There are such things as stupid questions

Jessie
Jessie
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

There are certain questions which I think less of a person for asking. I don’t mean questions like “explain again” or “I don’t understand”. I have never looked down on a person for asking why or how. Motivational questions demonstrate curiosity, which I find the highest form of intelligence. The opposite of curiosity is disinterest, and perhaps this is where my anger lies. There are certain questions which asking them is almost a sign of disinterest rather than interest.

Are questions inherently a demonstration of interest?

No. Too often, they are the opposite. Interest in any issue requires peeling back Ockham’s razor to reveal the complexities within it. I mean the act of asking me to approximate myself with a series of numbers, rather than expanding your knowledge of a person to their beliefs, values, fears, aspirations. Disinterest is to ask me my gpa, sat score, IQ, and Myers Briggs to get a feel for the person I am. Asking me some number you think measures my intelligence is not a personal question. Just a meaningless one — I am angry you want to simplify me. Truly, to ask such a thing demonstrates an innate ignorance to the complexity of human nature.

These questions imply that I can be numerically approximated. Or alphabetically approximated, if you reference the Myers Briggs. While these numbers provide information on what society has deemed my intelligence to be, I find it holistically repulsive (pun intended) to ask someone to simplify them self to a number or series of letters.

Tell me about yourself? 332310157131. I have given you my identity. You now know everything about me. Understand me. Have a feel for me.

I jest. I feel less connected to the series of numbers which might be used to abbreviate my candidacy than to my favorite color (dark green). I cannot be expressed in any finite series of numbers. My identity is held in an infinite uncountable set of numbers which must contain the name of everyone I love, the date of my life, death, and everything between. It holds the empty set, and every other person is a subset. Sorry, I am a math major.

Ask me what I am proud of, what I want to do with my life, what I view as my strengths and weaknesses, how I work with others. Any question which can be answered with a number has lost its ability to provoke interesting answers. I want to know why the square root of two cannot be written as a fraction. How to take the infinite integral of e^-x². I don’t want the answer, I want to understand the process. It’s much more indicative of identity.

Perhaps I say this because I am curious. Perhaps because I am angry with the frequency my SAT score is requested. Worse yet, I hate that because I am angry about giving it out, people assume I didn’t do well.

Jessie

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Jessie

Just a girl thinking about what goes on in the world; this is just an open space to unload thoughts from my head. University of Chicago ‘20