“Does anyone have any questions?”
My professor’s words reverberate through the lecture hall. Truthfully, the last thirty minutes went in one ear and out the other. The bug-eyed look on my friend’s face tells me that they’re just as confused as I am, and as I glance around, I see blank stare after blank stare. Even though we’ve just been prompted to ask for clarification to fill in the gaps in our professor’s lesson plan, no one raises their hand. No one meets the professor’s eyes, instead opting to fidget, slump down in our seats or gaze at our laptop screens. After an excruciating twenty seconds of silence, the lesson moves on.
Why do we feel so paralyzed when we’re given the opportunity to ask questions? In rare cases, a lesson will leave everyone so confused about the topic at hand that we don’t know where to start. However, then it is the responsibility of the professor to reformat their lesson plan or explain things more clearly. But most of the time, they have done a thorough job covering the content and there are just areas that are particularly confusing. Yet students’ hesitancy to ask questions persists.
This phenomenon is likely a behavior learned in middle or high school in order to protect ourselves from embarrassment. Many of us have likely had more than one of these experiences of asking questions in class and being humiliated by a condescending teacher or snickered at by a classmate. We’ve developed a fear of looking or sounding “stupid” by revealing that our knowledge is incomplete after a lesson. Over time, this fear grew to supersede the desire for full understanding in many of us. Although this feeling plays a powerful role in shaping our behavior, deconstructing it reveals its irrationality.
Almost no one perfectly understands a lesson immediately after hearing it once. That’s why we have the concept of studying in the first place. Even people who are quick learners and well-adapted to a traditional classroom environment can’t be expected to pick up every topic effortlessly. We all have academic areas that challenge us more than others, not to mention lapses in attention during class. Many of our professors build in ample time for questions during their lectures. We can’t expect our professors to predict which sections of the topic are going to be the most difficult for us to master.
For many professors, it has been decades since they were in our shoes, learning this material for the first time themselves. Therefore, it’s imperative that we overcome our fear of showing our confusion. Not only is this for the good of the entire class, but of the professor’s future students. Teaching is a process improved by iteration and feedback. If no one speaks up, nothing will change, and that confusing slideshow will be shown year after year, leaving more students to fend for themselves outside of class.
Considering that most Smith students are gender minorities and many of us have been raised to be people-pleasers, the desire to avoid “burdening” professors with our questions can also contribute to our hesitancy. We are so reluctant to inconvenience others that we end up doing ourselves a disservice by failing to take advantage of our professors’ knowledge and wisdom. But the fact that Smith caters to gender minorities also presents a safer environment in which to develop our confidence and conquer the fear of “seeming stupid,” because we are free of the intimidation imposed by a room full of cisgender men. As a person in STEM, this rings especially true for me. In my male-dominated high school math and science classes, I often felt that I was a “representative” for my gender and that I could not show any sign of weakness — that asking questions would betray some inherent inferiority on my part. But we must stop perceiving a lack of knowledge as weakness. We are weak not when we lack knowledge, but when we stop seeking it.
It can be surprisingly easy to forget that school is a place for learning, not for showing off how much we already know. We don’t expect every other student to be knowledgeable in every one of their classes already or to understand everything perfectly the first time they hear it, so it’s unreasonable to expect the same of ourselves. Our professors are there to help and guide us, and they have office hours and in-class Q&A sessions for a reason. Asking questions does not “waste their time” or place an undue burden on them. Confidence in asking for clarification is an incredible asset in life; double-checking and reinforcing understanding never hurt anyone. The sooner we realize our right to be confused, the sooner we won’t need to be anymore.
