The wonders you do...

Back in my university days, I was exposed for the first time to people with dramatically different learning capabilities than mine. Coming from a private school I have to admit that my class mates were not very diverse and even if a few of them were there on scholarships, most of us came from well-off  families where academic excellence was either a preexisting condition or, for the families with recent success, a strongly encouraged result. Besides, this reflection is fairly recent; back in the school days I was way too busy growing up, and notably oblivious to the circumstances of most of my school mates.

But by the time I arrived at university I had matured, and the exposure to people from very different backgrounds opened my mind a whole lot. One of the things that stroke me most profoundly was the fact that some of the students in my dorm were absolutely uses in math and science. Admittedly, most journalists do not need a strong background on those fields, but a basic knowledge should be a must for anyone aiming for a university degree. Still, it was not uncommon to hear from one of them "could you please do the wonders you do and help me out calculate this...?".

Photo: PickPic

In most cases the call for help was not aimed at helping them solve the problem, but to solve it in their stead. Knowing that, my go-to reply was "Why do you ask me to do it? I am sure you can do it yourself" to try to reframe the question so that I could help them learn to solve the problem. That was the second shock I had: many of my friends argued that several teachers had already tried to help them understand that and failed. What kind of teacher does simply give up on a student just by the fact that they are a bit slower or lack some of the foundation knowledge?

When I was young I used to pride myself of my intellectual feats, but then I realized that I deserved no recognition for something that was mostly imprinted on my genes. Of course, there is some part of self-development and putting your mind to work to make use of your capacities, but being smarter does not make me a better person than some who is not as smart, in the same way that being tall, blond or having a big mustache. In some way I started to feel a responsibility to show people that, even if they had a harder time and probably will never excel in the field, they could be able to be sufficiently performant for their everyday life. They just have to be taught the right way.

It is a well-established fact that people who reach a certain level of expertise not only become oblivious of how hard it was for them to become experts, but they are also incapable of explaining how they do what they do. This is called the "curse of expertise", and is a problem that sometimes affects teachers too: they do not understand how they know what they know, so they have a hard time to explain it to others. For people with a natural talent, this lack of explanation might not pose a significant hurdle, but less gifted people can be absolutely incapable of grasping the concept unless it is broken down to the level they need. And there is a big disparity in how far down people need the concepts to be broken down.

One might argue that it was by pure self-interest (to spare myself the repeated requests for help) but I went very far out of my way to explain to my dorm mates those elusive concepts that their teachers had failed to convey. And most of the time I succeeded, even if it took several attempts.

Even if I am now an accomplished aerospace engineer, I think that the biggest wonder that I do is not the complicated problems that I can solve, but the patience and analytical thinking that I can muster to piece down these complicated thoughts and explain them to people with significantly less preparation. That is probably I never miss an opportunity to take part in a public outreach activity... Enjoy the weekend.