That feeling when it seems like everyone around you gets it and you are the only one who does not! And you are afraid that asking the question which no one else seems to have would just make you look ignorant, or worse, stupid.
No matter how often you have heard the admonition “There are no stupid questions!”, it is tough to put yourself in (what you see as) the spot and actually ask it.
Sounds familiar?
I have talked before about the need to speak up in class, to participate, and to get into conversations, but it is something that does bear repeating, because it seems to be something that we have to re-learn each time we find ourselves in a new situation. There are different ways of clearing a doubt or finding out how to do something. Today, we have information at our fingertips, and all it takes is a few strokes on a keyboard or screen to access wisdom from all over the world.
There are videos that show us “how to” do anything from cleaning a carpet to facing an interview to rustling up a quick snack with the most basic of ingredients. There are maps and navigators that walk us through confusing streets and unreadable signs.
But even with all of this, we find ourselves, quite often, wanting an answer that seems to be more basic than any of these tools can provide.
In such cases, the only thing that can give us an answer is that most unfashionable (but most accessible) of memory banks — the human being.
Here are a couple of stories that may help underscore how important it is for us to get past the hesitation to ask those simple, apparently silly questions where the answers (we think) should be obvious.
Anxiety
(which many of my students have heard before): It is a cold winter morning in 1982, at an American university’s campus. I’m the newest (and to my mind, most nervous) student in a scriptwriting class where each desk is equipped with a shiny electronic typewriter. I have never seen one of these before. The instructor, speaking in rapid sentences, gives us a writing assignment and tells us to begin working at our typewriters. All the young people around turn to their machines and begin clacking away. I stare at the thing, frozen, unable to decode its impassive surface. Finally, I shake myself and tentatively ask the student next to me: How do I turn this thing on? He points to a switch that is staring me in the face but had been invisible to me until then. So I begin my work.
Local knowledge
It is a lovely autumn morning in 2016. I set out to locate a certain building in the fairly organised campus I am currently visiting. Google maps did a good job of telling me how far it was from my current location and how long it would take me to walk there. I walk around the maze of small pathways, following the arrows on the little screen of my phone, over and over, taking much more than those estimated six minutes, but Building X refuses to show itself. Finally, I buckle down and decide to ask someone.
It takes me three attempts before I find a person who is able to point clearly to where I needed to go. Not all the buildings are sequentially numbered, and they run into each other in a way that a visitor unfamiliar with the campus would naturally be confused. Only local knowledge could address that.
Lessons learnt
Here’s the twist in the tale(s): there was a thirty-four-year gap between the first and second experience, but I clearly had not learnt my lesson!
I was so worried about being marked as an outsider — as that person who did not know — that I hesitated to ask a simple question that could have saved me several minutes of searching and some anxiety.
Now, there are several lessons we can learn on our own, quite easily, and it is very important to build the ability to equip ourselves to be efficient, independent learners.
But sometimes, the easiest and least painful way to learn is still the old fashioned way: to find a person and to ask a simple, direct question. Chances are there are many others who feel just as lost as you are, and we need to get over that sense that we are stupid if we do not know what others seem to already know. Not asking will only make it tougher to go on.There is no doubt that we need to familiarise ourselves with the many tools available to give us information and instruction and prepare us for the many aspects of the world.
But it is also important to recognise that those tools all have limitations. They are never complete or detailed enough, and sometimes, you need a real person to help you find the switch to turn it on!
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad
and edits Teacher Plus. Email: usha.bpgll
@gmail.com
Published - October 02, 2016 05:00 pm IST
