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What's worse than not asking a dumb question in a college course? Not asking it. In my mind, the only dumb question is "will that be on the test?" Asking this will frustrate the professor and lower his view of you.

College is a place of learning. You go there to learn; the instructor is there to help you learn. If you do not understand something, you cannot learn it. And while passing the test is important because of the impact grade will have on the process of finding a job, it is not paramount. What is more important is making sure you have learned the material. If you learn it, the grades will follow.

This is true everywhere in life, and especially true in college, where you are attempting to learn things new to you. Look at it this way: if you don't get the stuff in a basic class, you will be hopelessly lost in the next one, regardless of what your grade was.

It's not easy, admitting you don't know something. I know. My whole life I have had to admit a lack of knowledge and ask for help. This is not a sign of stupidity, but ignorance. Ignorance is simply the lack of knowledge; the most intelligent mathematician may be ignorant of much of history. This is just the way it is.

Asking what might be viewed as "dumb questions" did not stop after I graduated college and entered the workforce in the world of accounting college prepared me for. It is not the employees who ask a lot of questions who concern me, it is the one who never has one. Either they are way smarter than I was (which is possible)or they are afraid to admit there is something they do not understand. It is this employee who will create the most havoc long term.

If you don't understand something in class, it is more likely than not others are there with you. Sometimes this is a result of the professor knowing so much about the subject she skips over the reasoning behind statement, other times, it is because the material is new or complex or possible even counter intuitive. Usually, when you are given the background, things will make more sense.

For the most part, instructors want to help you learn.

Yes, there are those few in every college who think teaching is beneath them and what they want to do is spend their time doing research and writing and that class time is the price they have to pay to do what they want; and while this is true of all really good professors to some degree, the best will want to do both.

The trick is to make sure you are spending the requisite time outside of class with the material so that your questions will indicate some level of understanding or at least of your grappling with the material. The old standard of three hours out of class for every class hour is about right and if you do his, your questions will indicate the time spent and more likely than not be welcomed by the professor.

But, it is important to recognize the needs of the many. It is not right to take up half the time in a class of three hundred asking questions. Most schools require the professor to keep office hours and most full professors have graduate assistants. Take advantage of both. Go see the prof during her office hours and corner the grad assistant.

The keys to success in college are attending the class with a clear and open mind, spending the time alone with the books or practice sets or in the lab or working through the equations and proofs, participation in group study time (and by this, I do not mean time at the local watering hole), and interaction with your professors via questions in class and talking in their offices.

Learn more about this author, J L Petriesan.
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