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| Dealing with writer's block Image from 8dio.com |
Anyway, I don't want to waste the following post so I insist on sharing it. Although it might not be relevant any more, it still serves as a nice timestamp.
If you have been keeping an eye on the time that I have been updating my blog, I haven't been keeping up with the schedules lately. This is due to the fact that I am actually writing something else.
When I write my blog, I can go on forever without stopping, and words come easily and quickly, straight from my head and my logic flows smooth like the flowing river, because I know very well that I am doing this not for myself, but for you guys. Like my student Godwin said in his email for me, I love what I do, I love to share. I know very well that I will write well. If you send me essays for corrections, I will know exactly how to make it sound better.
The story is completely different when I have to do something for myself, which I hate, I get writer's block. I can't seem to think of anything! The more I care about it, the least I can write. I guess many of you have had the same experience as well.
Apart from getting writer's block, another challenge is to think out of my own definition of "perfect".
Last year, I spent almost a year writing my personal statement. I spent month after month preparing, self-reflecting, researching, writing, cooling, rethinking, rewriting, modifying... making them look perfect for submission. When I pulled them out from the folder two weeks ago and read them again, they looked like trash!
This year, I only spent like a week to rewrite everything, which I think is a miracle, and I also think they look great (not perfect this time), but who knows, maybe after a year, they might too look like garbage? It is really difficult to break out from one's frame of thinking.
Then shouldn't I have spent more time on cooling them down, think them over and make more changes to them before submitting? I can't, because I am afraid that the seats for the courses may be filled before I even submit my forms. You see, they begin interviewing in December and they may even finish the interview before the submission deadline. I had to hurry. But excuses or not, I think that "chop-chop, submit quick" in my head got me to overlook my errors in the application form -- now I have 2 full-time job instead of one because I forgot to put an end date on my ex-full-time.
Nice going, Locky!
I double- and even triple-checked my form of course, but sometimes, even making 100-tuple checks is simply not enough to spot the error, ask the computer programmers and they will agree. What's worse, the admission board might even regard me as not giving a damn about the application and filter me out at once.
I started getting these dreams about me sitting on a chair in front of 3 interviewers with no face, who were asking me how I could possibly not take a blind bit of notice, and I had to explain why I made such stupid mistakes.
So silly, right? I might not even get an interview. But guess I have to plan early, for either full-time or part-time mode will greatly affect my monthly income and I need to know how to arrange my life then.
Master's degree classes are usually held in the evenings, which means I will need to relocate my working time to other days in order to keep my contract. If not, I will have to switch to part-time. And I suppose all of you will be comparing my salary with those Star Tutors on newspapers, well, the truth is, it will take about a hundred years for me to catch up with their annual salary.
Life is only going to get tougher no matter what, but I will boldly face it.
PS:
Just one final complaint, why is it that the Trinity CertTESOL teaching certificate which is widely recognised around world not being seriously considered in Hong Kong?
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Vocabulary:
to keep an eye on sth/sb -- to watch or look after something or someone
logic flows smooth like running river -- (simile) meaning quick and smooth
writer's block -- (n)[U] a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown
chop-chop --exclamation informal used to tell someone to hurry
overlook-- (vb)[T] to fail to notice or consider something
nice going -- (if sincere, means "good job"); (if sarcastic, means "bad job"), hereby the latter.
100-tuple -- (n) from n-tuple, means 100 times.
not give a damn about -- offensive used as a way of saying you do not care about something, especially the annoying things that someone else is doing or saying
not take a blind bit of notice -- UK informal not to pay any attention
Resources:
Writer's Block @Wikipedia
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/keep-your-an-eye-on-sth-sb?q=keep+an+eye
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/chop-chop
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/overlook_2
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/not-give-a-shit
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/not-take-a-blind-bit-of-notice
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