A Life Lesson From Nerves

Participating on the previous panel.
Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of
the second panel.

         My mom always used to say that there was still decent people in the world; that it’s not that the world’s gone bad, just that the bad makes more noise than the good. This notion was then supported by one of my communications classes were I learned that people pay attention to tragic subjects because this is what they like, even if they don’t admit it. I believe this is true in all aspects of our life.

            If you know me or if you’ve read most of my posts, you probably know or have gotten the notion that I’m a perfectionist. Why? The answer’s simple: the bad—your mistakes—is what people remember. Therefore, I don’t want to give any leverage to anyone; it makes me feel vulnerable.

            On April 15, 2015 I had to face my fear head on. This was the day I participated in the 5th Anual Student Research and Writing Conference: Student Collaboration and Contributions Across the Disciplines. As you may recall from a blog post I posted yesterday, I was moderator and participant of a panel featured in said conference. In this post, I stated I didn’t feel nervous, but rather powerful. This day I also participated in a different panel of the conference, and my story in it is a completely different story from the previous panel.

Dr. Seuss
Image retrieved from:
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/epicrapbattlesofhistory
/image/4/48/Seuss.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130731172643

The panel was titled Perspectives of Puerto Rico: A Journey Through Cyberspace. As part of it, my group and I had to give a presentation on the perception of Puerto Rico online. I can’t exactly pin point the reason why, but I felt completely nervous before stepping on stage as well as during officiating the presentation. Usually, if for some reason I feel nervous before walking on stage, when I step on it and utter my first words, I break the ice, and the nerves melt away. This time this did happen. While on stage, one of my favorite poems, “Oh, the PlacesYou’ll Go!” by the marvelous Dr. Seuss: “. . . there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants”. I felt as if I was paralyzed. A terrible feeling of dread that something was about to go wrong clouded all my senses. Logically, this threw me off balance. My mind went blank, and a material I had known for weeks now seemed gibberish.

Maybe it was delayed nerves from the first panel since I hadn’t felt nervous at all at any point of the panel I moderated. Maybe it was the loss of control. In the previous panel I had control: I was the moderator—the one that called the shots. I don’t know how, but I got through it and, I might add, with minor mishaps compared to how nervous I felt.

"Oh! the Places You'll Go! book cover
Image retrieved from:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en
/0/07/Oh,_the_Places_You'll_Go.jpg

Nonetheless, I felt ashamed of myself. I was disappointed of giving a presentation that was less than perfect. I was afraid of having let down my teammates. I was afraid of having let down my professor who worked so hard to constitute this panel.

The good thing was the experience helped me remember there’s always room for improvement. No matter how confident you are one minute, doesn’t guarantee you won’t feel nervous the next. Likewise, in life, nothing is guaranteed. One minute everything will be perfect, the next they’ll be the complete opposite. It’s our duty to learn to cope and learn from those experiences; that’s the best we could hope for.

Politics, history, culture, and language: Puerto Rican English

         Last Wednesday, February 4, 2015 the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus hosted a conference about lexicon varieties in the English language taking as a base the countries of Puerto Rico, the United States of America (USA), Malta, and Great Britain. Said conference was led by Dr. Manfred Krug of the University of Bamberg in Germany.

            One of the main points presented by Dr. Krug on the conference's subject dealt with the issue of how the culture—I would also add history and politics (especially political history)—influences the way English is spoken across the world. To exemplify this, he explained how the English spoken and written in each of the mentioned countries relates to each other. Maltese English, for example, has more similarities with British English. However, Puerto Rican English (the more pertinent case to my journey) has more similarities to American English.

Image retrieved from:
http://s895.photobucket.com/user/usmarine10984/media/h-PUERTO-RICO-US-
FLAG-960x540_zpsf8a072b8.jpg.html

            If you’re familiar with Puerto Rico’s current political situation, this may not come as a surprise. To those of you out there who aren’t, don’t fret; remember that part of our journey is to learn new things every day. Puerto Rico has been, since 1952, politically categorized as a Commonwealth of the United States of America. This term establishes that the island is a territory of the United States and emulates the “Mother Country” (as some Puerto Rican’s lie to refer to the USA) in form of government and, subsequently, basically everything else. Nevertheless, it has more political autonomy than an actual state of the nation would have. In addition, long before that, since the nation’s invasion of the island in 1898, the USA--and its cultural influences--has been present in Puerto Rico. In light of these facts, it’s easy to see why American English is so similar to Puerto Rico’s English. Furthermore, as also established  by Dr. Krug in his conference, Puerto Rico’s English is further influenced by the Spanish language due to the fact that, before becoming a US territory, the island was a Spanish colony with its official spoken language being Spanish. After the United States acquired possession of the land, the nation tried to change the language to English, but didn’t succeed. To this day, the main language spoken in Puerto Rico is Spanish. However, English can basically be considered a second official language.

            These political and historical events are the reasons behind the kind of English spoken on the island. Said events have instilled specific cultures and, consequently, languages in Puerto Rico. Then, as would happen in any social process, the influences of both cultures and languages are mixed to create a specific version or variety of the main languages. Therefore, without the political and historical events and cultural influences, varieties in a mother language—in this case English—wouldn’t take place naturally. Just like two fingerprints are never alike, the same language is never alike in different countries; even if they’re part of the nation that brought them the language in the first place.