This week, I attended my first Distinguished Scientists Lecture Series: Thomas Sanger’s lecture on sexual diversity on Feb. 24. He described a variety of complicated subjects — subjects that, as someone only studying the humanities, I generally would have a hard time comprehending. Even though there were moments when I had trouble (don’t ask me what 5 Alpha Reductase is), I understood a surprising amount. This is because he presented his points in an accessible and simple way, something a lot of people at Trinity could learn from.

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve heard both students and professors at Trinity explain concepts like the inverted pyramid or coding in Python and seem appalled when I don’t understand what they’re saying the first time around.
A peer once talked to me about some obscure fact like I had heard of it, and when I said I didn’t know what they were talking about, they said, “Really?” People have rattled off what they’re learning in their labs and smiled when I looked at them completely dumbfounded. When I read Virginia Woolf for the first time and told someone I had trouble understanding it, they said “Oh? I thought it was great.” I don’t think people realize they’re doing it, but it happens — all the time.

This veiled humiliation is a problem in academia — and one that Sanger acknowledged. During his lecture, he mentioned that all of his professor peers say that to combat the misinformation about sex development, they just need to publish more academic papers. To refute this, he showed a slide on how sex develops in humans and asked the audience to identify the enzyme that causes Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome. No one could answer, obviously, because that’s not the way people learn.
People learn when information is easy to consume. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the few months I’ve been a tutor at the Writing Center, it’s that I’m useless if I’m telling the students coming for help to avoid passive voice or make their writing cohesive. They don’t come to me for that. I have to tell them what that means; I have to show them how to do it.

People trying to show off what they know under the guise of teaching me brings me an immense amount of shame, and I withdraw. There’s a reason I’ve avoided the Distinguished Scientists Lectures in the past: I haven’t been able to understand the ideas in the past, and I felt like I wouldn’t understand them now.

This isn’t to say that that’s entirely on them. I’ve grouped those lectures in with the negative experiences I’ve had. That’s on me. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt — and more importantly, Joe from “The Princess Diaries” — “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” and I’ve worked really hard to try to overcome that feeling of inferiority when asking clarifying questions and just do it.

This doesn’t excuse anyone from the attempt to make someone else feel inferior, though. Each time I’ve experienced someone showing me how smart they are by telling me about some crazy fact or tactic and acting surprised when I have questions, it’s clear that they feel good in the process of making me feel bad.

Trust me, I know it can feel good temporarily to one-up someone, especially when you’re feeling insecure about your own abilities. I have two little brothers, and when they’re being particularly annoying and I’m feeling particularly vicious, reminding them that I’ve developed a skill they haven’t feels like heaven. After a minute, though, it doesn’t. They feel bad. I feel bad. It doesn’t do anyone any good.

Every time I studied with my dad in high school, he had me actually teach the material to him. He emphasized over and over again that being able to pass your knowledge onto someone else is the true test of whether or not you understand it. That — not a show of superiority full of jargon — is what really puts you on a pedestal.

I’m encouraging you to remember what it was like for you when all the ideas you know now were completely foreign to you. Even if you were a child prodigy and everything you’re working toward has been second nature to you, know that people have strengths and weaknesses. You have to teach people on their terms. The terms, really, are just simplicity. If you want to show off your knowledge, give it to someone else.