So far this summer, I've worked on my blog, created a LinkedIn, and watched plenty of new movies with family and friends. I've also been waiting tables at a small café about 20 miles from my house, a summer activity that's taken up a large part of my time lately - I've worked the past 8 days in a row. With all the time I've spent making small talk with strangers and writing down breakfast and lunch orders, I thought it would be fun to write a blog post that combined my summer job with my long-term career aspiration: science writing.
Working at a restaurant, especially one that includes a gelato shop and coffee station, requires me to keep a lot of different people and things in my head at one time, and it's easy to get confused. However, as I've worked longer hours and more time at the restaurant, I've found it easier to memorize orders and keep everything straight. By now I can make a latte, brew a new pot of coffee, scoop and ring up two ice creams and take out a table's order within a 10-minute time span. Some of the café's more experienced servers can move even more quickly than I can, and it occurred to me that becoming a skilled server might involve training or rewiring your brain in some way, which would make for a great blog topic.
So I looked it up, and found nothing. Surprisingly - or maybe not that surprisingly - no one seems to have done a study on how servers' brains work (i.e. how they memorize orders and juggle all the different aspects of restaurant function at the same time). I think "The Science of Serving" sounds like a great idea for either an investigative article or a scientific study, but it doesn't seem to have happened yet. I can't explain how my brain is different as a result of working in a restaurant, but I know I've managed to train myself to work more than a week in a row without complete exhaustion. The scientific links to serving aren't as obvious as the links to say, cooking, but I do think there's something to the idea.
When I wrote my first blog post for NUScience, I had trouble coming up with an topic. The blog manager told me that everything is science on some level, so I could write about whatever I wanted. My post ended up being about music therapy, but with that logic, I could have just as easily written about the science of being a server. If I can take an order, scoop gelato and brew coffee all at the same time, then couldn't I be a server, a journalist and a scientist at the same time too? That kind of combination is easier said than done, but I'm certainly doing my best.
