really good. Knew her stuff, told good stories, linked it together well, explained jargon and acronyms and put everything in helpful context.
The other presenter read off of the slides without elaborating, as if she didn't know what the things she was reading meant to be able to elaborate (probably not true, but how it came off), made no connections between things (because that wasn't on the slides!) slouched and shifted her weight constantly and didn't make eye contact, had a very shaky obviously nervous voice.
I can sympathize with those things, because you do them when you are nervious and don't know better.
I'm constantly surprised, now being in a professional setting, that people don't know better. I've seen so many poor public speakers, read so many instances of terribly poor and unclear writing. I recognize that when your job is something else, it isn't always worth your time to pay attention to those things.
But you sacrifice on how you come off if you don't pay some attention. I'd thought, all while I was desperately interviewing and trying to get my feet through doors, that proficiency in those kinds of things were a baseline, not the exception to the rule.
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