Get it Over With

Overthinking is something that everyone does from time to time. Some people think that all they do is overthink, others think they’re pretty good at keeping calm during situations. I myself like to believe that I stay relatively calm when presented with a stressful situation, however I know that there’s been many times where I have made myself extremely anxious over something that really didn’t deserve the fright. 

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question” is a tricky concept. Because if one is genuinely asking to know or to figure something out, then no, it’s not stupid to ask, even if it seems like it might be very obvious or simple. However, almost every time I hear that statement, there always has to be that one person that purposely asks an extremely ridiculous question to try and be funny. *cue eye roll* So perhaps there is such a thing as a stupid question, but most of the time, the questions people are afraid to ask are not as stupid as they’ve built it up in their head to be. 

There have been a bevy of times where I prolonged asking a question because I thought the person I needed to ask would be annoyed by my asking. But when I inevitably end up asking, the brisk and friendly answer I usually receive makes me feel foolish for putting this thing off that was resolved in 6.2 seconds. For instance, when I was in middle school I struggled a ton with asking teachers for help. I still usually refrain from asking unless I really need it, but it was ten times more severe in middle school. Typically the reason I would avoid asking a simple question about an assignment was because it was late and I was embarrassed and thought the teacher(s) would be annoyed with me for asking a question about an assignment that was due a week ago. But when it came down to the wire and I absolutely needed to ask the question, the teacher would just answer my question in a friendly manner, and half the time add a “if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to come right up and ask me!” The teachers didn’t hate me or think I was stupid for asking a question, rather they were happy I was actually engaging in my work, even if it was late. Had I grasped this concept quicker, school probably would have been a lot easier in some places. But I was (still am, just less so) a thick headed kid. So it took years of fear and procrastination for it to finally start sinking in that; 

A) Teachers would rather have questions than the work be even later than it needs to be. 

B) I’m not the only student in the world, teachers receive tons of questions everyday, and they do not spend the rest of their days thinking about and judging one student’s simple question. They have much more important things to worry about. 

But I know for fact I’m not the only one whose brain works like this. My younger sister Lilli is in 8th grade, and she is the spitting image of myself in middle school – except twice as shy and overthinks every situation it seems. Just earlier this year, the middle school held a dance, and my sister wanted to go. Except she didn’t tell my parents or ask them if they could drive her until like 30 minutes before the dance was supposed to start. Why she was too afraid to ask sooner I have no idea. Our parents are not strict when it comes to us going out places, and even encourage it and offer rides because of how anti-social we tend to be. So of course my parents agreed to bring her, but they were just a tad annoyed how late she’d waited to ask because my mother had planned to take my grandfather grocery shopping that evening. Had my sister talked to my parents even just a couple days sooner, my mother could have worked out a better solution to taking Lilli to the dance and taking her father shopping instead of the one she did. Our mother ended up dropping Lilli off at the middle school, going shopping with her father, and then taking our grandfather to the school to pick her up because she was scrambling to be at two places at once. 

The point of these stories is that if you’re thinking of putting off asking a question because you’re worried it’s stupid, don’t. Whatever the outcome, you’ll wish you’d just asked it sooner.

“there are no stupid questions just stupid people” by Byron Villegas is licensed under CC BY 2.0.