Is it really that bad?

Questions. It could be good or bad. In life, there are many questions that I have in my mind but I’m afraid to ask them. When I’m in class I’m always afraid to ask a question because I’m afraid that it’s going to be stupid and that people will make fun of me for asking about it, they could laugh, and talk about it with their friends saying that “I am dumb” or “it was already said I just wasn’t listening” and personally I feel like I can read peoples thoughts when someone asks a question they think is dumb. Especially when I’m in school there are so many kids that judge you there and everyone knows they will run to their friends to tell them about what you said. Questions are something that a lot of people seem to struggle with while in class. There are a lot of people that could be in that class and depending on the teacher that could also have to do with someone asking a question or not. There are a lot of teachers who will say “That’s a good question” or “why do you think that was a bad question?”. There have been a few moments where I felt as though I wanted to ask a question but then I froze and stopped.

There have been a lot of times while I’m in English class and I want to ask a question but then I look at who’s around me and I just figure it out by myself. Right now we’re reading “Hamlet” no one really knows what they’re reading because it does not make any sense so there are a lot of questions about it “What is happening”, and “What do these words mean” or “What was this scene about”. I believe it was just the other day and I was reading about it and even though I was reading it I still had no idea what I was saying so I was thinking about asking the teacher but then I thought about who was in that class and what they would say so I decided against it. I am a person who sits in the middle of the classroom so I’ll hear all the comments that are made about people’s questions “they really asked that” or “that’s just common sense”. As a person who wants to ask a question quite literally, it feels like I’m sweating a mile a minute, my heart will burst out of my chest and my throat is closing. Although I want to believe that people are getting better at not making fun of people for certain things they do I know they are just as bad as they always have been.

Although there have been many times when people or I myself have not asked questions because they are scared to ask. I feel as though the teachers can pick up on if someone has a question and are too scared to ask they see them thinking about it, them moving in their seating deciding what to do and sometimes the teacher already knows what the student is going to ask so they answer without being asked. There have also been times when I have been in a class where I felt good enough to ask a question and everyone just listened and I felt respected by everyone there. This was in art class so many people could have just not been paying attention to me and asking “How do I use this” or ” How should I do this” which again helps because who really wants the attention on them when asking a question?

I feel like the adults in my life have made it possible to be heard without really talking and it also helps that we can email teachers if we are scared to ask them face to face or just did not ask them before leaving their class. I think another time that I was really scared to ask a question that I thought was dumb was probably during psychology this year I did not really understand what we were learning about and it was a really small group of kids, I just decided not to ask the teacher what I wanted to because again it makes me sweat, shake and like really clammy when I go to ask a question so I would rather not ask.

Asking questions can be a very scary thing for a lot of people, including myself. I really do think there could be a thing called a stupid question because there have been a few where I have questioned the person but I feel like people should not make fun of others because that person could think that their asking a really could question and everyone else could just be laughing making them feel uncomfortable and that can stop kids from asking questions. I am a person who not only gets scared to ask questions in front of people but I am also a person who will laugh at a question that I believe is not very good. I also believe that asking a question in front of the whole class, at a job, or really anywhere takes a lot of guts.

“Question mark in Esbjerg” by alexanderdrachmann is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.