Blinding Anxiety
Anxiety in any
dosage can blind a person. It blinds by forcing one to focus on the
difficulty of a task rather than the actual task itself. When I was first
beginning to learn about rhetoric, I struggled due to the fact that I was
simply not a persuasive writer. I would over analyze every aspect of the difficulty involved with rhetoric rather than focus my attention on how to
write in a persuasive manner. Consequentially, my writing suffered until
I overcame this blinding anxiety. As I wrote more persuasive papers my
anxiety slowly faded but the memory of my first persuasive writing assignment
remained.
I had never
written a paper this complex before. How could I write a paper that
consisted of twenty five hundred to three thousand words? It seemed like
madness to even think that such a task was possible. What if I ran out of
ideas? What if I was not persuasive enough? My palms began sweating; I
had to take a breath. I regained my composure and said to myself, “I can
do this.” I had gone through this same feeling of butterflies in my
stomach before. This sort of anxiety was awoken from time to time in
scenarios similar to this. I just had to focus on the prompt and I would
do fine, just like always. I glanced around the dim lit room searching
for ideas in my head and hoping to figure out how to create a concise thesis
statement. I stood up from my chair bent over and began rummaging through
my unorganized backpack searching for the book I had to write about, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I began flipping through page after
page while still thinking of what to write for my thesis. I was not
technically reading anything in my book while flipping the pages; it served to
get some built up energy out of my system. My heart rate began rising
again, my face began getting pinker, I was getting anxious. The topic
began slipping out of my hands like a bar of soap and was quickly replaced with
the fixation on the difficulty of the task. I threw my book to the other
side of the room and myself onto my bed, I had to take another breath.
I woke up the
next morning, it was a Sunday and I had all day to work on my paper. I
decided that I should start by looking back at my sticky notes that I placed
throughout the novel in order to figure out some sort of thesis
statement. After about an hour of writing down important events I decided
it was time to start formulating some sentences that could be possible thesis
statements. At the end of another hour I had five possible thesis
statements but I could not make a decision on which one to choose. I
began noticing minute effects of tension and anxiety once again while my eyes were
beating down at the piece of yellow-lined paper. At this point I became
more fixated once again on the difficulty of choosing between five
options. It felt as though I was taking a multiple choice test. “I
have a twenty percent chance at picking the correct choice. Which one is
the correct answer?” I then began thinking about how my thesis statement
was due tomorrow in class. If I did not have a thesis statement to share
I would be left out of group discussion and I would get a zero in the grade
book for participation. My tension began building higher and higher and I
kept on over analyzing the difficulty of the task rather than the actual task.
I quickly stood up, walked over to the doorway and turned on the
lights. The room was too dark to work and after sitting in a chair for a
few hours it felt good to stand up. I began walking back and forth
contemplating and planning my paper in my head. After a few minutes I sat
back down and made my decision on my thesis statement. After making my
final decision on my thesis I decided it was time to head to bed, I had school
in the morning.
After school
ended the next day I felt exhilarated about how well my thesis was compared to
my classmates. Even though writing is taught to not be a competition, I
felt a thrill in a little competition from time to time. Once I got home
I decided to begin working on my paper in order to get the draft done by
Wednesday. I walked into my room, turned the lights on and began tidying
up the papers that cluttered my room. I sat down at my desk and decided
to start by free writing my introduction paragraph. The words were
flowing like the Colorado River, from my head and onto my paper. It was
as if my anxiety, the clouding blindness that prevented me from focusing on my
task, had disappeared completely. After finishing my introduction
paragraph I decided to try a different approach and skip to my conclusion
paragraph in order to set a domain and range for my paper. By doing so I
narrowed the margin for going off topic and then later feeling anxiety once
again because a good portion of my paper is off topic. I ended up
finishing both my introduction and conclusion paragraph within half an hour of
starting and decided it was time for a break. At this point the hard work
was done and I simply had to focus on filling in the blanks.
After finishing
that paper I began feeling much more comfortable with my writing and how I
would convey my ideas. I began taking chances and actually connected
and personalized with my writing as time passed. It took an ample amount
of time to fully notice a difference in my writing and the anxiety that came
with it but, I can confidently say that it started with this paper.
Anxiety caused a great deal of blindness for any task that I did because
it prevented me from seeing the importance of learning what was being
taught. Rhetoric not only taught me how to persuade people with my
writing and speaking, it also taught me how to control my anxiety with any task
I was given.
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