Sweet Stupidity

My ignorance evidenced itself when I skimmed a section of my tech comm book about research. I've been writing research papers for years now (or at least once per year) so I skimmed quickly. That afternoon the random reading quiz came. Groans echoed in the class.

Initially I was smug thinking: "I one-upped the rest of the class; I at least skimmed it." I was wrong. After failing the reading quiz I felt humbled in my false sense of "research" security. So tonight I opened up the chapter that I failed to understand. An impending deadline for a research-based report was a great avatar to follow the recommendations page after page for my research. It was enlightening. I learned more about pre-writing and pre-researching than I ever would have by trial-and-error. I thought back to my first post for this blog. I could have felt stupid and decided to quit learning or place my focus somewhere else, but learning to learn from my stupidity created an avenue to change my perspective. . . Awe, the sweet sense of stupidity.