I’m lost

We’re born with absolutely no knowledge. Over the course of our life we grow and learn more about the world. Without questions, we’d be left as clueless babies who’d gone extinct long ago. Today, questions are seen as having lack of intelligence which is incorrect. I’m often clueless in a lot of subjects but I always wonder. I ask a lot of questions that can’t be answered and some questions are met with negative responses from others. While I think questions are a great tool for becoming more knowledgeable, there are some who think my questions aren’t worth being answered.

Whenever I’m confused, I ask a question. Getting help from teachers who will gladly answer my questions helps me understand the material a lot better. Sometimes though I’ll be really lost and I hesitate. I feel stupid when I have to ask about something that seemed clear was obvious to everyone else but myself. Usually it leads to me raising my hand in embarrassment and then slowly admitting that I got lost at the very beginning of the lesson. I wait for the laughter to ensue and sometimes I get some banter from my friends but usually no one comments on my ignorance and I go about my day either learning more or still being stuck and moving on instead.

I joined Academic Decathlon in my sophomore year of high school and got lost a lot. I had no clue what was going on at any time and wasn’t really sure how to learn the information. I had asked some people for help but the only thing they could really say was that I just had to memorize it. All the information was hidden in huge incomprehensible walls of text that I had to basically translate like a Shakespearean play. Even though I had asked, I had still no idea what to do and felt like my questions ended up not helping. We had a math teacher come in and teach everyone calculus and before she even started I was lost. I felt like an idiot but I didn’t want to raise my hand and tell her I was lost because I could tell everyone else was following along just fine and I would’ve slowed them down if I did ask so I decided not to.

In the end, my overall score came out okay. I got a couple of medals in the subjects I did decent in and even got a medal for a subject I didn’t study at all for and guessed the whole way through. I bet if I had tried harder and asked more questions though the outcome would’ve been better. I see lots of people who get killer scores and I can just tell that they probably had to ask a lot of questions to get where they are. I still ask lots of questions and because of that, I found my interest lies in music where I ask the most questions (which probably annoys my teacher a lot). I’m going to college for music where I hope to be able to ask many more questions and get many more answers.

“Raised Hands” by proctoracademy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

“Shawn Newborn” by RTD Photography is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“National Academic Decathlon Competition Winners” by US Department of Education is licensed under CC BY 2.0.