by Gourab Modak

Created on: January 13, 2010   Last Updated: January 18, 2010

To make it out of high school with the knowledge you need for college, you have to do a lot of stuff. You need to do community service, and be involved in school, but the most important part of all this is that you should ask questions. This not only applies to academics, but also things like sports, band, and even drama.

Asking questions are very important. By doing so, you can learn more about the topic. Let’s say you didn’t understand the lecture in Chemistry about how an electron can be a particle and a wave at the same time. If you ask a question (and actually pay attention to the teacher’s answer), you have a higher chance of understanding the concept.

Sometimes, if you have one of those teachers that are really stupid and they forget huge portions of a lesson easily, one of your questions can redirect the teacher from giving you the huge essay to going back to the lecture. And by the way, this can help you learn some important stuff, too.

In fact, that important stuff you learned from asking that question can go a long way. It can lead you into getting a college degree, and a good high-paying job. If you didn’t know already, that job is the key to staying alive. So asking questions does pay off, now doesn’t it?

Now, let’s say that the job you get has to do with the law, or maybe you decide to be a researcher. At that point, you will need to ask questions to get things done. Asking questions at that point becomes critical. If you don’t ask questions in those jobs, it can cost you and the world. Let’s say you end up being a lawyer handling high profile cases. It’s your first trial, and the defendant is charged with manslaughter, and could face capital punishment. Let’s say you are defending that man. You know that man is innocent, but you have no proof. If you don’t cross examine him and the plaintiff(s), you will never be able to prove to the court that he is innocent. And if you can’t do that, the man is as good as dead.

Now let’s say you become a researcher looking for the cure to AIDS. Let’s say you have found a possible way to cure AIDS. But then, after thirty years, after getting within reach of the cure, you give up. You don’t question a seemingly impossible way and just give up. Now what if that seemingly impossible way turns out to be the sole cure for AIDS and no one discovers it for another century? Who would be responsible for all the deaths due to AIDS? It would be your fault, and it would be so big, that you couldn't share the blame with anyone else.

All of these situations aren’t supposed to be direct examples, but they can be a parallel to what can happen to you if you aren’t very inquisitive about knowledge. So if you want to avoid this kind of situation, it is important to ask questions about what you don’t know. And what’s a better place to do that than in the classroom? Once you have this base, when you go into a job that requires asking questions, you will have no problems.

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