Blog Assignment #6: Carte Blanche
Why am I not able to say NO?
Why am I not able to say NO?
What a struggle it is sometimes, to be both a part time student and working almost fulltime as a temporary teacher at school. Not mentioning that I’ve got a family to take care of in the “spare time” that doesn’t exist.
An hour ago a colleague called asking me if I could work instead of her tomorrow. Before I had thought properly about it I can hear myself saying, of course I’ll do that for you. Stupid me! I don’t really have the time for it but I’ll do it anyway. I don’t have the strength to say NO, just a simple NO. Why is it impossible for me to squeeze out the NO word?
The “NO” word obviously doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. I always want to be the good girl and I don’t dare to say no when I am offered extra hours at school. I am totally aware of the extra hours I’ll do at work tomorrow steel some time from my English studies. At the end of the day I’ll probably steel those hours from my two children, the unborn I’m expecting and my husband. I’m always stressed of bad conscious no matter what I decide to do. An easy solution to this dilemma would be work less hours, sounds reasonable to me mentally but in real life it’s a NO NO.
Working fewer hours would absolutely help me out when I run out of time, unfortunately there are only 24 hours a day. When my vocabulary doesn’t contains a “NO” word when working as a temporary teacher, I think I have to live with this kind of struggling. Making a puzzle of the hours I’m awake almost tearing me apart. I’m totally aware of the show must go on like this if I want to change the status from temporary teacher to teacher if you know what I mean?
Hiding behind the desk being a good student won’t give me a job as a teacher. Being at school working these extra hours, getting experience will more likely give me a permanent job in the future when teachers born in the 40’s hitting the pension age. One of my dreams is to become an English teacher for young learners, therefore I’m not saying NO working as a temporary teacher. I want to become a propper teacher.
Hi Viktoria,
SvaraRaderathank you for an interesting text. You are right, in today´s society it´s hard to say no. I think it´s a problem for many persons, including you.
Your paragraphing is good,with a blank line between the paragraphs and you deal with one thought in one paragraph, good. Your title is good and you follow the train of thought throughout your text. Perhaps you should put paragraph 1 and 2 together to get the thesis statement in the first paragraph. Then I think your purpose would be more clear. What do you think?
The grammar is good I think and the vocabulary as well. The only thing I thought about was one word in the end of the text. You have written propper but I think you meant proper, didn´t you? And please put a comma after the word NO in the last paragraph. It would do the sentence more easy to read and to understand.
Thank you for a well written blog.
Well done!
/Åsa
Dear Viktoria,
SvaraRaderaThank you for your interesting text about not being able to say no. I think the problems you describe are so typical for us women!
As to the way you structure your text, you have an introductory paragraph where you give a background to the problem, but make sure not to divide it into two, but to join it up into one single paragraph. Quite rightly, you end your introduction with a question, making your text a causal analysis. In the subsequent two paragraphs you give answers to this question, which is good. However, the contents of the two paragraphs is quite similar, and it would have been good if you had been a bit clearer about presenting two different causes. This could partly have been solved, I think, by making the topic sentence of paragraph 3 a bit clearer. As it is now, it is a bit fuzzy. The one in paragraph 2, however, works very well. In your concluding paragraph it would have been good if you had summed up your main points first (briefly, in a sentence or two), then gone with what you have now. That would make your argument more powerful. Also, try to make more use of transitional devices!
As to language, there are a few things I’d like to point out. You have a few cases of comma splice, which should be avoided (“An easy solution to this dilemma would be work less hours, sounds reasonable to me mentally but in real life it’s a NO NO.”, “Working fewer hours would absolutely help me out when I run out of time, unfortunately there are only 24 hours a day. “, “One of my dreams is to become an English teacher for young learners, therefore I’m not saying NO working as a temporary teacher.” There you should either put in a full stop instead of the comma, or use a conjunction.). Think about subject-verb agreement, as in “my vocabulary doesn’t contains a “NO””. In “I am totally aware of the extra hours I’ll do at work tomorrow steel some time from my English studies.” you should say “I am totally aware THAT the extra hours I’ll do at work tomorrow WILL steel some time from my English studies.”. When you say “bad conscious” I guess you mean “bad conscience”. Don’t forget the infinitive marker “to”, as you did in “An easy solution to this dilemma would be work less hours”, and don’t forget BE in the progressive form: “when teachers born in the 40’s hitting the pension age.”.
Good luck for the exam!
Best,
Marika