Fear Blocking Truth

Via Public Domain Photos

Last year I had applied to two linguistic MA programs, which had been my dream to be accepted for over a decade. When I was not accepted, I asked for the reasons why from one school: my GRE essay score was too low and my thesis topic was not a fit for the school. The school had an unusual number of applicants last year too.

I felt the logical steps were to pick a topic that faculty has some specialties in and retake the GRE. So I formed an idea of a second language acquisition project based on peer learning. I would start making a peer-to-peer website that people can match with each other to play games to learn language with each other. I started my TESOL certificate and beginning programming with this goal in mind. I am signed up to continue these online classes. I have some passion for this idea because I would love to make quality, free peer learning available worldwide.

But my passion isn't necessarily all in this area of linguistics. I wrote a focused draft of my statement of intent about peer learning and second language acquisition. I sent this to a professor and my idea to another professor. These professors suggested I look into different majors of TESOL and Second Language Teaching because of my focused idea. I felt defensive because I wanted linguistics. I wanted to learn about phonetics, spelling, comparative/historical linguistics, poetics, philology, and language acquisition. But I hadn't communicated that to them. I had lied to them and to myself. So they gave me suggestions based on my lies. I had been afraid of being rejected a second time from the linguistics MA. I sent emails back to them explaining my fear and lie to myself and them.

I feel like an idiot, but I am only human. I never felt like I was lying because I felt I was acting logically. I am recognizing that I was acting out of fear. Fear is not a good place to act from because it brings poor results. I am working on a new statement of intent that better reflects my general interest in linguistics. I can still have the same tentative Master's project, maybe.

By the way, I retook the GRE and scored one point higher on the essay score out of six points. I have an almost average essay score, so it's significantly better than before. Much more focused.

Whatever the future brings will be fine.