The first thing I want to say is that my professor talks. A. Lot. He begins with a social issue such as education and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and his mind doesn't even close until he can somehow be reminded of looking at his watch or the clock on the wall. He actually goes off-topic with such ease. I mean the tolerable thing is that what he says is very meaningful and has a point - it's just I feel that some of the stuff isn't really necessary, mostly because it doesn't get me thinking in any particular direction personally. Other classmates, I can tell, are very affected with social issues and care about them a lot so good for them - I honestly am glad that there are people who care as much as they do, because it really isn't my nature to do so. I mean, I care about the extinction of Pandas and keeping the environment as clean as possible but I don't have the time nor the effort to care about the current economical crises or about some country building a nuclear bomb or some war in some other area. It's not that I'm apathetic and heartless - I am aware, and I have opinions about those kinds of things, but I just don't have the urge to voice my thoughts out as much as other people do.
Speaking of my voicing my thoughts, I was surprisingly very quiet in class today. I was shocked myself, I couldn't find anything to say, so I didn't. I'd rather not say anything than say a bunch of bullshit and have the other people at my group look at me in dullness - which they did eventually after someone told me to talk because I wasn't talking. Usually, I do talk a lot in class. I talk on a fairly frequent basis in math and English classes, ask meaningful things. I feel like I might talk a lot in my Linguistics class - and I had so many questions in Humanities today and just had no chance to ask my questions but they weren't that important anyways. But this speech class - critical thinking.
Since it's never too late, I'll try to jot down what I think of critical thinking. It's really sad, Monta Vista didn't really tell us much about critical thinking - the only exception I can think of being AP US History. Sometimes it depends on the class or curriculum, and sometimes it depends on the teacher. Like British Literature for example, critical thinking may have occasionally come up but for the most part, we were analyzing literal components of the stories, not too much about critically thinking of the text. And in all my other classes all I can remember is memorization or constant practice - not much room for "critical thinking". Honestly, when we had the discussion today I wanted to ask like well what the hell does 'critical thinking' mean in the first place? Why can't they say it in more simplistic forms like "reasoning" or "analyzing" and why make it sound like I'm about to do some SAT problem? Because honestly that was what I was thinking about the whole time - while my other group members thought of very good things and came up with very good examples and I'm just obediently and quietly jotting down notes. This is another moment that just proves I'm not really a shy person - I'm just quiet, voiceless. I felt fine talking to them before and after class, just not during this discussion because honestly NOTHING was going on in my brain.
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... so now it's my turn to be side-tracked again. Am I shy? Honestly I will say I get upset when people label me as shy, but through much thorough thinking - it really depends. I will say, though, that I'm shy pretty much 60% of the time. However, any time I'm around people, most of the time I really don't have anything to say. Or I do, but I hate coming off as awkward. I absolutely despise that deadlock feeling it's the worst ever. If I can't click with someone within a few days of meeting and talking to them, I usually just forget about them. I have circumstances at the time being where I don't have any choice but to keep talking to them, so I have to deal with this horrible deadlock feeling every once in a while. Yet the fact that I don't have anything to say leads me to not want to talk to people because I hate feeling awkward and basically socially stationary so I don't do anything and I avoid people which lead to basically a chain reaction of being shy, and thus being perceived as such.
I also want to mention that I'm not used to talking about deep, intellectual, and possibly emotional things with groups in school. Usually we discuss a question, a rather objective perhaps relating to some instance in some story or whatever. Or it builds up, you know? Like in all my English classes. Shallow thoughts, then we gradually go deeper. That's what I'm comfortable with, and today in Speech we just dived head first, no warm-ups, straight into the deeper ends of ... questioning stuff and life. But I guess it's just a sign to begin stepping out of my comfort zone.
This whole quarter I'm going to have to step out of my comfort zone. Again. I can't believe I lost the feeling of the excitement of being an Honors student and actively participating in class. What happened?
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