I felt useless. Of course, there were more times wherein I thought I was more useless, but this was a time wherein not only had I felt I was useless, but also unneeded. That I had no purpose in being a member of that group at all. That I was only there so I could get a grade, not earn a grade. That this groupings were only a façade, making it seem like everyone had something they could do and would be tasked to do. It was only an appearance in order for everyone to get a grade.
My only role was to solve a rubics cube-or pretend to solve, rather. I was only in the infomercial, with Carl being in the whole production. I’m not saying I’m envious, but I think that the show was something that only focused on one person and one task. “Carl the Explorer” was a TV show that focused on an adventurer that delved into the wonders of Iloilo city, visiting all the well-known sights of the city, from Esplanade to the streets of the said city. I can’t say that we could have made a better show, but since that would be considered insulting to the editor’s editing skills (apparently), I stopped myself from doing so, since I didn’t have a better idea anyway. The experience was beneficial, in a way. Of course my self-esteem was still a little downhill, but I learned that I should not only look at my way. I should also look at the perspective of others on how this task will become more difficult if I had changed the show into something I wanted it to be. I did not think how the editor will have more of a hard time if I had insisted. My suggestions were ridiculed and discarded, but not that I think about it, I can kind of see why they did. Yes, they were cool, but not very easily obtainable. I could have asked for a better role, yes, in order to not feel as useless and unnecessary as I felt I was. And I wouldn’t be as so down as I was if only I had the courage to speak my opinions. In our days of getting out of the sun to shoot our video, I had only followed them around like a dog, expecting something else to happen or for me to have some, any, kind of role that was worth the wait. In the end, there was none, and I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed. I don’t ever want to feel this feeling again, this feeling of unneededness to people I thought would need me. If another output would arise, I would first ask what my role will be so I could find in myself how I can be needed by someone, that I am important in this group, that I can do something that would benefit my own group. If this situation would arise again, I would be able to know what to do and how to react calmly and with composure. I will not let their opinions drag me down and make those same opinions something that would make me rise.
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Nervousness crawled under my sweaty skin up to my jumbled up mind, erasing my sense of touch and clouding my vision from the terrifying view that was in front of my eyes. My hands were trembling even when I was holding the microphone as tightly as I could, something I thought would help me not look as anxious as I really was. My eyes were darting from left to right, anywhere as long as it wasn’t her I was looking at. I was forcing words to come out, even when now that I think about it, didn’t really make much of a sense to my own ears. The words were said with haste and were filled with my despair and uneasiness to my situation.
I was answering a relatively easy question, only asking if I would hide my child’s existence to my family and peers if ever I have one still young. I reviewed the question in my head when I finished my impromptu, and I agreed with myself that I could expand what I had said even more if only this were a written essay. The question was easy and I did kind of had a point in my impromptu, but with my stage fright taking over, I couldn’t even form a single appropriate paragraph that would suit a high grade. But the experience made me realize something, something that I actually already knew and just did not recognize that I had it since a long time ago. My lack of self-confidence. I am a person with such low self-esteem that you would even call me pathetic. I even pity myself because of it. Because of this experience, I think that I can no longer ignore the fact that I am poor at speaking in public places. I knew I am, but I have pretended for a long time that I can just wing anything related to this. From this experience, I promise to myself that I will practice my speaking skills, even if I will start with only talking to myself and not to a huge crowd. The experience also enabled me to start to develop skills that would make me think fast in any given situation. In interviews, I would be able to use this skill I might acquire from this impromptu speaking. I only hope that I will be able to practice more even if it is not a task that is needed to be, but practice it in days where I have nothing to do. In that situation, I could have only cleared my mind in order to answer the question calmly and with much more length. In my practices, I have always spoken better, but when it comes to these types of things, I tend to forget what I have practiced about. If only I was calm from the start to the end, I would be able to get a higher grade than my current one. If something like this would arise again, I will try to get my mind to clear up and work on its gears. I will try to get my body to calmly accept the situation and adapt to the tension. I will constantly tell myself that I should be cool and composed in order to deliver my speech perfectly. I will definitely have the confidence needed in order to be able to speak in front of spectators. If an experience like this would happen again, I would half thank God for another opportunity and do my best to make that impromptu into my best one. Whenever we see words that are not really difficult but are unclear to us, we always turn to the Merriam Webster’s dictionary for help, wanting to identify if that word we are curious of means what we really think it means. We might think those words are similar in meaning and don’t understand why we are being tasked to identify what it is, but we don’t really know that those words’ definitions are actually different from each other.
But then good thing that we reported about the words I was confused about. I was a little confused between accurate and valid before. I knew what relevant was since the word was obvious and it was in the word itself. Accurate and valid seemed alike to me and I didn’t think they would be different from each other that much. I knew both the words, of course, but the task required both of them to be identified in the selection. I was confused, so I consulted the Merriam dictionary. They were different. One being acceptable while the other one being correct. The realization of not actually knowing words I thought I already knew of was like a blow to my ego. It’s like you had a really close friend, but then you investigate about that friend and he turned out to be different from how you thought him to be. But then there are also positive sides to the issue. Because of your mistake, you persevere to learn more words so you would be able to recognize any difficult word easily. The error would render you to persist in studying more about the English language. We had reported on an article and were tasked to identify if it was valid, accurate, and relevant. This assignment forced me to learn more about the topic in order to report successfully. It enabled me to search and research for the details that made the article valid, accurate and relevant. I could’ve also reported in front in order to be criticized and learn what else could there be that I had a mistake with. But since there was a much better reporter than me that would guarantee a higher grade, I was not chosen. If another word misunderstanding would occur such as this one, I would still definitely still consult the Merriam Webster’s dictionary. But I will definitely do my best for this incident to never occur again, for I will study hard and learn more words to the point wherein I could efficiently explain each and every one of them. Our new topic was Argumentative essays, reported by Allen, my classmate whose expertise was of this area (also Editorials, etc). In my opinion, an argumentative essay is a boring kind of writing, only talking about facts and whatnot. It might be interesting for people, since most argumentative essays are all about our society and the world today, but for me, it's just uninteresting and void of any imagination. I guess that's the point, since argumentative essays lack the use of any colorful words and creative fantasies. But that's exactly what bores my mind, because there isn't anything I'm supposed to visualize.
That's exactly the reason this task made me have a really hard time. I was even late in passing this, because my apathy towards it made me stop myself from picking up a pen. But since I realized (quite regrettably) that I really need to pass something, at least, in order to have a grade. Miserably, I wrote an argumentative essay, and even I, myself thought it wasn't one. I had only one single fact (with proof) by some doctor, and that's all. I talked about the "Infinite Universe" for God's sake, and I don't know if that's not enough to convince you I didn't do a great job. Yes, I knew a little about making argumentative essays, and I still had a little confidence that I could at least make it seem somewhat like one. All before I started writing, that is. What came out my mind was different from what should be, and I knew that. I was suffering while I wrote the essay, but I thought that nothing could stop me from making the paper into a half feature. It was already way past midnight, and rewriting it and starting from scratch with no ideas at all was going to be a torture, so I continued writing it instead. This is exactly the reason why I can never be fit to write editiorials in the school paper. I guess searching more about argumentative essays was something I could've done to improve, or even asking for help from my classmates. Even practicing was something I could've done, but my time was short and I really needed to finish that. I should've started that earlier and not be later, so I wouldn't have been so pressured and be a wreck. I could've practiced more in the past, and that's definitely one of my regrets. If this happened again, I would die. I mean, no I won't but I technically would. I'd cry and think why is this happening to me. Kidding, I'd probably find a way to not be a mess like I was when making this argumentative essay. I would try to be not as informal and uninformative as this one and try to be more intellectual-looking from my writing alone. I would search for more "How To's" and "Help Me's" in the internet, and I would probably cope with all the the problems that would arise while I'm writing the essay. It's all up to my future self. We are already through 3/4 of our Grade 10 life and numerous reportings were already done since our Grade 7 years, so we thought doing this report would be a breeze, yet it turns out that reporting will never be as easy as we thought it to be. We were scolded for not starting on time, that waiting for the teacher to arrive is never the right thing to do. We were missing a cord that was needed in order to connect to the laptop and since my classmates said it was with the teacher, we waited for her (of course while looking for other ways to try to report like finding another laptop). But it turns out waiting wasn't the right thing to do since it just wastes time, apparently. She said it just proves that we cannot control our classmates and don't have the skill to be in charge. She punished us by getting a low score in that part of the criteria.
I guess she was right, since it was time consuming (we waited for around 20 minutes) and we could have actually reported without a powerpoint, but I just thought about how we had a video we needed to show and my missing groupmates still hadn't arrived yet either. But I was grateful that she didn't scold us as much and I learned a lesson from that, too. We regret not starting as soon as we arrived, and our grades will show our failure to do so. It taught me that I shouldn't wait for something to happen rather, make it happen. In a way, this lesson I'm teaching myself means differently since it should be about looking for another way or method to do something, but that's just what I learned. I shouldn't wait, thinking the situation would be solved if the solution comes to me, but rather think of a solution you are sure that would work. We weren't even sure that the cord was really with the teacher, yet we still waited for her. What if, she didn't bring it? (which she didn't) We didn't think of that and just wasted our time. We should have thought up a sure solution rather than wait for the unsure one. We should have searched for more solutions, like going to other grade levels to borrow a laptop, writing on the white board, or just plainly reporting from nothing. We should have thought of just reporting, but our laziness probably kicked in and prevented us from doing so. No one said anything and we weren't scolded yet so that was probably why none of us moved to do anything else. I'm grateful my teacher had scolded me, because if another reporting would arise in my next school, I would know what to do and not get a low grade. I would be able to do a great job and impress my classmates and teachers. If this kind of problem would arise again, I would know to improvise and find other ways to solve it. I wouldn't get scolded, either. I would know how to have plan B's or plan C's before anything else. That scolding wasn't really that bad either, since it made me improve my skills in reporting. Since our teacher said we were all fine in other aspects of reporting except the waiting part, we were thankful we could do it now. Her years of teaching was never a waste. Have you ever had your heart broken so bad that you went through sleepless nights thinking about the times the person that had always made you smile and laugh, that was always by your side, was gone and never going back? Staring into space mumbling a few thoughts, letting the fact sink into you that you are now ALONE, alone in the world with no shoulder to cry on and a broken heart, because you have just wasted the only person that you could say will always and forever love you and you just regret the things you have done so much you would want to turn back to the time where you could do it all over again. Redo what you have done wrong and make it right. Love that person all over again, and be loved the same.
What makes everything worse is that you see your former lover smiling beside another person. Not at you, at someone else. That their smiling face is not fake, and they are truly not affected by the break up, that you weren't actually even worth a single tear. You think it is unfair, that while you are suffering from the pain and the hurt that the person had caused, they think of the whole thing as nothing, and just something of the past. He/she is already okay, while you are not. And will probably never be. The song “Breakeven” by The Script tells exactly what I have said. The song is about a break up of a man and a woman, and the man struggles to overcome the hurt that was carved in his heart, and thinks of the unfairness of how the woman is unaffected, and already is with another man. The man blames himself for the reason that they had ended their relationship, for he had admitted the fact, as stated, that he had not put the woman first in everything. He had probably made the mistake of putting his work first, and forgot about the woman. And now he regrets that, but is also relieved that she had found someone that would. My favorite line “I’m falling to pieces” is sang in a high pitch, and it just makes it a lot more depressing that it already is. It’s the truth. The man is falling to pieces, like the only thing, the woman, that had become his backbone, the one that made him stand up, the one that made him stick together, was forever gone. Without her, he was “falling to pieces”, broken by what he himself had caused. The line is really heartbreaking, because it tells of how his heart is broken because the girl doesn’t care anymore, that she doesn’t love the man anymore and has moved on. It shows that there is no forever in a relationship, that nothings lasts. That is why I love it. It hurts. It aches with every beat of your heart. Sometimes it hurts too much that you just want to stop breathing, so that your heart can stop beating and you won’t have to feel anymore. That is what the song is trying to convey. That without the one you love, without the other half that promised you a forever, without the person that cherish from the bottom of your heart, you are reduced to nothing, and are “falling to pieces”. Wanting to know about your favorite movie star, you look them up at YouTube, searching for videos that will make you get to know them better. You click for interviews in any television shows, fan cameras and lives that will let you see their raw faces without any edit, and albums or singles that they may possibly have. You stalk them for the rest of the day, loving how you are getting accustomed to their personality, despite not actually meeting them.
But in order to actually see them have impromptu talk, with no script backing them up, just their self and the things they know, where do you go? You go to the talk shows that they are a guest in. Because in talk shows, it’s all just you and no one by your side. You have to be prepared for the thousands of bold questions, which may be insensitive sometimes, that will be bombarded to you by the host. You have to overcome the fear of having your most recent scandal being exposed and becoming a topic of out of the blue. You have to have something like a backup plan up your sleeves, for that may be the only thing that will give you hope in saving yourself. That is exactly what I felt in our talk show. I didn’t know the questions, and it was pressuring to answer them one by one. But it wasn’t a bad experience, not at all. For it made me develop my skills in impromptu speaking, even if there were scene cuts here and there because of my inability to speak clearly and on point sometimes. Not only I, but also my classmates, both the ones that were the hosts or the guests. They had developed their speaking skills in front of the camera, and they had also probably greatly developed their self-confidence. The talk show was a great experience, for one is being exposed to the camera and to what is called impromptu speaking. If something similar as to this activity would be again given to me as an assignment, I would like to again take this up and do my best. I would also want to try out new roles, like being a host, a camerawoman, or a technical (which is the most improbable of all, but learning is always worth a try), for being exposed to different things will definitely make me have more experience in a lot more things and will make my life more flowing because of the things I already have knowledge of. Poverty is one of the thousands of problems that one can experience and be consumed with. It rules the world for it can be easily involved with, and it ranges from even the rich to the poor, for one can be considered in poverty if they are in severe lack of something whether it may be of love, of money, of material things. Now, poverty is something that is always in the newspapers, televisions, and radios. Poverty inclined places are always the favorite sight-seeing places of photojournalists, for they have hundreds of possible pictures one can take. And that is what we did in order for our photo essay to be completed.
Upon roaming around the streets of Iloilo city, one can already say poverty is present in every single corner that you turn to. Seeing the beggars that slept on the side of the roads begging for money or food just to feed themselves, their children. I remain my eyes open to how reality really is, that there is no escape to what we call poverty. It seems like this cycle of scarcity and inadequacy of certain things for the people that are in need will continue on and on, a never-ending cycle. There was no hesitance in myself when I took my picture, like I had no doubt that what I was doing was wrong-for it was not. With this picture, and with the essay I had written, I had hopes that the passersby that will see this picture will open their eyes to this deficit. That even though they are living a comfortable life because of the stable jobs of their parents, that they must also see the dark side that the country tries to hide. That not everyone is happy, and life is never filled with sunshines and rainbows. In the areas with poverty, people there hide their faces upon seeing a camera directed to them because of their fear of the possibility of being in public media. That is what I am aiming to overcome. For people to be free from poverty, that they have nothing to be ashamed of. By having my picture exposed, one can only hope of some people opening their hearts, and doing things that will make a person say that what he is doing is what one with humanity should do. If I was again exposed to an activity like this, or any kind of activity that can reveal anything about the reality of the people that suffer in the dark shades of our country, I would grab the chance to do my very best, for I am not only completing a project that will affect my grades, but I will also be completing a project that can affect the state of my beloved country. With enough publicity and concern from humans, there might be a possibility of overcoming this problem that has already been declared as something that just exists and can never be solved. We were required to make a troublesome activity this time, something really not within my forte. We had to write english "Hugots" using modals, our current lesson in english. "Hugots" are popular in the Philippines now, which means "to draw" or to "pull out". They are made from even just simple actions. They have deeper meaning and are always used by pinoys to imply something, and one should dig deeper and look underneath what is really said to understand it.
I just had an argument with someone that time, and I was in a pretty bad mood, so I knew it was the right time for me to write my hugots, because they required for someone to be emotional for the perfect hugot to be pulled out. I wrote with my feelings, and only revised some parts so it wouldn't be too obvious what or who I was writing about. I learned a lot more about myself from the activity. I learned that I wasn't too bad at it, and I could say I was actually pretty good. My friends were actually shocked that I was able to make good hugot lines. They didn't think I could be that emotional. It was difficult when I started, and I forced myself to squeeze my brain to think up hugots. Everyone probably had those problems, for hugots required emotional difficulty. They probably also had to search the internet for examples. I had seen that some got theirs from lyrics, but it wasn't too obvious unless you searched for it. One needs to have an understanding of a difficult life to make a great hugot, and that was the reason some of my classmates produced good ones. Hugots need to come from the heart for one to write really good ones. They should tell what you are feeling inside about a certaon person or thing. Personally, you don't have to force yourself to be mad or dad about something to write. Try thinking about a past experience, and for sure you could make one. Think about yourself next time. In order to understand yourself, dig deeper in you heart and search for things you want to let out, that you cannot tell anybody. Put them into words, into quotes that can be inspirational to satisfy yourself. This time, we were given an activity to make a 30 second speech with us pretending to be another person such as a “janitor, parent, nun/priest, senator, and a teacher”.
I picked to be a janitor, for most of my classmates wouldn't even consider picking that one because it was the most odd one out, so it was the least likely that a lot will choose to become a janitor. When I thought about it, it looked really interesting to think about the perspective of a janitor. The views of a janitor as they stare at a student being bullied beside lockers, in the comfort rooms, and in his closet, “the janitor's closet”. It was good to experience the thoughts of another person. You had to only imagine yourself as a janitor, and you could definitely do it. It was really fun to think as a different person. I also had no big problems for this activity. I had little difficulty in timing my speech for exactly 30 seconds, but that was all. I had no difficulty in saying it in front or writing it. It was just a simple problem, and everyone of course experienced it. To time the way you say every single word, and to cut out or to add up some sentences all just for it to fit exactly 30 seconds was tiring because just constantly repeating your speech. Others might have problems in writing the speech or saying it in front though. With the way they stuttered and just looked down their paper, I could tell. I can conclude that stage fright is definitely still present in even tiny stage performances such as this. They should try to overcome their stage fright. Even I myself haven't. My face always gets pale, especially my lips, and my hands quiver and go cold. That always happens. But we should all at least try to keep it, and make ourselves look like we are confident in ourselves. For that to happen, practice is the only thing that could solve it. By practicing, we could all be prepared and avoid any mistakes that could happen and we would be assured to speak confidently. |
Just meFluff. Sweaters. Cold. Cuddles. I like them all. |