After the beginning comes the discussion

In my mind communication is a huge thing.  In my mind communication is the means by which a person communicates with another person.  There are many different ways that people, and animals for that matter, communicate with each other. Some of these ways include talking, hand gestures, body language, signs and all the other sorts of written language.  Some people are good at communicating and others need help with that.  I would say that I am one of those that needs help communicating.  I would say that one of my weakness is in writing.  I would not consider myself a writer.  There have been a few, distinct experiences where I may have considered myself a writing but that is not common.  Those times were when I really had something to say.  I wanted to remember and recount my vacation to Moscow and so ended up writing 10 pages about the weekend that I had.  I would have definitely considered myself a writer then.

St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, Russia

When I did do that write up then I immediately started to add pictures to that document.  One of the ways that I prefer to express myself is through pictures.  I could try to explain or describe what it was like to be in Moscow for hours but the person I am talking to could have a different picture in their mind.  But then once I show that picture then everything comes together.  I don't have the capacity to be that comprehensive.  Now that doesn't mean that pictures are perfect at communicating a desired message.  But I believe the age old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words."

As a child I also had very few memories of writing.  There were various writing assignments that I had in school.   Then also during the summer my mom would play school with me and I would write some reports on animals but it still had that school mentality.  I did have another moment when I wanted to write.  I decided that I wanted to write a story.  It was called Jeremy Thatcher the Dragon Hatcher.  It was only a couple pages but I was pretty proud of it.

Since then my writing habits has stayed just about the same.  I have never really been one to write poems or songs.  They seemed like something that didn’t really flow for me and I felt limited.  That things had to be a certain way or style.  It is something that I never really pursued.  I do write the occasional email and even more uncommon is writing a letter.  There are more common types of writing I do which include texting and writing on Facebook.  I also notes write notes so that I don’t forget things.  I always hate it when I go to the grocery store to get milk, bread and fruit and end up not getting bread.  Gah!  Frusterating!  So that helps me remember.

In school, there were a lot of writing assignments.  There have definitely been times when I have written a lot of homework and times when it hasn’t been too much.  But the times that I would say that I enjoyed writing was when I had a topic that I cared about.  Something that I was personally involved in and that I cared about.  It helped when I could see how a knowledge about what I was writing was beneficial. The other time when I enjoyed writing was when I was able to take literary license and write short stories.  That was there wasn’t a huge pressure to keep writing and keep writing.  But I could make it as long as I wanted.  The assignments that I really did not like were the opposite of what I just said.  So when there was a topic that I could really care less about or something that I didn’t see how a knowledge of this would be useful.  That always made writing a lot harder.  The last complaint that I will share was when I had to write a certain length.  Whether that was a certain number of words or a certain number of pages.  That was frustrating because there is a limit to my opinion.  Now if there is a rebuttal or a differing opinion then a paper can be extended.  But I found it hard to make my writing be long enough.

Carrying that in over to math is strange at first.  I don’t remember having a lot of writing in my math classes until I reached my undergraduate studies.  It was only then that I really came to understand the importance of writing in mathematics.  Being able to write and communicate is incredibly important.  Half of learning mathematics is learning how to communicate through the language of math.  When I felt confident in communicating and writing about the content I was learning in my math classes then I knew that I had pretty good understanding and my comprehension was pretty high.