Admitting you don't know something

Graduate school instills the humility and strength it takes to admit you don’t know something

By Joshua Jordan

Realizing that you don’t know 

"I think you're confused." Having just chimed into the discussion with my own thoughts about the week's readings, that was the professor's response to my input. That was, in fact, the expert's response to me—the uninitiated.

"Are you sure? Do you really  mean that?" These are questions you might be on the receiving end of in graduate school. These questions, and their variations, converge to instill an important quality in you: humility.

These questions train you to admit that you don't know something, to say, "I don't know." These questions, subtle yet forceful, compel you to juggle what you know and what you think you know. And, importantly, they plant the seed that grows into contemplation about what you don't know—and what you don't know you don't know.

Accepting that you don’t know:

While graduate school crafts you into someone with expert knowledge , it does more than that—it also molds you into someone who is increasingly capable of navigating their way through the complex pursuit of such knowledge.

A pursuit that involves enduring professorial polemics and never-ending research articles. A pursuit that involves realizing that you have questions, but not knowing how to answer them. A pursuit that involves exploring both marked and uncharted  territory, the former instilling in you that you’re new to this and that you’ve only just begun, the latter watering the seeds of doubt about  whether you’re fit enough—since you’ve only just begun—to make your mark. 

Together, the resultant thoughts, feelings, and experiences, coalesce into seemingly countless opportunities to stumble and simply profess, “I don’t know.”  That is, countless opportunities to confront what you don't know and embrace the opportunity to find out.

Embracing what you don’t know:

The "I don't know" moments are not "I don't want to know" moments. They are merely a means to an end—a stepping stone to an end in which you wind up learning something, rather than remaining inimically oblivious to it. 

Once in graduate school, you—not your undergraduate advisor, who was probably  assigned to you based on your last name—are the commodore navigating the treacherous waters to your intellectual destination; each class you take comprises the flotilla that helps you get there, the frigates and gunboats of which fend off the incoming criticism, self-doubt, and insecurity that threaten to seize your confidence and willpower. 

With each class you take—each threatening to pierce your sails and slow you down, or, worse, sink you in a sea of doubt—you not only gain factual knowledge, you qualitatively become a more critical thinker; someone who can not only absorb information and regurgitate it, but someone who also has the agility to go look for it—or create it, if it doesn’t yet exist.  You and embracing opportunities to find out become friends. 

So, while the end goal is to graduate with more knowledge—and a degree to show for it—graduating with more “knowledge” includes capturing that elusive humility which renders you able, and willing, to admit when you don’t know and to embrace those opportunities to find out.  

Embracing the opportunity to find out:

When you finally emerge from graduate school, you're no longer just a consumer of knowledge, you're a producer of knowledge, as an advisor once told me. You're someone who is producing knowledge for your contemporaries—and for posterity. This is only done, however, through first accepting your own knowledge deficits and then working to fill them in (incrementally) by having the strength and humility to wrestle with your ignorance.

The challenges wrought by graduate school, much like life experiences in general, prepare you for something bigger—whatever that may be. But do not forget that these challenges are also humbling and are a chance to signify your desire to know. Through the ambiguity, they showcase your humility and strength to admit you don’t know something all in a devoted effort to contribute to society’s collective knowledge—to simply discover.