Social Skill is Like Music

The other day my mom was typing a report for her studies. She is head nurse in the hospital she works in and she went to a bigger hospital to learn about the procedures of nursing in palliative care. It's rare to see my mom doing any sort of homework so I asked her what she was writing. She told me it's a common homework for people studying in nursing; the task was to record conversations one had with a patient or the patient's family members, and analyze what they said. 

Nursing is based largely on interactions with patients in order to make them feel understood. The purpose of such assignment is to train people to have this ability in a short time, as opposed to learning it from long term experiences. 

I’m amazed at how my mom can write down an entire conversation from mostly memory. She said it takes practice. 

We came to the conclusion that social skill is like music: some people are born with good sense of rhythm, while some can’t follow the beat at all. It’s possible to improve one’s musical sense by practicing, but everyone starts off on a different level.