For the longest time, I assumed smart people didn't need to ask questions because smart people understood things the first time. I know that's terrible, because students especially are encouraged to ask questions. During my university years, however, the questions usually weren't along the lines of: "Would you help me? I don't understand!" They were what I considered smart questions: "What if x happened?" "How does x affect y?" "Why does x react this way?"
More and more, I feel like I need to ask questions because I just don't understand. I waited a long time before asking a question on the CollectiveAccess forum because I felt like I must be stupid. I must have been missing something incredibly obvious to need to ask this question. The alternative to not asking, however, was searching for a solution to my problem without actually understanding what was wrong. That's really hard to do and pretty unproductive. So I finally gave in and asked. The answer helped me understand what was wrong (Apache and PHP weren't installed correctly) which allowed me to find the correct solution.
After jumping the initial hubris hurdle, asking questions has become easier. But I still feel insecure if I don't understand the answer the first time around. You can see my latest struggle here. I'm afraid of sounding like an idiot. What if the people answering my questions are judging me? Is there something wrong with me that I don't understand this?
No, I'm not an idiot. I've made it this far, right?
So what if they're judging me? At least I'm getting an answer!
And no, there's nothing wrong with me. Sometimes learning a new trick is hard.
Here's to not being afraid to sound stupid in order to get an answer!
Dilbert cartoon from November 1989