Thinky thoughts
Aug. 6th, 2009 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inshadowsandlight
I don't communicate enough. While I was in school full time and living in a dorm (at least before I got sick) I had guaranteed interaction with other people involving conversation. Granted, not a huge amount as my roommate and I would IM each other from five feet away rather than having actual conversations, but there was some guarantee that I would end up saying more than three sentences in a day. Also, there were papers to write.
I no longer have that guarantee and can go for three days spending no more than a cumulative ten minutes a day actually talking to someone. I can actually feel the effect this is having on my vocabulary. I am still reading, listening to the news, paying attention to the world, so my actual vocabulary is not disappearing. My ability to access it, on the other hand, does seem to be disintegrating.
I noticed this a bit in conversation previously, but am noticing it much more now that I am taking a class. I can still learn the material, and do fine on the lecture exams because they are multiple choice. The lab exams are kicking my behind, though, because I need to label body parts/structures without access to the names. If I had a list of all 120 bones and structures and 90 muscles we need to know for the class, I could reasonably reliably match structure to name. Trying to get from structure to name without that list is an exercise in frustration.
So I am going to try to write more for the sake of trying to wake up the pathways in my brain that produce words instead of take them in. Maybe it will even work.
I no longer have that guarantee and can go for three days spending no more than a cumulative ten minutes a day actually talking to someone. I can actually feel the effect this is having on my vocabulary. I am still reading, listening to the news, paying attention to the world, so my actual vocabulary is not disappearing. My ability to access it, on the other hand, does seem to be disintegrating.
I noticed this a bit in conversation previously, but am noticing it much more now that I am taking a class. I can still learn the material, and do fine on the lecture exams because they are multiple choice. The lab exams are kicking my behind, though, because I need to label body parts/structures without access to the names. If I had a list of all 120 bones and structures and 90 muscles we need to know for the class, I could reasonably reliably match structure to name. Trying to get from structure to name without that list is an exercise in frustration.
So I am going to try to write more for the sake of trying to wake up the pathways in my brain that produce words instead of take them in. Maybe it will even work.
