Audalogy

Want to know my Achilles’ heel? Maybe someday it’ll come in handy.

Graded participation. The bain bane of my existence. (haha, accidentally typed Bain because that’s my all time dream job. Just one extra little tidbit for you) I probably should have thought of that before I decided to major in Business – the one major where participation matters. Then again, I always like a challenge, and I always tend to get myself into areas that I’m weak in.

Why I get so anxious about participation, who knows. I have my theories, of course, but every single time I want to raise my hand to say something, my mind just blanks out. Sometimes the GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) will ask a question and I will have absolutely no thoughts come across me. It’s like a white sheet of paper…or a monk in deep zen meditation..like writer’s block except this is more like speech block. What’s worse is that I’m not even day dreaming or counting down the minutes until the end of class. I’m just sitting there with a mind numb. This tends to happen more often in those classes where participation matters the most (as in it’ll make or break your grade because the class is that competitive). Somehow the idea of “graded participation” really turns me off, and I just want to disobey for the heck of it. Yea, I’m such a rebel aren’t I.

Other times, what starts happening is I overthink every single detail. Say the GSI has a grading policy where you get 2 points for coming to class, 3 points for saying anything, 4 points for saying something good, and 5 points for saying something mind blowing. Well, every time I hear someone say something, I start evaluating how many points he/she should get for that comment, instead of thinking about the topic at hand or how I can respond to it. What fascinates me more is how a teacher can put a number on someone else’s contribution to the group. As far as I’m concerned, anytime a student says something, I consider it a valued comment. In fact, I admire the student for even having the courage to put up his/her hand and talk. I just can’t figure out how a GSI can go around and assign points to everyone based on a discussion section an hour and a half ago. How inaccurate and subjective would that be? Although if I never say a word, that’s an automatic 2 points right there, but what if the GSI mistook I for the person sitting next to me and accidentally assigned me points instead? Wouldn’t that be an unfair distribution? How lucky can I get by “stealing” the points from my next door neighbor? Well, as I ruminate about all these thoughts, the hour and a half sneaks past me and before I know it, class is over.

Potential reasons for these unfortunate thoughts~ (1) Procrastination. The truth is I’m deathly afraid of speaking up for fear of being judged as saying something stupid, so I’m just buying time by keeping my mind occupied. (2) I have some sort of atypical autistic disorder where I can’t focus on the social interactions at hand and my mind wanders off into thinking the thoughts of others (3) I think that some of the questions are so obvious and redundant that I can’t be bothered to answer. A rather arrogant perspective, I’d say. (4) Others have already made really good points, and I don’t feel like I could top what they said or have anything to add. (5) Self-Enhancement Theory (at least I think that’s what it’s called). I’m afraid of failure, so I create an excuse. Therefore, if I received a poor participation grade, it wasn’t because I was deemed to produce dumb or unworthy contributions, but rather because an extrinsic factor caused me not to participate at all.

Funny that I have so much to say about this now that I will never have a chance to “participate” in the traditional sense ever again. But no worries, there’s always the “real world” test.

One thing to keep in mind, “You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  If I happen to remember that, it just might be the antidote to my Achilles’ heel.