How Experience Changes Meaning with Linda Gidlund

You may know what “bring a plate” means. But do you know why?

It sounds like a simple question. But in this On Experience conversation with Linda Gidlund, it becomes the starting point for a much bigger discussion about experience, culture and the hidden meanings we take for granted.

Sometimes the words don’t change, but we do.

Watch or read on to discover why one small misunderstanding reveals something surprisingly profound about the way experience shapes how we see the world.

Edited Transcript

Geoff: Why did you take on the community stuff? Was it just a natural evolution of…

Linda: I took on the community aspect because I moved here from a different country, and I didn’t know anything about where I was living essentially. I didn’t know anything about the local community, how is it structured? What’s the government processes that I’m living in? I used to come home from work every day and say to Bernie, ‘This is the question for the day’.

I’m gonna give you a really silly example. I was working at a TAFE automotive school, and the woman that I was working for, she used to have lunches and things with people in the group. And so I was told that I needed to bring a plate. You get it?

Geoff: I do.

Linda: Yeah.

Geoff: If you take that literally.

Linda: I came home and said to Bernie, ‘I need to bring a plate.’ What does that mean? I don’t know what that means. I was gonna ask the lady, but, it was something that you… I would’ve found a time to ask her that, and by the time I knew what
that was, it was time for me to go home.

So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll just ask Bernie what does that mean?’ And so I just thought it was so funny that it meant you put something on the plate to contribute to the group. I
get that now. But that’s part of living in a different country, and people would say, ‘Well, yes, but you speak English.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t speak Australian English.’ I don’t have the knowledge of growing up here. I still to this day find things and, ‘Oh, well, wait a minute, I better check that meaning out because I’m not sure that I really understand it.’

I worked at a place at one point where there were a lot of Russian immigrants, and
their accent from their language was making it hard for them to take on the next step of working in the computer space in the company.

So I did a lot of research and found out that your vocal cords are set when you’re around 15. And so that’s why they were having a hard time, because they needed to do the next step, which was to stop coding, getting on the phone, and helping people by talking to them, right? And people couldn’t understand them.

This lady says, you know, I had a wonderful conversation with her about her daughter, because when they came out with the ATMs, and her daughter saw that you could go up and walk up to an ATM and get money. She wanted to know how you could do that. You know it’s an inexperience.

Like I, I came from a place that was using those machines, so there was no question that I needed to know about it. But here’s this little girl never seeing it before. But that’s, that’s what it’s like to come to a different country. Everything can be not known to you.