WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

Literally I was without words this weekend when I was trying to write about a personal statement of goals for my grad admission application to Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach.  I happen to be applying at this time for the MA in Spanish at Fullerton, which will be my second master I hope so, and for the MA in education, option social and cultural analysis at Long Beach State.  Anyway, as most of you may know such process involves a great deal of stress, and issues of language usage as well, which the second being as the most stressful for second language students.  Whether you are applying for a master in Spanish or a master in mathematics, you really need to be familiar with the English language basic composition structures.  Regardless of the type of grad program you intend to apply, there are some common features that most grad programs include.  A predominant feature includes the writing of a personal statement of goals, and some of the questions involve very individualize responses.  Hence; I suddenly had gone out of words when I was trying to answer questions about my views of education when apply to my personal experience.  Also, how the grad program will help me to achieve my future goals in the education field.  Personally, this weekend makes me sick adding to the approximately six-hour test I took on Saturday at Dominguez Hills, well that is another story.

I was trying also to keep up with my teaching of composition course readings, and on Lindemann, chapter eight about shaping discourse; I found something particularly interesting about blocking.  She talks about blocking, and formal outlines.  It happened that I was trying to create an outline that would allow me to write a well-developed statement, but I wasn’t able to follow it.  I found that the outline imposes limitations on what I intend to say, it was very frustrating because I got to a point where I had no words to continue with my statement.  At first, I didn’t want to sound too personal, so I spent hours trying to develop a neat outline which at the end was worthless.  Lindemann argues that formal outlines don’t allow spontaneity.  Since I wanted to sound “me,” my outline was not suitable to fulfill the message I was trying to convey.  I ended up creating what she calls blocking.  I sketched a few geometric shapes, which each of them containing one idea only, so at the end I was able to just develop that idea, and that was the solution to my frustration.  I really dislike outlines!  My mind thinks differently, organized mi thoughts in a more abstract way.  Most of the time I just seat in front of my word processor and start writing what it’s coming directly from my mind. I even don’t write on a separate piece of paper, I just do that to write notes as reminders.  Well, mind works intrinsically as an individualized system of thoughts that there is no key for writing, just be you!