A speaker uses a ball-of-yarn metaphor to describe code-switching: adopting someone else's persona to be liked. They spent twelve years at IBM in a black suit and bun, fitting in but drifting from their true self. The cost of acceptance was distance from who they actually were.
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But anyway, this ball of yarn who's different and colorful goes in and tries to be themselves and is shut down, wing clipped, like at every turn. And so what ends up happening, and a lot of us do this, as a matter of fact, it's so common that NPR created a podcast called Code Switching, which is we start to basically take on the persona of the people that don't like us in order to become more likable to those people. You watch this ball of yarn turn into a bro, right? And wearing pants. And I remember thinking when I was younger, early in my career, I did the same thing. I would look at— I was at IBM for my first 12 years and looking around, everyone, no one looked like me. I would wear, I remember I'd wear these like black suit pants. I'd wear a white button-down shirt and like a blazer. I looked like a guy in hindsight, a lot like this Pearl person actually. And I remember putting my hair in a bun for for like 2 years I never took it out. So you just go and you buy these cosmetic, you know, aesthetically pleasing glasses. But I wanted people to think I was smart, and it worked. That's the problem with it, is that systemically I was— I— it worked. But then you, as a— as the human who switched and code-switched and accommodated, you realize how far from your true self you are at some point.
