I wish I were better at talking. I wish my speaking abilities would be consistent at least. In a group of friends, I am fine. I feel like I tend to lead the conversations in those settings. But for some reason, I cannot seem to speak as comfortably at my internship compared to other situations. It must be some remnant of selective mutism. I didn't realize only answering non-verbally while in public and struggling to talk in class could be due to selective mutsim. I just shut down. It isn't that I am so nervous that I get flustered and the words come out all wrong. They actually don't come out at all. They are caught in my throat. I have thoughts swirling about but I just can't express it. Sometimes I can't express it fast enough. I am so slow to respond sometimes, it kills the pace of conversation. The most annoying part is that I like talking. I would talk if I could, but sometimes I can't.
My fellow interns and I went to another intern's house for dinner. It was so nice to play a game of cards with friends. I even feel like I got some decent jokes in. Settings like that, or a party, or inbetween classes, hanging out with friends, those are all situations I am fine with. I just think I have a hard time being in someone's office. It helps to have the door open. I don't freeze up, but I am slower. My words are clumsy. I think a lot of it has to do with trying to do well in Tom's class. It really wasn't worth my time or energy. He was someone who did not like when I talked to my friends, assuming I wanted to cheat on my assignments. It is disappointing to have a class that sounds interesting, get progressively more demotivating, as the instructor turns the learning environment into an AI/Cheating witch hunt.
I talked about my experience in the CS classes that I really did not like, during lunch. My fellow interns let me know my experience in a class where collaboration is discouraged is fortunately not a common occurrance. I already mourned what the class could have been. I won't let a bad instructor discourage me from learning about topics I am interested in. I will learn data structures by doing problem sets online. I will use the commandline more than I did in class. I will write in Python. I learn about networking, sockets, subnets, IPV4. The knowledge doesn't belong to the people that teach about these subjects. I will make this knowledge my own.