“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life”, Confucius
“Not know is not shameful, not asking is”, Turkish proverb
I was sitting in a room full of other students. The professor kept talking about phi, psi, and omega angles. Obviously it was an important topic of discussion but I didn’t know what these angles were. Everybody else seemed to know what the professor was talking about, except me. I mustered some courage and raised my hand to ask what those angles were. The professor told me these are “peptide torsion angles”. I didn’t understand. So I asked him what are peptide torsion angles? The professor was a little irritated and I felt embarrassment that everyone except myself knew about this. As I probed further and the professor explained further, others joined in asking more questions. It turns out that none of us knew about this. The professor assumed that we would have learned about this in a previous class. We didn’t. Everyone was just sitting pretending to understand what the professor was saying. What is the point of taking a class when you are not able to understand what is being discussed?
Often people feel ashamed of asking questions. There is nothing shameful about asking questions. None of us were born knowledgeable. Everyone had to learn. There is no shame in not knowing but it is shameful to lose an opportunity to ask questions and learn.