This summer, I decided to cross of my last general education requirement -- a social science --and take a summer class. I chose Sociology 101 because a friend told me it would interest me and that it was less term heavy than Psychology. Basically, I signed up for it because it sounded like it would be an easy A.
On Tuesday, I had my first class and I was, admittedly, a little nervous because I didn’t actually know what sociology was. I arrived, as I always do -- 15 minutes early, armed and ready with my binder full of paper for whatever the heck sociology was. After about 10 minutes, I was joined by four other students, the professor, and a surmised knowledge that I was the youngest one in the class. I started to get the feeling that this was not going to be the same sociology class that my friend had taken in the spring semester.
As an introduction exercise, the professor spread out a bunch of index cards on the table, each with character traits written on them. She asked us to come to the front and pick two cards, a strength and a weakness. While I looked through all the cards I had a hard time picking just one weakness rather than three. In the end, I picked perfectionist, feeling that it accurately summed up my weaknesses by identifying their cause. We then went around and shared a brief introduction of ourselves ending with the strengths and weaknesses that we had selected from the table.
One student introduced themselves with all of the normal things (year, area of study, hometown, etc.) and then went on to explain their strength. When they got to their weakness they shared what was written on the card, "diligent." They paused for a moment, admitted they weren’t entirely sure what the word meant, and then asked the professor for a definition. This caught me totally by surprise.
At first, I was astonished that they didn’t know the meaning of "diligent" despite being a senior in college. Then, I wondered why they would pick a word if they didn’t know what it meant. I imagined my own embarrassment if I had been forced to explain a word that I didn’t know the definition of. I pictured myself quickly looking it up on my phone before anyone could notice that I didn’t know it.
Suddenly, I was accosted by the judgmental nature of my own thoughts. I realized the bravery and the vulnerability that this student demonstrated simply by asking for the definition of a word. I saw the strength he had shown in revealing his weakness.
We are told from a young age, or at least I was, that knowledge is power. This statement automatically creates another maxim, ignorance is weakness. But, today, I learned that ignorance is not weakness. Ignorance is only weakness if we choose not to act upon it. To put up a facade of knowledge, of power, and to hide ignorance does nothing for us.
We are encouraged to yell our knowledge from the mountaintops but to staunchly contain our ignorance out of fear of what others may think. I even hesitate to use the word ignorance because it has such a negative connotation but it is the best antonym I know for knowledge.
I realized, today, that there is this unnecessary pressure to appear omnipotent and all knowing, even when we aren’t, in fact, especially when we aren’t. Today, I realized that I don’t say ‘I don’t know’ enough. I am so often afraid to be wrong that I just stay silent. Even in the classroom, the place where I should be asking questions and learning, I’m afraid to be wrong. By realizing this, I also realized how many other people don’t say, "I don’t know," enough. How there are there are countless problems that we all face as individuals and as a society, and sometimes we don’t really know how to solve them. Instead of admitting this, we just scream at each other what we hope might sound intelligent, what might sound like a solution. We want to sound intelligent so that we sound powerful.
Today, I learned the power of "I don’t know."
