When you’re doing something you really love, you know you belong. Whether it’s a hobby, school, or work whenever you get a bundle of joy from it you know that’s your thing. Some of the things we love to do on a day to day basis can be described as a discourse community. Discourse communities are a very strong and powerful group of people who share and connect a lot of common values and activities. Basketball and my major here at City Tech Hospitality Management are discourse communities that I feel very differently about but still apply to my everyday life.
Basketball is a discourse community I feel I am strongly a part of. I associate myself with the basketball community because I’ve been watching and playing the sport since I was young. My understanding of the complexity, detailed terminology, statistics, and movement of the sport only leads me to have more confidence and a larger sense of belonging in the community. My favorite NBA teams are the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder. A large part of this is because when I was young my uncle used to always make me play with random teams in NBA 2K12. I’ve been playing NBA2K, which is a basketball video game series (2K12 being the 12th one made), since I was six years old. But one time I won with those teams I started to take a liking to them. I was introduced to the video game first then the actual sport on tv which is when I first discovered my favorite player Kevin Durant. He played for the Oklahoma City Thunder, and around this time won the Most Valuable Player award on his way to compete for an NBA championship. My love for basketball opened up a lot of newly strong friendships for me throughout my early years of school. My friend to this day Matthew and I became close friends through our passion for basketball and always playing in gym class together. We were always friends but basketball is something that made us closer and talk more often about it. We would always play NBA2K and talk about the nba games that came on tv at school. Naturally over time playing basketball with Matthew I was introduced to his friends which I later on became cool with. This is when I felt like I belonged in the basketball community because it opened me up to more people, making me have an established friend group and they shared a common language and love for the game as basketball just like I did. A common language in basketball that makes me feel more connected to this discourse community is the phrase “And-1”. This commonly refers to when a player gets fouled while making a shot and then goes to the free throw line to shoot one free throw. Also, a lot of abbreviations of stats or games people use are 3P% which means 3-point percentage, 2K which is short for NBA2K the video game, and PER which stands for player efficiency rating.
The second discourse community I don’t feel so much a part of is here at City Tech which is my major Hospitality Management. I don’t think I really belong in that discourse community yet because there’s still a lot of terminology I have to learn and knowledge about managing certain things around that management profession. I feel like there are so many jobs in the Hospitality Management category that all have their own shared language and terminology that I didn’t think of when I first chose for this to be my major. I remember my first semester here at City Tech which was just a couple months ago where I went on a trip to a hotel with my Perspectives in Hospitality Management class in Manhattan. The goal of the trip was for us to learn all about the new hotel being worked on and everyone’s job within it. I feel like I was an outcast there because a lot of other students were familiar with the language and phrases in which the tour leader was saying, and I was just kind of in the middle of it all. For example, some categories in Hospitality Management are food and beverage management, tourism, lodging, front office, and hotel. At first, I thought some of these were under the same branch and didn’t require much knowledge of certain things such as the terminology used around coworkers and customers. I also didn’t have a specific goal of what category of hospitality management I wanted to do so I wasn’t aware of all the different things it had to offer. During that same trip though I did learn some easy terminology like ADR which means average daily rate, ARI which means availability rate index, and B&B which means bed and breakfast. This gave me hope that if I can’t get the simpler ones the harder ones would come to me along the way. After the school trip, the next time I went to a hotel was a holiday inn and I felt comfortable in the environment. From getting food at the front to calling room service I was able to converse with them a little bit more fluently using languages like B&B and CO for carryout. Although I wasn’t familiar with everything it made me want to try harder and grasp an understanding of it for the future. It gave me something to look forward to and work on. Things I can do to get better at understanding the terminology and field is place myself in more hotels and surround myself around people who are very knowledgeable about it. The type of experience I had at the hotel trip is somewhat similar to the text “Hers”. The author states, ” …it was exciting for me to discover that I’d finally cracked the code, that I could understand what doctors said and wrote and could use the same formulations myself.” This relates to me because I was excited, I understood some of the terminologies and shared abbreviations in the Hospitality management field even though it was the small ones it made me want to use it more and try harder to understand the rest. It is a community I do want to be a part of, but I just feel like it is going to take time for me to understand all the different shared languages and be versatile in my field.
Francine
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Add Yours →Beauty Vs Fashion Community
I always questioned whether I would fit in anywhere, thinking that because I was so shy and self reserved that I wouldn’t make friends anywhere I would go. But I’ve learned to bond with others through mutual interests. Although I’m growing out of my shell to communicate with those who share mutual likings with myself, at times I find it hard to still bond with them. Being a part of the beauty community has given me a sense of self and comfortability, with the shared language and knowledge of cosmetics and hairdressing. On the other hand, trying to find myself a part of the fashion discourse has been a challenge. My lack of knowledge and not much of a community in that space, makes it more difficult for me to engage with those a part of this space, and feel more included.
Since I was young, I’ve had an interest in both beauty and fashion. As I’ve gotten older, the more I learned that they go with one another. The beauty discourse has brought me to a calmer self within me and gives me peace. I grew up watching many makeup videos on youtube, learning the types of makeup brushes, types of foundations and concealers. While I was so young learning all of this, it did make me feel different from some of the girls in my elementary class, but it made me feel different in a good way, like I was nuanced from them. After I graduated and moved into middle school. Many of the girls that I did interact with knew about makeup. It was easier for me to talk to them, they knew the “beauty” language. Talking about learning how to contour, the blushes we preferred, the more pinkish kind or the orangish kind. This community gave me the ability to talk to anyone about beauty products or skills.
Transitioning into highschool, I started to experiment with doing my hair and my makeup. I gained the skill of not only using what I learned about makeup on myself, but I learned how to do my hair and make profit off of it. This started to become a great hobby of mine. It was a gateway to express myself without being judged, because if there’s one thing in the beauty community, those who once knew nothing, knew about the trails and eras it takes to master a certain makeup style or hairstyle. That’s why I feel so connected and not isolated in this community.
After I graduated highschool, I learned very quickly that I had a passion for fashion as well as beauty. I knew I wanted to pursue something in the fashion field. Being the fact that I already had retail experience in the past few years, I realized that it can help me pursue a position in the e-commerce or merchandising field for clothing.
Once I got to college, I felt like many of the kids that were in my major had more experiences within fashion than I did. They knew more designers, and not just designers for today, but designers like Vivienne Westwood, Virgil Abloh, and many others that I wasn’t up to date with. I didn’t feel like I fit in, from the knowledge that my peers knew. They had a sense of how to style themselves, it came from their own mind and not inspired by someone else they saw. Looking at myself, I didn’t think that I had my own sense of style. I still wear very basic clothing, like the classics, denim, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and sneakers. But I feel like everyone else, when you look at them, you assume they just put this outfit together because they had to go somewhere. That’s different for me, I just haven’t found my sense of fashion as yet, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to still learn more fashion knowledge, or be more creative with my outfits.
From the people in my major to those I see online, the fashion community seems pretty judgemental at times. The fashion scene is always evolving but something that stuck is, the newer generation hates seeing fast fashion, any brands that are fast fashion and cheap, has become an automatic no no. To be quite honest, there are times I may shop from those fast fashion brands, which puts me aside from those in the fashion community that believes that fast fashion isn’t “cool” or “trendy.” But that’s why I feel like I’m different and it’s hard to fit in besides having the lack of knowledge, I know that whatever I like and is fashionable will become a part of my wardrobe and my style. Apart from the negative thoughts on fast fashion, the fashion community are very big on name brands from what I’ve seen, some of those who have made themselves fashion icons, have created many outfits with big names brands in the industry. Those named brands have very high prices and at times are very hard to get because of the limited quantity of the item.
Top name brands and knowledge of fashion doesn’t make me less interested in wanting to be in the fashion community. I’ve acknowledged that I have to find my people who are fashionably alike. I don’t fit in because I’m not necessarily like the “majority,” and that’s okay. I would rather find my people within the fashion community who can also share other mutual interests outside of fashion, then fit into a group of those who would judge me for not knowing certain things in fashion history. Everyone starts somewhere, being in college has given me outlets to meet some of those who are in the same fashion major and have similar interests in beauty. As I continue to slowly find comfortability in the fashion community, I will educate myself on fashion history, not just to fit in, but it could later help me in life within my field that I want to pursue.
The beauty community was easy for me to fit in and find my people. I made ways of having peace within myself because it became a hobby for me. But it also turned into a way for me to profit off of it as well. I used the knowledge and my personality to create the bonds that I have made in the beauty community, which has given me the confidence to create friendships or mutuals with those within the beauty community. The fashion community has been a bit harder for me to fit into because I just started to learn the depths of fashion, when I started college. The fashion community that I’ve seen online and some friend groups in school have seem pretty judgmental. Despite that, I’ve realized that I have to find people within the fashion community that have a similar fashion sense like myself, and maybe an interest in the beauty community as well.
Both of these discourse communities were always of interest to me growing up, but building more connections in each discourse helps me feel more comfortable and relatable. For those who are shy and self reserved like myself, we have to put ourselves out there and make connections. It can feel uncomfortable, but if you’re in college, take advantage of the clubs and events for your majors. Associating with people who have similar interests, will give you more ways to make relations, probably with people in the industry.See this comment in context.