Mental Blocks

Takuan

I've had them ever since I was a child. Over the years, I learned to deal with them, but recently they've started to bother me again. You see, I've been studying Japanese for almost a semester and a half. My first semester of Japanese went extremely well, and the concepts really didn't bother me too much. I'm now in the middle of my second semester, and things are not going that well at all. The strange thing is that I understand all the questions on the tests, but formulating answers has proven to be very difficult. I know how the answers should be formulated and what it should look like, but nothing "comes out". To combat this, I've taken to sitting in an extra Japanese class, which comes up to about 2.5 hours of class everyday, and 1.5 hours of tutoring every other day. Despite doing all of this and increasing my study hours, I still perform miserably on tests. It's the same issue I had as a child reasserting itself. I'm not quite sure what triggers it, but it's starting to make my academic life quite difficult. It's especially sad when the answer is just floating there, almost on the tip of your tongue, but just sits there.

How do you deal with mental blocks?

If I can't get this figured out, I might as well kiss my graduate school aspirations goodbye.

Zero

Have you ever been tested for dyslexia?

It can be a side effect of being stressed - Are there periods you can point to where there isn't this mental block and if so, what is different between then and the periods where there is a mental block.

I should point out that I am not a medical practitioner.

Takuan

Zero said:

Have you ever been tested for dyslexia?

It can be a side effect of being stressed - Are there periods you can point to where there isn't this mental block and if so, what is different between then and the periods where there is a mental block.

I should point out that I am not a medical practitioner.

I was tested as a child, but the results were inconclusive. I had anxiety issues as a child, but, according to my therapist, I have grown out of them.

When I'm at home doing the homework assignments for class, the blocks generally do not manifest. It's only in class when they suddenly appear. The blocks were pretty much nonexistent last semester (even during tests), but they've suddenly appeared during this one. The strange thing is the difficulty of the material is about the same as it was last semester.

Jeffrey

That sounds so frustrating and I know how that feels in school. In your tutoring are you practicing the same types of questions you will field in the exam? Even easy questions are good to practice because then you can do them faster come exam time which lowers stress and gives you more time to solve the hard one.

I recommend practice problems for this reason. They should be the same types that will be on the exam. I am a kinesthetic learner who learns by doing and this is the only way that worked out well for me.

Also diagnose your problem. Is it vocabulary? Is it conjugation?

zombiegirl

Perhaps a new study method? What are you struggling with specifically? What is your current study method?

People do all sorts of things, like recording their notes and listening to it on a loop while they sleep... But personally, I've always found it the most helpful to write things over and over again repetitively. I do this until the answer becomes second nature and I no longer have to pause very long to think of it.

Takuan

Jeffrey said:

That sounds so frustrating and I know how that feels in school. In your tutoring are you practicing the same types of questions you will field in the exam? Even easy questions are good to practice because then you can do them faster come exam time which lowers stress and gives you more time to solve the hard one.

I recommend practice problems for this reason. They should be the same types that will be on the exam. I am a kinesthetic learner who learns by doing and this is the only way that worked out well for me.

Also diagnose your problem. Is it vocabulary? Is it conjugation?

In the tutoring we do variations of homework questions, which usually appear on the test. The questions are easy enough during tutoring sessions, but come test time it's a different story. For example, one question on this past test was one that I had absolutely no issue with during tutoring, but during the test I really fudged it up.

Vocabulary isn't a real problem when I have enough time to think. Conjugation has proven most difficult, so I've been working on it the most. I've improved a great deal during tutoring, but the actual class is a different story.

Tutor: "That! Why can't you do that in class?"
Me: "I don't know..."

chela

That sounds very frustrating. I worked at a university and we had a Disability Services office that handled all sorts of student issues. They helped students get around unfair obstacles. You might just have an anxiety issue with tests-- this is not that uncommon, I don't think. If you were diagnosed with such an issue, perhaps your equivalent disability services office would allow you to take the class somewhere else. Maybe just being away from the classroom and other test-takers would ease the anxiety.

Jeffrey

That's so frustrating. A lot of people have test anxiety. I never did because I was in the same zone as when I would play sports. But maybe research test anxiety and see if anyone has made a technique or has experience in test anxiety.

Takuan

I'm not sure what happened, but I'm going to schedule a meeting with the school therapist tomorrow. If I want to salvage any future hopes of graduate school, this really needs to be figured out. I've worked way too hard to have a mental block in one class stop me from achieving my goals.

chela said:

That sounds very frustrating. I worked at a university and we had a Disability Services office that handled all sorts of student issues. They helped students get around unfair obstacles. You might just have an anxiety issue with tests-- this is not that uncommon, I don't think. If you were diagnosed with such an issue, perhaps your equivalent disability services office would allow you to take the class somewhere else. Maybe just being away from the classroom and other test-takers would ease the anxiety.

Yes, I've actually contacted them. The only issue is that half of the test is oral, which proved difficult for testing room scheduling.

shanyin

I'm sorry, so you feel you know the answers but get a mental block when you think about how to formulate them and come up with nothing?

shanyin

Maybe giving us an example will help us get the a better sense of the problem.

Straight_Man

Ok, I have a similar block. I am attacking it by doing extra reading and practicing what I learn in my own way. At my own speed.... I have this website, though it is a blog and tech site not a language learning site. I am spending the money that I could pay someone to build it for me to learn to code it myself. Takes longer....

Can you get the oral half done in class test setting and the written half scheduled seperately in a room to yourself? Can you get extra credit assignments that you can do and turn in to tutor to grade?

Work AROUND the anxiety, not forcibly against it.... Please. Learn how to unblock by using what you are unblocked about to release the block.... Does that make sense???

I am taking online courses, some, to learn to code websites, and practicing on my own. They are not for credit, but I am USING the knowledge. Can you take the oral part, if that is what is blocking you, in a conversational test with a student testing you and instructor listening in but not present? Via a recording perhaps submitted and a proctor recording the oral testing?

Some ideas to explore! HTH!

Takuan

shanyin said:

Maybe giving us an example will help us get the a better sense of the problem.

Imagine working extremely hard to understand a concept. Outside of class, you can exercise that concept at will. Homework assignments are a breeze and conversation is not easy but not quite difficult either. Now imagine being tested on that information. Remember, this is information you've already mastered in your head, so it should be easy enough to put that information to paper. As you begin to jot down the first answers, something seems to just block the information. Questions that should be easy become extremely hard, for no apparent reason. You try to write the answers, but nothing comes out right. You start to get frustrated, like really frustrated, because you spend almost all of your time on this subject and work harder than most of the people in the class. The more frustrated you get the worse you feel. Soon you begin cursing yourself and wondering why such an easy thing has become so difficult. Everyone else is handing in their papers. You only have half of the test finished, which causes even more stress. You scramble to somehow get it done, but it's too late. The time is up. About an hour later, you can recall EVERYTHING.

zombiegirl

It sounds like an anxiety/stress issue. I had similar experiences when I took the ACT and the SAT. EXTREME anxiety that seemed to put me into a loop where I was helpless to do little more than watch the minutes tick away with OH SHIT OH SHIT running through my brain.

Now, I'm no longer in school so I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but that anxiety has always felt similar to the anxiety I experience from stage fright. I've always loved to sing, but stage fright has always been a huge issue for me. When it would affect me like that, my vocal chords would literally constrict and I would get in that same panic loop. Over the years, I've learned that my meditation practice has helped me more than anything. When I start to feel the anxiety creep in, I just bring my focus to my breath. Sometimes I have to center myself multiple times during a song. Maybe this is something you can work on with your meditation practice.

Takuan

Yeah, I think it is comparable to stage fright. I've been working on directing my meditation towards the alleviation of this anxiety, and trying to remember how I dealt with it as a child. I'm thinking of experimenting with a more directed tonglen practice.

footiam

Takuan said:

I've had them ever since I was a child. Over the years, I learned to deal with them, but recently they've started to bother me again. You see, I've been studying Japanese for almost a semester and a half. My first semester of Japanese went extremely well, and the concepts really didn't bother me too much. I'm now in the middle of my second semester, and things are not going that well at all. The strange thing is that I understand all the questions on the tests, but formulating answers has proven to be very difficult. I know how the answers should be formulated and what it should look like, but nothing "comes out". To combat this, I've taken to sitting in an extra Japanese class, which comes up to about 2.5 hours of class everyday, and 1.5 hours of tutoring every other day. Despite doing all of this and increasing my study hours, I still perform miserably on tests. It's the same issue I had as a child reasserting itself. I'm not quite sure what triggers it, but it's starting to make my academic life quite difficult. It's especially sad when the answer is just floating there, almost on the tip of your tongue, but just sits there.

How do you deal with mental blocks?

If I can't get this figured out, I might as well kiss my graduate school aspirations goodbye.

Revision and more revision help. There is no shortcut.

lobster

Yeah, I think it is comparable to stage fright. I've been working on directing my meditation towards the alleviation of this anxiety, and trying to remember how I dealt with it as a child. I'm thinking of experimenting with a more directed tonglen practice.

This is a good plan on a number of levels. It makes you aware of others shared suffering and somehow this relaxes and share the burden. It also is orientated towards a specific area of your lack of calm and poise. I hope you find tonglen as useful and powerful a practice as I have. Perseverance. Success guaranteed. Good luck.
:wave:

Dakini

OP, do you think test anxiety might be the problem? Anxiety releases stress hormones into the system, that interfere with memory. Are you meditating daily? This can help keep the nervous system calm, if you do slow, deep breathing to get your meditation started.

Review the material to be tested, the night before the test, before you go to bed. Review it again first thing in the morning. This helps fix it in your memory. Perhaps with the additional confidence review like this can bring, you can overcome anxiety and blocks. You can also discuss this with your doctor. I think there's a medication that helps overcome this problem.