Complete Communication Failure, or having a bad word day...

Post Reply New Topic

People talk about 'bad hair days'... I want to coin the phrase "bad word day."

Normally I can get by with verbal communication. I tend to forget things, or over think something, or explain stuff in the wrong order, or go to fast, or to slow.... but overall I'm able to reel this in and get the job done communicating. Sometimes though, all these problems seem to jumble together...and I'm just not able to communicate anything.

Yesterday, while tutoring, this exact thing happened. Normally I'm able to get some semblance of a connection with a student. It may be awkward and stiff, but I'm able to impart some information. Not with this student. She had didn't have a fundamental grasp of a concept, but wanted a quick 'plug it in a formula' solution.... she wasn't getting that from me because she didn't have the underlying framework.

But unfortunately every time I said something I mixed it up. I said things in the wrong order, I assumed understanding when there was none, I filled my speech with little noncommittal flourishes like saying 'right' after a statement that got interpreted as a question... or I saying I think a lot. She was getting very frustrated, and her what seemed to be a very linear mind, couldn't begin to see what my extremely non-linear mind was trying to say.

She actually walked out and just gave up on me.

It was a complete communication failure.

For that whole day I was mixing up words. I was often saying the exact opposite of what I was thinking. A sort of verbal dyslexia. I do this sometimes, but never as bad as it was that day. I would think of something to say, in mid explanation think of a better way of saying it... and then interject this new explanation while speaking. The result was a jumbled mess of words that didn't make any sense.

I hope these don't come up that often, because I plan on becoming a teacher. And up until this point, people can get past my words to better understanding of math.

But wow, that experience was just horrible.

Do you have good days and bad days communicating? I'd like to hear stories of 'my worst communication ever'.

Oh, don't you hate those days!??

I haven't got one specific story to tell you, but there are days when my boss asks me a question and even though I know the information he needs to hear I cannot manage to get it strung together in the correct way, and then get nervous about it and put the wrong inflections on the words an come out sounding like I'm on drugs or in need of them....

I have days, or even just moments, when it feels like I have to push every word out of my mouth individually. It's awful, because normally I'm pretty good at talking, and I generally do enough of it.

The fun thing with tutoring is that I know when I'm getting this way, and tell the student... I'm talking way to fast and I don't think you picked up what I just said. And then I slow down and get to the point. Most of the time they appreciate my awareness of the problem.

In the end it's okay because I have a strong intuitive understanding of math, and I can convey that understanding to others once I slow down... they finally can understand hows and whys of math.

Nan: It felt like I was on drugs at the time, well what I think drugs are like. It was surreal... because mentally I was aware of the problem but I could do nothing to stop it. You're right on with those inflections... that's another problem area too...

Most days words come out of my mouth in the wrong order. When trying to ask my husband if the front door is open I come out with.. "Door. Front. Closed? is it. " That type of thing happens every single day.. when I'm not missing the important nouns that is. Then its even worse. punctuated by "thingy" and "um um um" because I cannot think of the word I need.

Heh, I don't drop nouns... but I use extremely vague nouns. Examples like, When the thing moves over this thing, the other thing can't move... and then you can't get the stuff.

This isn't really a joke either, I philosophically like to work with these vague descriptors... I ignore details to get to the core idea.

But after the sentence is formed, I get looks of what the hell did you just say. Did you really say "the stuff with the stuff"?

Haha yep I do that too when trying to explain something. I guess I do it because it takes too long to say what each thingy is when thats not really the important part.

Sounds similar to what I experience though I have times of no-words then. I definitely have 'bad words days' though usually mine are more like 'bad word hours' and 'good word hours'.

I have a whole lexicon of "technical terms"... like thing-a-ma-bob, doohickey, dealybob... oh, and my all time fave: Er...

Christ I hate that!

I start out the day reading and talking fluently and then by the end I can barely speak and reading is impossible.

They aren't words, they're tiny needles in my brain!

This happens most of the time when I try to tell a story I can't recall well.
Usually end up saying f**k it!

But what happens more often is I'll forget a word I want to use, and sit there thinking about what the word is and say something along the lines of, "Arrrgh, hmmm... gah, its on the tip of my tongue, give me a sec... ehh... aahhh, arghh..." And I'll remember 5 minutes later.

Jesus christ when these both happen FFFFFFFFFUUUUU~!