“People often use the word “quiet” to describe me. They are not entirely wrong; my voice is quiet, my demeanor is quiet, and even my appearance has a quietness to it. Behind my quiet exterior, however, my thoughts are loud. My opinions are far from timid and my ambitions can best be described as deafening. I am not shy, diffident, or meek — just quiet.
Throughout high school and my freshman year at Georgia Tech, my quietness never inhibited me from being successful. In fact, I was delighted to find that several of my engineering classmates shared this trait, which is so intrinsic to my personality. It wasn’t until I entered the professional world via an internship my sophomore year that I discovered a problem. My ideas, relayed in my usual soft-spoken manner, were not heard over the clamor of my naturally extroverted peers.
I never questioned whether my thoughts and ideas were inferior to those presented more aggressively by my cohorts. So, in the face of a problem without a clear solution, I did what most self-identified nerds would do: I read books, watched TED talks, and listened to podcasts. Susan Cain’s book titled Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking was the turning point. I acknowledged western society’s cultural bias towards extroversion, and I began honing a skill that would allow my voice to be heard loud and clear.
The skill I worked hard to develop during my sophomore year internship was acting. I fabricated an assertive, extroverted persona that I could “turn-on” when I entered the office each morning and “turn off” when I left in the evening. The first day I wore my new persona, I felt like an imposter. However, when the opportunity arose to present my ideas using the mannerisms I had diligently practiced, I was astounded with the results. The same ideas that were dismissed a couple months earlier were enthusiastically received by my colleagues. By the end of my internship, I received a company-wide performance award and earned the highest rating given to an intern. My carefully-constructed professional persona was a roaring success.
Building an extroverted professional character did not require me to forfeit my introverted style of being. Moreover, it has not changed the nature of my thoughts and opinions. My extroverted persona hangs in the closet, so to speak, until a situation warrants that I put it on. Professional presentations, public speaking, and the occasional friendly debate are a few examples of situations that benefit from stepping outside of my quiet, contemplative comfort zone and into the bold, authoritative version of myself.
There is wisdom in the old adage “actions speak louder than words.” However, the power of words should never be underestimated. The word “quiet” is still used to describe me by my close friends and family, but not by my professional network. My performance evaluations at work frequently include the words “confident”, “decisive”, and “proactive”, but never “quiet”. The words we identify with define who we are and how we interact with the world. Learning to tailor my mannerisms to suit various situations has enabled me to identify as a quiet person with loud thoughts, strong opinions, and deafening ambitions.”
