Remote Interpreting: All About Adapting

We still can't believe she agreed to be on - Robyn Dean!!

Welcome back! We are fangirling that we have the wonderful Robyn Dean on this episode! She imparts so much wisdom, we can't wait for you to hear it.

A big shout out to our sponsors the Sign Language Interpreting Service (SLIS) and the Citizens Information Board (CIB) without which this miniseries wouldn't have happened.

Let us know what you think about all this remote work!

Ciara and Romy 

xxx

Transcript

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It's the Lean Podcast.- Hi, my name's Ciara.- Hi, I'm Romy. And this is The Lean Be doo- Welcome to the first installment in our brand new mini series all about remote interpreting.- How exciting!- So exciting, Romy, tell us about today's topic.- Well, today's topic is remote interpreting, all about adapting. And, basically, when Ciara and I came up with this idea, we were thinking, okay, the world's gone a bit mad, and we are all remote interpreting. And it's been a massive change, but it's also been adapting. We've all been shifting and changing to match the current climate, to work online. One of the first things we wanted to look at was how we've adapted, and in what ways. I mean, it's so broad.- There's so much to cover. There's so much involved in remote interpreting. And I think a good place to start is how you set yourself up to remote interpret. And Romy, I don't know about you, but I've learned a lot of things in these past few months.(Romy laughing) And what I did at the very start of those months is very different to what I do now, in regards to how I've adapted, if you like. My actual setup has been on quite a journey, you could say. It began on an ironing board.(Romy laughing) It's now on a desk.- Wow, you've moved up in the world.- I've really, you know, progressed, you could say. But I've learned to laugh. And adapting was no easy feat, I'll tell you that for free. It's a push, and it's been a journey. I've learned a great many things.- We've been doing nothing but adapting. And I mean on so many levels. Not only just in creating or interpreting spaces. I mean, I've had at least five moving around the house, trying to find the right place. And then I relocated home to be with my family, and got a really nice space going, but it was still changed. But on top of that, it's like adapting how you work online. I mean, you now have your, if you're working in a team, someone who is not on site with you. And how you adapt to communicate with them to support each other, I've done it like six or seven different ways.- Yeah, and I think it's also, it depends a little bit, like we talked about before, we talked about team interpreting, it very much depends on who you're working with and the situation you're in. So what might work super well with one team interpreter in one particular assignment could be completely different working with someone else on something different. So again, you have to adapt within your new space of remote interpreting. And how do you do that when you're not physically with someone right beside you? And we do such a people centric job. How do you adapt, is the question.(Romy laughing)- Thing is, I feel like I'm still adapting, like even now being remote for over 10 weeks, still feel like I'm changing every job, still tweaking and making it better. And I just, I don't know if that'll ever not be the case.- I know, I know.- But I mean, we do it in the real world, as well, onsite, we do these adaptations, but I don't think they're as big or they don't feel as big, because you're onsite and it's part of the job. I think they're just magnified by what's going on at the moment.- Yeah. But I think it's very important to remember that everyone is adapting. That's really helped me. It's not just like, "oh, I can't do it. I'm not very good at this, this and this." I think it's very much everybody, even if you're just fresh out of training, or if you've got years, and years, and years experience. It's all so new. I think that's been the lovely thing that I've had. I've had some great conversations with some interpreters. And what's really nice to know is that, reassuring, is that everybody is kind of in the same boat, and the issues I'm having are very similar to someone who may have way more experience than me. And to see that someone that talented and experienced is having the same issues I'm having is very kind of heartwarming, in a way.- Totally.- 'Cause it makes me, it makes me think, no, Ciara, it's okay. If we just work together, we're gonna get through it together. And that's been one of the most important things I've found, anyway, with adapting, is making sure that everybody is aware of your (laughs), you're not trying to mask anything. Everybody's aware of the issues we're all facing from working at home, relying on technology, which is not always very reliable, especially when you're in the middle of all sorts of situations, and your wifi decides to not cooperate, using different platforms, figuring out how to use platforms, wishing that platforms had other functions that they just don't have.- They just don't have. And then also I feel it depends on the Chair, or whoever's managing the meeting, as well. And how many deaf clients you have in the audience and whether you need to voice them over, as in work into English, and you have like seven of them on screen and you have to manage it. It's very quick adaptation. And I think the other thing as well, that I have in my notes, is like backup, backup, backup. So it's, again, it links to adaptation. If one thing doesn't work have another thing. So like, okay, my wifi goes down. Okay, well I'll try plug it in with like the USB port. If that doesn't work, okay. We'll use my phone as a hotspot. Having your backups. Similarly, okay, your computer suddenly decides it doesn't want to work anymore. Okay, onto my phone I go. And it's, like you say, health and safety is so important, but sometimes it's less ideal. But you still need to make things work, somehow.- Exactly. Exactly.- Backup, backup, backup. Yeah, there's been a lot of adaptations in my life. I was in my bedroom, kind of, sort of kneeling and interpreting. And I had my, oh yeah, no, it was very uncomfortable for health and safety.- That sounds awful.- It was bad. It was bad. It was that or it was stand in front of the bathroom, which was like the only space in my house that was big enough to work from. But it meant my house mate had to walk around me if he needed the bathroom (laughs). That's why I kind of.- That's very challenging.- Dublin, isn't the best place for big houses, even if you are working. It's very tough to adapt in quite a small living space. I live with my best friend ever, so it was fine. But even then, when I came back home and I actually now have my own office space in my house. Made the world of difference.- Well, I've told you about, but I still need to take you through my journey of my desks (laughs).- I quite like your ironing board. I mean, I feel you should have stuck with it.- My desk began as an ironing board. And look, what I'll say is this, don't underestimate an ironing board.(Romy laughing) They can come in very handy. You can change the heights. You can set that low and sit down, you can put it up higher, have a standing desk. Yeah, so I began with an ironing board. Then we discovered, well, we had a desk that was dismantled in our house. I had to assemble the desk and with no instructions, just a screwdriver, that I think was about 40 or 50 years old. Look, I mean, it was pretty ropey.(Romy laughing) Because I forgot to put in quite an important screw. And it was very wobbly, I'd say for a good two weeks.(Romy laughing) Until I discovered that problem. But now it's great. I've got, I now have a desk chair. I've got an extra screen. Things have really, it's been a journey that I've went on with my remote setup. But what I'll say is, we've got there.- This second screen business, I feel like is essential. I don't have one yet.- What I'll say is, second screens, for me, were a game changer when you're interpreting on zoom. And if they're sharing a screen. So if someone shares a screen, then everybody goes tiny. And you can like stretch it as much as you can, but they're still very small. Whereas when you have the second screen, you can have the PowerPoint on one side and then you can have people in the gallery on the other side. So you still have that, you've got a little bit more to work with. So that was very helpful, I have to say. And that helped an awful lot. That's been my evolution, just adapting left, right, and center, (laughing) really. I was gonna talk about angles. Angles.- Oh.- Get those angles.(Romy laughing) Angles.- This is just as good for selfies as it is for (laughing) sign language interpreting remotely.- They're very important. And what I've found, the best way to get (laughing) a great angle, Ciara's hot tip, from my laptop is to sit on four recipe books. I particularly like a cookbook'cause they're large and in charge, they're nice and stable, and they've got good height. So I've got four recipe book. Sometimes I go with three recipe book height, but I find that keeps my laptop open, stable. Use what you have (both laughing).- I also have books. Mine, however, are like, so I come from a family of architects, and mine are like "The History of the Topography and the Antiquity of Limerick City," volumes one through five. Then we've also got "Limerick History and Society, Civil Survey of County Limerick 1654 to 1670," whatever. Yeah, yeah. These are the tomes that rest under.- Little did they know(Romy laughing) they would be supporting.- They're finally.- International remote interpreting.- They're finally being put to use.(Romy laughing) That was a gas.- Well, I think that's all I really have to say about adapting. It's been a journey.- It has. And it's still going. I don't think the adaptations are as drastic. I think they're much more fine tuned now. But yeah, yeah,- Yeah. And some, I could say, have been more successful than others.- Absolutely.- And, what I think is very interesting to hear everybody's own experiences and how they've been dealing with it. It's the only way to learn.- It is. So I guess we should probably, maybe a little bit, introduced who our guest is.- Oh, on that note. So today we are joined by a wonderful guest. Robyn Dean has joined us to talk all about adapting in remote interpreting. Robyn Dean is a nationally certified ASL interpreter, with over 25 years, particularly in healthcare. She has over 20 publications, one of which Ciara and I are obsessed with, which is the Demand Control Schema that she wrote with Robert Pollard. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Rochester Institute of technology, and is the lead instructor for the Institute's postgraduate degree in Healthcare Interpreting.- I'm so excited to talk to her (laughing).- Great, without further ado, welcome to the podcast. Right, well, welcome, Robyn Dean, to The Lean. We are so happy to have you here.- So excited.- Thank you, I'm thrilled. I just put on Facebook that I was gonna be on a podcast and I thought that that must happen because I've listened to over 5,000 hours of my own podcasts that I'm interested in. And then I think that that's like the bonus. Once you pass 5,000 hours of listening to a podcast, you get your own.(Ciara laughing) So let's get started.- Let's do it.- Great. Okay, well, Robyn, would you like to tell the viewers and listeners of The Lean podcast a little bit about yourself and your interpreting background?- Sure. You can read biographies, and they give you sort of the highlights, but what they don't tell you is a couple of these things that I'll bring up. I actually started learning American Sign language at the age of 11, in the theater. I don't have anybody in my family who is deaf, but I was involved in children's theater. And there was a deaf theater that kind of tried to work, or merge, with us. And so actually the first person I met who was a sign language user was an interpreter. And I think I'm one of the earliest generations where interpreters passed along sign language to other interpreters, as opposed to deaf people. I think that's sort of another avenue that you can come in. Now, granted, soon after that, I got involved solved with the deaf community quite quickly after that, and started learning American sign language directly. And that was through really the only place that deaf people in, at this point I was living in Florida, at the age, young age, of 11, 12, 13. The only way to get access to deaf people in Florida is through religious organizations. I would sit in a Southern Baptist church, not being remotely Southern Baptist, and just using the opportunity to chat, if you will, and learn from the deaf community as much as I possibly could. And then I went to an interpreting program in Maryville, Tennessee, which is in the southern, eastern part of the United States. It is the first, though there's some argument with another university. It was the first four year bachelor level degree program in the United States. This is back in 1986, of which there were only two at the time. I went to that program. Graduated, became certified soon after, went to become mostly a freelance interpreter, worked in medical and mental health settings almost immediately, but, interestingly enough, with deaf professionals. Now in the US, it's common to refer to interpreters who work with deaf professionals in a regular way as designated interpreters. And I understand the term sometimes gets used elsewhere, as well. But designated interpreters, we didn't have that term. I was just mostly working with deaf professionals for the majority of the first 10 years of my career, which is really the outgrowth, or I should say the sort of stimulus for what eventually became my academic work. For a couple of reasons, and I'll talk about those later. And then, in 2001, I started getting funded by the US government, Department of Education, to produce and create materials based on Bob Pollard's and my theoretical material. And academically was supported, excuse me, not academically. But from a grants perspective was supported in my career for about a decade. And then I was offered a PhD scholarship to Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Graham Turner, Jemina Napier, Sven Yverm, this great group of people. And went there for three years and got my PhD. And now I am teaching full time in a graduate program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, National Technical Institute for the Deaf. They're a new graduate program in healthcare interpreting. And I'm one of the main instructors on that program. So that's me in a nutshell.- So interesting.- Oh, Robyn, you're so cool. I can't handle it.(everyone laughing)(Robyn laughing) As you know, our mini series is all about remote interpreting. And this particular episode is all about adapting. You've heard a little bit about what me and Romy have gone (laughing) through to try and adapt. The journey from the ironing board to the desk. Romy's library that she sets her laptop up on.(Romy laughing) But Robyn, we really want to know, what do you think adapting in remote interpreting is.(Robyn sighs) Big question.- Yeah, well, you know, I think you are aware that my colleague, Amanda Smith and I, wanted to address what we were seeing with our colleagues, both in the UK, and in the US, around, all of a sudden I'm a remote video interpreter. And, Amanda Smith and I, through our work with IRIS, which I'm trying to avoid saying lengthy names, cause someone's gonna have to interpret this,(Romy and Ciara laughing) but maybe you could put it at the bottom of the screen. This is the Interpreting Institute for Reflection in Action and Supervision. The idea that we're trying to advance reflective practice and supervision within the interpreting field. And while we tend to take interpreting practice and reflection more broadly, sometimes you can't really attend to people's broad needs when they're not getting their practical needs met. And so we decided to host a webinar and really sort of stand in the background as the host, because neither one of us are supporting ourselves in any significant way having to do remote interpreting. And hopefully give sort of the spotlight to the other panelists who were all willing to donate their time and just make that available to people. I think that adapting is a choice. There can, I think there's a lot of emotional reaction that comes to adapting. And I think that interpreters should be more aware of the emotional reactions that come along to being thrown into what Paul Ricoeur, R-I-C-O-E-U-R, French philosopher, called disorientation as part of his Orientation, Disorientation, Reorientation philosophy or scheme. And so, when you're thrown into disorientation with anything such as being a human on the planet and having to deal with international pandemic, to now being an interpreter in a way in which you've never, perhaps, done that kind of interpreting, seeing people two dimensionally, et cetera, and having to attend to the family and such within the next, perhaps, space, next to you. So I think that this has been a very disorienting experience for interpreters. Not to mention, obviously, everybody else on the other side of that screen. And making sure that we attend to both our own emotional reactions and psychological reactions, but also we have to somehow attend to the emotional, psychological reactions happening for the people on the other side as well. And I think that when your so frustrated, tired, angry, it's hard to have patience and kindness for people on the other end (laughs). So yeah, so that's referred to as emotional labor, the amount of work that we as interpreters have to do in our normal face-to-face work, as emotional labor is very intense, obviously. And then this emotional labor is a little bit different. You're mostly dealing with your own emotional reactions, the emotional and psychological reactions of others, and everybody trying to maintain some sense of decorum at the same time, and productivity as well. And trying to further the values of important things, such as access to communication and access to information.- And I think it's something that is forgotten. Like even when Ciara and I were chatting about adaptive, we were talking about real world mechanisms, rather than the internal change that is also happening in response to what's going on. So it's a very important thing to bear in mind.- And I think that when we don't bear something in mind, it finds its way out in other ways, that we are not prepared for, not ready for, and oftentimes can have some pretty bad ramifications.- Yeah. That's really interesting. Just to hear you talk about disorientation.'Cause I actually work as a VRS interpreter, half the time. So half of my work was already that. But then when everything got turned remotely, and I kind of thought to myself, "no, Ciara, you're okay,'cause you've got a bit of a background working remotely. You're gonna be okay." Nope. It was not okay because all those things that you're normally so used to, and they're so smooth and easy when you're face-to-face, are suddenly completely different. And, like what you're talking about, how your body kind of nearly fights to protect your soul, the tiredness and the fatigue is something else. It really is. And you can really feel it. And although I was very used to a system, and I was kind of, had adapted to that in my own kind of way from when I'd been working with that. But then when it turned to everything else, everything that would normally be out in the world was now, suddenly, in my sitting room, you could really feel the strain, I have to say, I really felt it.- It makes me think of my decision to go to move to Edinburgh when I was 43, thinking, what am I doing? I mean, I have a house of 15 years. I have a career, yada, yada. And I thought, but you know, it's not going to be that hard to adapt to the UK.'Cause you know, culturally and linguistically. And then of course just like you thinking, oh, VRS, VRI. How difficult can it be? So America, Scotland, you know?(Romy and Ciara laughing) So that makes me wonder if interpreters, when faced with this I thought it was going to be one way and perhaps not as bad as it is, and the decision fatigue of constantly having to say,"all right, I should probably do something at this point," becomes so intense that you end up, the decisions become, do nothing. Not because do nothing is a good decision, but because you just can't make another decision.- So with that decision fatigue, is to be aware of it. One, so that you can take the action to look after yourself and recoup because we're a profession that's particularly susceptible to burnout. And with everything that's going on, you don't realize until it's too late. So it's critical to put a name on things so that people can be more reflective of what's going on internally.- We oftentimes don't take proactive action. That's a bit of a redundancy, right? But we're not proactive. We tend to wait until there's a problem, and then we do something. And that's sort of human nature. And that's one of the reasons why supervision and reflective practice is so important, because it basically says,"I know you don't particularly feel like you need to talk about this situation, or your work, or whatever, but trust us in the process because," and we talk about the famous last words of somebody saying, "well, I've got the situation that, there's really not much to talk about. It'll take like five minutes, but okay." And about an hour and a half later, I'm going, okay, we really do need to talk about this now.(Romy laughing) A five minute story in your mind. Because that's what your mind also does. Your mind minimizes things. And so you can't really, on some level, trust your brain to actually apprehend what the experience was. Which I think is why it's good to have rituals and mechanisms, in place, that you just sort of aren't necessarily going,"well, I'll exercise when I feel like exercising." Now, please don't think that, therefore, I'm a person who is out there with some sort of exercise discipline and regimen.'Cause I'm not.(Romy and Ciara laughing) But I do truly, truly believe in it, philosophically. But I certainly am advancing it in the field of don't wait until the emotional toll, psychological toll, that interpreting work, like any practice, profession can have on you emerges in negative ways.- I mean, it's why EIPI is so important, because it does build up that self-reflective system.- Right, on some level, any sort of theory making, naming things, whether it's the context like EIPI, or whether it's this idea of consequences and decision-making that DCS tries to advance, these theories while artificial on some level, because they're trying to grasp reality, which of course reality will always, or the phenomenon of life, will be ungraspable on some level they do help our brains work through them in ways that reduce the cognitive load. And so, if we can reduce the cognitive load of our brain trying to pick up on all these things, because we have categories that go,"oh, that's that, that, that," that then you're more likely to move through your decision making in easier ways. Cognitive rehearsal does the same thing. If I say to myself, so on some level, Ciara, you sort of set yourself up for failure, to say, "oh, how hard can it be?"'Cause the brain is looking for those kinds of things. That's what the brain does. It's very efficient. And it wants to make sure that it doesn't have to expend any more energy than it has to, for good biological reasons. One of the things that I think we like about it. Well, let me speak for myself. What I like about interpreting, or what's is the excitement of it all, is sort of the challenge of performance, in the moment, and it kind of takes away the fun or the mystery when you go, "okay, let's think about what's about to. Let's do some prep work." It's like, "nah, let's show up and."- Keep the magic alive (laughing). That's right. That's right.- Okay, well that kind of leads us on nicely for our next question, Is there any specific example, or experience, or something that sticks in your mind, that truly represents adapting when it comes to remote interpreting, for you?- I think it, and again, and I, even though you're saying"in remote interpreting," I tend to think of things a little bit more broadly in saying this is not unique, right? On some level yes, when you get down to the bits and pieces, it definitely is unique. But when you back away from a topic you say, "right, I can see how this is similar to this, this and this." And I think actually reminding yourself of that is helpful because you say "this is actually similar in these ways. I've been in situations where I've been disoriented, and I came through it." Or, "I remembered that, when I did come through it, effectively, it was, I did these things". So I tend to like theories, like frameworks, like processes, because they allow you to see, as the book of Ecclesiastes says,"there's nothing new under the sun." Basically we're all experiencing the same (laughing). It's like Groundhog day. I know people are using that as a term to talk about living under a pandemic. But I think on some level, the human experience is the human experience. My Master's degree is in Theology, in part, because I thought the 5,000 year old story is still relevant today, on some level. You change the names and the characters. And yet the struggle for justice, for example, is still ongoing. Which is obviously what the Hebrew text, and Christian text, is all about, is about justice, arguably. And so, and so, so pardon me if I'm going too esoteric when I say this, but I think that, when I think of an example of adapting, I mean, I think about, I graduated from my four year program. I thought, I know how to do this work. I was pretty competent, linguistically, in part because I started learning at a young age, learned from the deaf community, or at least a portion of them, and had my ethics. Passed my test and all those things. And then I went out into the practice world, and I'm like, "oh," (laughs). And you could argue that no profession can adequately, fully give you an understanding of the work. But I was particularly concerned, because as I mentioned at the introduction, I worked with, I worked amongst other professions. And I worked with these deaf professionals amongst other hearing professionals, in educational environments, practice educational environments, so internships and practicums and that kind of thing. And so I was constantly being exposed to the ways in which other practice professionals prepare their new practitioners. And I kept saying, we've got none of this. And so it could have been the case that I could have said, because I would sit down with my colleagues. And I, it would be over coffee. We'd just sort of moan to each other about, "oh my gosh." and this and that. And I was quite happy with moaning, on some level. A cup of coffee and moan, and then you go back to work. And the change really came for me because really all I did was go to Bob Pollard and moan, because he was the head of the program that had these deaf professionals. And so I kind of felt like he was my confessioner. I could go to him and say, "hey, look, so I made this decision and it probably isn't right from the ethical perspective, but it seemed to work really well." And I would, and he'd be like,"well, that's interesting because that would be perfectly acceptable," and blah, blah, blah. And he wasn't moaning along with me. He was like saying,"well, that's interesting. And perhaps you should do a literature search." And I'm like, (groans),"man, this guy is annoying."(Ciara laughing) And at one point he actually, and he said, "well, why don't you start doing some research to find out who's said, who's talked about this already." So I put in some words, begrudgingly, keywords, a Boolean something or other. Anyway, so he was like,"okay, so you're set to do your literature review." And he walked out. And, literally, I put in stress and a couple of other keywords. And the first thing on my little list was "Demand/Control Theory" by Robert Karasek,"Healthy Work." And I'm like, "good, done ,check. Found it."(Ciara and Romy laughing) So I, at some point, got the book out of the library and read it. And of course that's really when everything changed. My point here is, is that adapting, I think, has phases and stages. And I think the initial phase is to moan and be quite content with the moaning. Even to find solidarity and connection, which is usually invigorated. We get sort of that need, emotional need, met and we think, okay, we're done. But then the next gig is gonna be equally as frustrating. And we're not necessarily gonna have any sort of recourse, or new skills in place, as a result of that. And so we're just gonna basically end up in that. So at some point it's gonna have to become, in this case, I had somebody who wouldn't moan along with me, even though he didn't realize it was fun, apparently.(Romy and Ciara laughing) And said, you should look into research. And so the idea of looking outside yourself. When moaning ends up being ineffectual, or not enough fun, or sickness creating, then it's time to move into, perhaps there's something else outside of this bubble that I'm in that might have something to say about this topic.- That's true.'Cause I sometimes think of an interpreter as a bit like a comedian, because we have to, we find ourselves in so many different situations and you have to, you have to kind of morph into, or blend in, wherever you are, and to make sure that communication is smooth and everything happens. So I suppose, if you think about it that way, if you just think of things switching to online as just another kind of aspect of adapting in your own kind of little comedian way, which you're doing all the time anyway, as an interpreter.- Yes. Yes. And I think that was one of the powerful things, when I read Karasek's book, was the word demand, of the job. Just to sort of think of something as a demand. It's not out to get you, (ladies laughing), it's not personal. It's just what the job is asking you to do. And I know that that sort of sounds like cognitive trick, or something, that is supposed to bring about a Buddhist level of Zen. But it really is, if you do focus on some of these ideas about, this isn't personal, everybody's doing the best that they can with the resources that they have. If you understand people's behavior in the context that they're experiencing and they're reacting from, it makes much more sense than it does to you on the outside. The ways in which you can kind of remind yourselves of these realities that you know, and you often give yourself a pass off when those things happen to you. The idea that we would then extend them to people outside of us is an important reminder, I think. Which is connected to what I was going to say in response to the final question about the tip. Self care, while certainly I believe in baths, and yoga, and hot tea, and hot toddies, and all those things that are sort of soothing. I think that there's another self care tactic that is a little bit more longterm in its effectiveness. And that is thinking about the way that you think. Taking a look at your thoughts, and taking a look, and usually we find our thoughts from our emotions. The emotion is the first thing we feel. And so once we're done sort of raging, or whatever, about whatever emotion we're feeling, and then we say, "okay, so what thought is creating?" Typical cognitive behavioral therapy approach. What thought is creating that emotion? Because if you really wanna address the emotion, stifling it, actually, doesn't work as effectively. As a matter of fact, that's what emotional labor research has shown, is that repression, of saying, "I feel these things, but I'm not supposed to feel these things, or at least I'm not supposed to display them. And so I'll just suck it up," actually leads to the things that we talked about earlier, burnout, compassion fatigue, et cetera. When you have an emotional reaction to something somebody does or says, you try to remind yourself that most people behave in reasonable ways, and there's likely a reason why their behavior, or what they've said, comes from a certain place. That doesn't mean that, obviously, we stand for abuse. I'm not, certainly, talking about that, But let's talk about sort of under the bell curve of normal human engagement, is that you say, "I wonder what that person is responding to." And to give, again, as I've already said, extend that kindness and that cognitive benefit of the doubt to other people. And on some level, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Because the point here is that you're really doing it, on some level, for yourself and the next person that you come into contact with. Because if you come into contact already charged with somebody else that doesn't deserve, if you will, the same kind of charged nature that you're walking in with, I think is something for us to be, again, concerned about for ourselves and those individuals we engage.- Romy, it goes to my political slogan. Kindness costs nothing. If I ever run for election, Robyn, than that's gonna be my-- Love that. I love that.- That's gonna be my line.(Ciara laughing) It's so true. It's so true. This has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.- Oh, it's fun. Fun, fun, fun. Thank you so much for inviting me.- You made our podcast dream come true.- Oh, that's very kind of you to say. That's very, good. Good. It's The Lean Podcast- Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Lean Podcast, the mini series. We would like to thank David Hay, our video technician extraordinaire, Isabelle Walsh, art director supreme, Aisling Dragoi, our dream translator, as well of all of our guests for making these episodes possible. This has been made possible thanks to the Sign Language Interpreting Service, SLIS, and the Citizens Information Board. Without them, this never would have happened. Please follow us on our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, @theleanpodcast_ and know that we now have a Patreon account. So if you have any Euros to spare, we would really appreciate them so we can continue doing what we love, talking about interpreting. Thanks for listening, bye.