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Author: nikkiahrens
Nikki Ahrens: Sometimes I’m Maria

Nikki Ahrens: Sometimes I’m Maria

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Fish climb treeFish climb treeFish climb treeI can’t help myself.  I love it when classroom discussions become “genuine discussions” and the flow of ideas is harmonious and fluid.  It’s nice when the professor can initiate the conversation, then several students reply and then turn to each other and have an intelligent discussion for a while.  As long as no one is stealing the floor or offending anybody then this is where a lot of juicy learning can take place.

Hand raising can spoil the rhythm of an otherwise free-flowing conversation.  Sometimes people forget what they wanted to say if they get stuck raising their hand for too long, waiting for a turn to speak.  I get bummed out when that happens to me, or worse yet, when the whole subject of the discussion changes before I even get a chance to express myself.Fish climb tree  Sometimes I get so excited about what I want to say that I just blurt it out, only to find out that what was so neatly packed as a whole thought inside my head becomes a pile of fruitcake crumbs the minute it leaves my mouth. Nobody understands or cares about it. Not even me.

Why does this happen?  Why do I get like Maria when trying to offer up something for discussion in class, where my thoughts seem incomplete or scattered?  I think it has something to do with the anxiety I feel.  The anxiety comes from not wanting to take up too much class time with what I have to say, from worrying that my fellow students and/or professor might think that what I have to say is irrelevant, and from being concerned that I might not be able to convert my thoughts into the appropriate words within a reasonable amount of time.  Professors like June make it even worse.  My problem is that if I get stuck inside my own head for too long with no chance to participate, I become disenchanted and zone out entirely.  I try to keep up with the lecture but I can only take in so much information from a single direction.  Maybe sometimes my words get jumbled because I’m desperate to break up the monotony.

I can imagine being June.  I might get frustrated, especially if I had more than one Maria (or me) in my class.  Etiquette is such a powerful factor in how a person is judged.  People judge others based on etiquette without even knowing that they are doing it.  Maybe Maria is like me and thinks that college should be more interactive sometimes.  Maybe, like the article suggests, we are just rebelling against a system that doesn’t work very well for us.   Maybe we are better at writing than we are at talking.  Aren’t there a lot of people like that?

Talking about it helps -Nikki Ahrens

Talking about it helps -Nikki Ahrens

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I recall several moments in my college experience when I’ve had writer’s block– especially at the beginning, when I had a paper assigned and I didn’t know where to begin.  What was I going to write about?  Where was I going to get my information?  I was a “bleeder.”  I had a habit of getting right into writing my paper– no outline, just start at the beginning and keep writing until I got to a “stuck” point, read what I’ve written, hate it, throw it away and start over.  I would sometimes pick my first “draft” out of the garbage, de-crumple it, use a sentence or phrase from it in my next version and move on.  As my number of “drafts” increased, so did the complexity of this process, because my trash can got fuller of these crumpled up rejects, each having more words on it than the one before.

Finally a point would come when one of my friends would call or come by out of concern because I looked like shit and may or may not have gone outside, eaten or showered in a few days.  He or she would ask me what was wrong and I would break it down all sweaty and salivating and crying going “I have this crazy paper due in two days and I am more confused about it than I was when I started blah, blah blah!”  And then…..  After about fifteen minutes of complaining like it was the end of the world I would magically see through the pile of muck I had created.  I just had to hear myself talk about my paper.

I know that as a tutor in the ESL center my job will involve more than just sitting and listening to students complain about how writing “is the worst!” but I know I will be able to relate in some ways to how they might feel.  I think one of the biggest contributors to my writer’s block has always been that I make things too complicated.  It really is no big deal.  It’s about putting thoughts into words that are written on paper.  That’s a process.  Those thoughts may have to be transformed into something else before they are written down.  For me, a lot of times they become hand gestures first.  Sometimes they become feelings, memories, connections, pictures or something else.  But a great tool for transforming thoughts into written words is speaking.  Writers can come into the ESL center and talk about their papers.  I’m no expert at writing, but I’m pretty sure I can help them talk it out.