Over the past couple of days one of my weaknesses has become very clear to me. While sitting in my Intro to Peace and Justice Studies class, and my Intro to Philosophy class, and the ALLIES meeting, I realized that I have a serious problem getting my point across. Not to get too self congratulatory here, but I know that intellectually I fit in my classes. The points people bring up makes sense to me, and I don’t usually get too lost during the lectures. When it comes to contribute however, I sometimes have problems. Not all the time, I can often contribute well in these kinds of intellectual situations. However, there are times when I have valuable things to say, but the way I express my thoughts doesn’t seem very effective. Part of it is how I speak. It’s not like I speak with a country accent or sound like a Valley girl or anything, but I definitely don’t speak like a debater. When I’m not coming from that kind of standpoint with some crazy intellectual sounding way of talking, people tend to not take me nearly as seriously as the people who sound more put together, so I really have to be able to support my opinions. This is also slightly problematic because I don’t know a lot about recent history. There’s this gap, like the 90s and early 2000s, where my knowledge is pretty weak because it falls between the end of our learning in history classes and the age at which I was mature enough to pay attention and understand the news. For some reason this period of time has come up surprisingly often so I’m feeling slightly disadvantaged.
I’m really not upset about this though. The gap in my learning is easy to fix, I just need to do a little research (as soon as I find some time.) And as far as weaknesses go, this is a good one to be aware of in college. I have no doubt that these next four years will improve my ability to express myself in many types of situations. It’s a good challenge and I’m actually looking forward to actively trying to improve this aspect of myself. Plus it’s inspiring to be around people who can carry on these great discussions. Still, it was something I became aware of last week and I figured it was worth a post.
