My One-hundred-and-thirtieth Post

Notes of interest from yesterday:
-I bought adorable shoes (I considered red ones, and grey ones, but I finally settled on the brown ones, and I'm in love with them)
-I experienced my first car accident (I was a only passenger, but it was still really scary)
-I broke my goal to blog everyday in November (but hopefully this will make up for it).


So it turns out I have an uncontrollable urge to supply a word when someone pauses in the middle of a sentence. I use it as a communication tool to (a) help the flow of the conversation and (b) convey my understanding of where the speaker is going. I think in casual conversation this can be useful. In class settings, though, it sometimes gets out of hand.

During a lecture, when a professor pauses, searching for a word, I can't keep myself from muttering an appropriate word under my breath. But I'm not as involved in class discussion as I would be during a conversation with an individual. So my thought process does not always follow the nuances of where the professor is driving the discussion, but instead forms its own pathways. The word I mutter under my breath is therefore more reflective of my thoughts than the professor's, and sometimes doesn't make sense in the context of the lecture. Unfortunately, this becomes a problem when I am sitting close enough to the lecturer that they overhear my muttering. Since they are searching for a word, they immediately pick up on my suggestion, but then realize it doesn't make sense, using up even more time as they attempt to find the right word.

Take this morning, for example. We were discussing grammar structure. As in nouns and semi-colons and such. My mind was somewhat distracted, so I started thinking about how semicolons act as a mirror in sentences. On one side there is an idea, and then on the other side a reflection, distortion, or expansion of that idea. Feeling quite pleased with this comparison, I jumped back into the lecture just as my professor was saying "And so, while commas act as separators, semi-colons function as..." And then he paused. My need to 'fill the void' kicked in automatically. Because of my thoughts, the most obvious word to supply was the word "mirrors," which I murmured quietly to myself. My professor over heard this, and (since it didn't really make sense in context) it took him a few moments to process it and understand where my thoughts were. We then ended up having a side conversation about that idea, while the rest of the class sat confused for a minute or two. Thus my mumbling managed to derail an entire lecture. While in this instance it actually made me feel kind of cool, the result is more often simply disruptive or embarrassing. I really wish I could find an on/off switch for this habit.