Lately, I’m always the one. The one who everyone glimpses at
during the awkward silence, my peers speculating if I inhabit the will to fill
the void with an intelligent discovery of Myrtle’s disposition. I remain the
one who feels Ms. Serensky’s eyes glaring at my downturned head, unable to look
up because I consciously feel the “Come on Becky, TALK!!” expression that
shoots from her eyeballs. The cause might lay in the fact that my parents just
paid my enrollment and housing deposit at The University of Alabama. The cause
also might lay in the senioritis that runs through my veins, which were
apparent my sophomore year of high school. Or finally, the cause might remain
that I just don’t have anything to say. I will fully admit that I remain
intimidated during the intellectual discussions that take place on a day to day
basis. I know for a fact that I do not obtain a membership to the “smart group,”
my own personal classification of who could easily write for The New York Times
or become a prestigious doctor at The Cleveland Clinic. Don’t get me wrong, I
do not think I view myself as stupid. But, I take Advanced Placement English to
challenge myself. I know that I do not exist as the Ivy League type, but I like
to surround myself with people who live as that type. But throughout class, I endure
listening to my classmates discuss the points that I wanted to discuss. Not only
do I endure just them taking my points, but they find a particular underlying meaning
of the simple anecdote. But that’s not all! They also say it in a way, using
literary devices and advanced vocabulary that leaves me speechless. Literally. But
wait, it gets better. Other people find themselves in this same predicament.
Their point already made, and they need to say something so a check can reside
next to their name. So, they repeat the same exact point with the same exact quotes,
and twist the wording up. Yay, overkill! And now, I remain completely speechless.
I know I need to find an answer to this problem, for my grade will most likely
suffer due to my silence during discussion. But sometimes, I just don’t have
anything to say.
I agree, sometimes I just do not have anything to say as someone already said my point. I find that particular interesting though, that out of about twenty pages of reading, a lot of people will focus in on only a few moments and then nothing else really grabs their attention. On the flip side, I also find it interesting that people will bring up moments I completely overlooked and proceed to find deep underlying meaning. I think the benefit of discussion lies in that purpose though, as everyone notices different moments that contribute to the meaning of the story.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I often find myself opting for silence during discussions. Unlike you, though, this silence does not stem from not having anything to say; on the contrary, I always have plenty to say about the reading and my classmate's opinions of it--I just rarely know how to string my thoughts together into a coherent sentence. Whenever I do choose to talk, my heart rate inevitably skyrockets, adrenaline kicks in, and, naturally, my thoughts come out as a jumbled mess of sporadic words and phrases that often leave me wondering why I decided to talk in the first place.
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