This is one of those posts where you can read the title and pretty much know the bottom line. (In this case, the bottom line is the top line! Har har har...) Allow me to quote myself: "It's better not to assume." There you have it. I think that you end up looking like a fool less often when you don't assume things about other people, situations, or events.
Now, before you devil's advocates reading this come up with all sorts of examples to tell me that I'm wrong, allow me to clarify what I mean by 'assume'. Assume, to me and for this post, means making a judgment based upon minimal knowledge, often none. Assume does not refer to choices made on instinct. When a police officer sees suspicious behavior and acts based on it, I think of that more as an instinct move. Though police get in trouble if they profile people based on race or ethnicity, I would treat those cases separately from those where the are acting apart from any prejudice. Additionally, some of baseball is based on quick thinking, which one might mistake for assumption. A player gets to a point where he knows the game so well that he can make good decisions almost instantaneously, but this isn't quick thinking based on little information; it's actually based on quite a bit. Just to clarify, 'assume' to me means acting based upon little proof.
The reason this topic comes to me this week is because my group, Team Dew, interviewed the Deans yesterday. Deans Watkins (LAS) and DeBrock (Business) were very easy to interview. They spoke well and gave accessible explanations with their answers. Overall, I think our proposals for a student mentoring program will be better for having had them spend an hour with us.
As we interviewed the Deans, there were quite a few surprises to me, but most of them centered around their view of large classes. Going into the interview, I thought their general tone toward large classes would be negative. Looking at the script we wrote to guide our interview, you can see that we thought that when planning it. One of the main headings in it is "The Disengagement Pact and Large Classes." So you can imagine I was surprised when Dean DeBrock talked about his effectively teaching ECON 102: a class with 1685 students! The cap for classes has shrunk to 750 students since then, but I can't even imagine teaching a class that large. And to teach it well? It seems impossible, and yet he said that he managed it well. Dean Watkins went on to say that if it weren't for large classes, we couldn't have as many small, interactive classes as we do on campus. I don't know why I hadn't really thought of that. Suddenly, my view on large classes wasn't as negative as it had been minutes before, and our script was not as useful anymore. If I had not assumed the discussion would go a certain way, I think I would have been prepared with more questions along different lines. I still think that the interview went well, and I managed to ask a question off the top of my head, but that's in spite of preparing for a certain discussion that didn't really happen.
I've found myself in similar situations my entire life. One that immediately comes to mind is the time my parents wanted to take my brother and me to listen to chamber music at a local library. I whined about it. I just knew it would be boring. I didn't know why I had to be exposed to "culture." The whole time leading up to it, I complained. And then I ended up enjoying it. So what did my assumption do for me? It made me waste my time by being miserable, and it wasted my parents' time explaining how it would be fun. I'm sure it also got on their nerves to some extent.
There have been times recently when I've been prone to assume something negative, but thought back on all the times I've been wrong before. If I stop and think, I often find there are many other possible reasons or outcomes than the one that immediately comes to mind. This is something at which I want to get better, especially since teaching seldom goes as planned. I think I've gotten better about not assuming things, but I'm still a work in progress; I assume all of you are, too. (Just kidding.)
2 comments:
I just finished commenting on the class blog about something similar to your topic, what a coincidence. I think you are right on about assumptions. They can definitely hinder and waste time that otherwise could have been well spent. In my comment on the class blog, I was talking about how I try to treat every class I take here to be a potential avenue to learn. Even if the class is a GenEd requirement or a major requirement, I've tried not to assume that I will not learn much from the class. Having a more open attitude has made learning exciting for me even in the classes that most people may find boring.
I believe the "magic hump" in life happens around age 50. All the students in the class, still far removed from the peak, are a work in progress. Alas, I am a work in regress.
Experiential learning is the most powerful, no doubt. There is nothing like having an important experience which makes your prior held beliefs come into question for there to be a fundamental change in your point of view. Describing that change in view makes for a good story. I liked this post.
That said, I do encourage a persistent skepticism, as a rule, in all matters of inquiry. So after the fact, you need to ask whether what you heard from the Deans gives a full and accurate picture. The first step for that is in asking, how can you tell?
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