The Value of Feeling Stupid
I’ve spent a fair amount of my life trying not to look stupid. Abe Lincoln’’s sage advice to keep one’s mouth shut to keep people wondering, rather than opening it to confirm being a fool has not been lost on me. Luckily, as an introvert, I can often let others do the talking– unless an issue of justice pops up its head. Then my heart can’t control my mouth.
But I’ve learned over the years that feeling stupid can be an enriching experience.
Not in the moment, generally. No, I’m often too self-conscious to see any educational value as heat rises on my face and my breathing quickens.
But in the long run, especially if I take some time to process or contemplate the situation, I eventually understand that feeling stupid can be a meaningful way to grow.
And feeling stupid, surprisingly doesn’t seem to have any age restrictions, at least from about age five onwards. It’s happened to me too many times to record, but as I wander through my old writing files, three recent times stand out.
The first happened about fifteen years ago, but it quickly impacted my daily life. Back then, I wanted my school to offer a dual credit college class, but I didn’t have enough graduate credits to teach it. So, the next summer, I invested several weeks in a six-credit writing instruction institute from the local university. Completing it would qualify me as an adjunct instructor, and I was eager to pick up some tips for helping teach kids to write narratives, my weak area.
One of the initial exercises was to determine our Myers-Briggs Personality Types. I’d been exposed to MBTI once before, from my sister in a business setting. But even with this prior exposure, details about the commonalities among the sixteen types confused me. I could see a general connection to Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theory and Sternberg’s Learning Styles and how they impacted my pedagogy, but sixteen types! That was too much new information for me to absorb. By the end of the day, I failed the oral pop quiz and sat mortified at how dense I surely appeared to the other twenty-five teacher participants.
The next week, when we worked on writing in groups, I was placed with others who shared my two middle MBTI letters. They understood my writing and how my mind worked, but being surrounded by them was too much of a good thing. We NT’s were overly critical and blunt, and our analytical natures and conversations soon landed on the workshop itself. I was overwhelmed with negativity and too much analysis, making narrative writing a distasteful chore. I had plenty of negative self-analysis for my narratives; what I needed was what the other personality types had to offer, a new perspective. I was disappointed that I came away with very little to improve my narrative writing that summer, except the resolution to group student writers of different personalities for feedback.
But my experience of feeling stupid motivated me to learn more. I eventually developed a system to help my students understand their natural tendencies as writers based on their Myers-Briggs personalities. It surfaced in a serendipitous AP Lit lesson one morning. And that knowledge taught many students how to balance their writing between pathos and logos, and make them more convincing in their arguments.
A little stupidity went a long way over my subsequent 13 years in the classroom!
A couple of years later, I agreed to speak to a writing group that a friend belonged to. Members of this regional chapter of Sisters in Crime, a national organization for writers of crime, horror, and mystery writers, were curious about the teaching of writing in public schools. I agreed to share the writing workshop principles I’d learned from my summer training.
After the presentation, a few members encouraged me to join their group.
“Oh, no,” I demurred. “I don’t write narratives. I write grant proposals and informational texts.” In fact, I’d just finished a rigorously edited, multiple-draft monograph for the National Writing Project. I felt pretty confident in my expository writing skills.
As soon as the words left my mouth, though, I realized how stupid I sounded. As a teacher, I was required to instruct my kids to write in all genres, but I just admitted that I didn’t write narratives myself. I was ignoring the first rule of the summer program: teachers must be writers. How could I teach them something I myself didn’t know?
It’ll be good for you to struggle with something that is hard and that you don’t like, I told myself. You’ll be able to experience the challenges that your students face.
I couldn’t push away that logic, so I joined.
I attended meetings each month, driving some 50 miles each way. I listened to the speakers, wise and accomplished writers. I attentively took notes, always looking for what I could take back to my students.
A few months later, the group announced that submissions were open for their next short story anthology. Contributing a story to the editors was too intimidating to even consider. Once more I declined.
“Why not?” my friend encouraged. “The editors will help you.”
That logical voice in my head whispered: The whole point was to learn and be uncomfortable. It’ll be like submitting a paper to be graded. Like your students do!
I didn’t know how stupid I would feel by participating.
It was uncomfortable and even embarrassing when I received my first critical feedback, even though every bit of it was constructive. I felt stupid. Not because they were “killing my baby,” but because I was a teacher of writing and I had so many gaps in my story! Characterization opportunities missed, more dialogue needed, even a believable climactic scene gone awry.
Is this how kids feel when I tear into their work?
Of course, I learned that being able to analyze a classic in the Western canon is FAR easier than producing one’s own excellent, original work. Afterward, I could commiserate with my students about how HARD good writing can be. And I could lighten up on my critical feedback, or at least balance it with plenty of praise.
Just last year, I experienced another bout of stupidity. Its roots oddly, hung on my classroom wall for years. It was a poster, one laminated and decorated with bright colors. In bold print, it read, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
Of course, I’d hung it to tame a few general education freshmen who hadn’t learned to control their behavior.
When I retired, the poster came down, and somewhat faded, it surrendered itself to the giant wheeled trash can that carted away much of my professional life.
No, I didn’t see that poster again, but I soon heard its voice channeling through my spiritual director.
Suddenly faced with unlimited free time and unexpected requests from all sides to fill it, I was struggling with guilt. I wanted to spend my days writing. However, others had dozens of ideas about how I might lend time or expertise to a cause.
Some made good cases for my involvement. And I’d always been one of those capable people who enjoyed ticking off a long list of daily accomplishments. But now I was getting overwhelmed. Wasn’t retirement supposed to be about me? A time for me to do what I hadn’t had time to do previously? Not a time to do more of what I’d been doing?
Even so, I agreed to more and more obligations. I justified them to my husband. “I know I can do it, and fairly fast. After all, somebody needs to do it.”
Then I whined about it to my spiritual director. “I know I can do these things people are asking me to do. And I know that they won’t take me too much time,” I told her. “And of course, they are all good causes.” I paused before admitting the truth: “But I don’t really want to.”
She looked at me and tightened her bottom lip. “Just because you can…,” she began.
I interrupted: “I know, I know… that doesn’t mean you should.” I slumped in the wing-back chair, feeling stupid. How many years had that poster hung in my classroom? I could feel my face going red as I thought about what I’d preached to my students… and so promptly forgotten.
Grasping to redeem myself, I whined an explanation. “But I know I can do them fairly quickly, so I feel I should. I mean, working people are so busy. But they tie me down.”
“Have you ever thought about it this way?” she asked. “Even though you can do something quickly– and probably well– you may actually be stealing a learning opportunity from someone else.”
I sat up a little straighter. Now this was something I could latch onto. I’d spent twenty-five years creating learning opportunities!
It was a DUH moment. “You know,” I conceded, rolling my eyes. “I had a poster with that bit of wisdom hanging in my classroom. I never knew it applied to me.”
She smiled, and I suspect it was not at my stupidity but at my growth. She’s like that.
The wisdom from that simple poster has guided me this past year. Just as feeling stupid has been a predecessor to learning and growth all my life. I’m not exactly looking for ways to feel stupid these days, but I’m not so eager to avoid them. I’ve learned that taking a risk to learn or grow inherently holds the likelihood of feeling or looking stupid. And I'm okay with that… and the positives that often follow.