When at work, it is very common to act differently than how you would act or behave outside of work. It can be caused due to the expectations placed on you as an employee, or because of the specific environment of the workplace. How you act depends on the position you are in at work, whether you are an entry level employee, or the CEO of the business. These types of differing behavior is explored in Elizabeth Wardle’s article, “Identity, Authority, and Learning To Write In New Workplaces”, where she discusses the importance of maintaining one’s identify and authority while writing, especially while writing in the workplace. The major takeaway I got from her article was how one should develop connections to the people they are working with to further their skills at work, while also maintaining one’s identify and authority.
So what do I mean by what I said? When you are at work, you often follow and learn from what your coworkers are doing, especially if you are new. I can personally relate, as I did the same thing when I started working at my current position. I would often follow what my co-workers would do and try to emulate how they completed tasks. However, the problem I ran into was how I didn’t know how to do things in different ways as I would just copy others instead of thinking independently. This relates to what I am saying about authority and identity in relation to writing at work, as you should learn and improve by interacting with your co-workers, but you should maintain your own sense of authority and self-identify. Do so would help you create your own style of writing and help you stand out for the better. If you fail to do that, you will fail to grow as a person and writing, and instead will remain as nothing but a cheap, hollow, imitation of what you can truly be.
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