Jumping to Conclusions

Just a moment ago I was kind of frazzled. I was handing in the first assignment in Calculus, and it was almost painfully easy--just a single problem, that required nothing more complicated than an application of the Pythagorean theorem. In fact as I was writing it, the math teachers from my past were chiding me in my head that I wasn't "showing my work". The paper looked awfully bare... but there was nothing to show, really. There was no work involved. But the professor rejected the assignment as I was handing it in, saying that I should have written out the question (it was a word problem, by the way, three or four sentences of text describing a single equation), and I shouldn't have written it in pen, and that she would give me a low grade for that reason if I handed it in as-is.

As I was walking out of class, I was feeling kind of upset by this, and briefly considered writing a three-page essay with nested footnotes describing in all possible detail (and then some) the thought processes that went on behind the solving of this problem. In the end all I did was write a blog post about professors who value style over substance--or perhaps are unable to appreciate substance without the proper style. And as I was typing away on my laptop, the professor walked up to me out of the blue, and apologized. She said that she was just trying to set an example, more for the other students than for me (because she had been my precalc teacher and she knew that I wasn't at the same level as most of the other students), and that what seems silly now is necessary to get coherent assignments back from the class when the problems started getting harder.

Needless to say I was mollified, and as I thought about it more I realized that I had noticed that earlier in class the professor was kind of put-off by the questions that other students asked, and the deep lack of understanding thereby revealed. Her response as I tried to turn in the assignment was likely colored by some amount of frustration, and frankly the paper looked pretty desolate. So, once again, I'm simply trying to get through the day, and I nevertheless find myself thrown on an emotional rollercoaster, and learning a valuable lesson besides. And there's a little synchronicity thrown in to take the point home.

The post I started writing was titled "little tyrants". I thought that I remembered the phrase from somewhere, and I decided to look it up to give proper credit, or at least not mangle the original intent of the phrase. I never found out where it came from, but the first Google search that came up was a conservative echo chamber. Please read the post--it's short, and your eyes won't melt a whole lot. Here's the key phrase:

"I am not willing to assume the presence of facts not in evidence that would have recast their behavior in an acceptable light."

This phrase struck a chord with me, because I've known for a long time that this position is thoroughly inadvisable. This particular event was just one in a long string of experiences which taught me the importance of reserving judgement. It's very easy to hear about a situation, or even be in one, and think you know all the facts. If you look at the other side of an issue, there is almost always more information that you weren't aware of. It's very easy to be convinced of something if you're entirely unaware of the facts of the other side. And once you're convinced of something, it's just one small step away from rejecting contradictory evidence, and then you have a feedback loop.

Open your mind from the start, and do your darndest to keep it that way. It needs the fresh air.