The Samford Crimson

I implied that he was wrong and I was right. He stressed to me his accuracy. To prove him wrong, I looked deeper into the matter…only to find, embarrassingly, that I was the inaccurate one. What’s even worse is that you don’t know what I’m talking about. In the words of the late Paul Newman, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

If you became frustrated after reading the previous paragraph, then I’ve succeeded in my goal of presenting a poorly communicated situation that annoyed you. Such annoyance always occurs due to one party inadequately relating information to another. It’s a major pet peeve of mine. Yet, the situation above consists of me playing the leading role in one of the factors behind this pet peeve: assumption.

Concerning this particular assumption, a dilemma came up for me involving another person. Acting on my own mindset, I confidently stated what I believed were the facts. The other person denied my facts and told me something else, which I thought to be false.

Ultimately, I looked to the source behind the disagreement, a forgotten month-old email, and burned with unnecessary humiliation because I discovered that the other person’s facts were the facts, and mine were part of an assumption. Seeing my wrong, I apologized. I know this for certain: whenever in doubt, don’t assume; go to the source. You should understand me clearly now. So, I progress.

Another factor behind my annoyance of poor communication is the refusal or unawareness of one party to at least establish a common level with another for both parties’ sake. For instance, one thing that I’ve noticed since I have attended Samford is that I admire professors who, despite strong expertise in their field, can design their courses on a level that their students can understand.

I appreciate these professors tremendously because I have had ones, unfortunately, who taught their classes in ways that only made sense to them. With the latter professor, no student truly benefits from the offered instruction. If students are paying to go here, or any school, it’s not too much to ask that such professors meet students at least half way.

The same disaster can also occur in those dreaded group projects. There always seems be that student who “leads” the group when he or she was never called to do so in the first place. Maybe that student just has a “get-things-done-so-we-can-get-a-decent-grade” attitude, but from my experience, I’ve always found myself lost when working with such people. Like the professor who teaches classes the way that only he or she understands, this type of student fails to consider establishing a common level from which all group members can work.

Of course, communicating doesn’t have to be this difficult. Imagine how much better some situations could be if more of us avoided assumptions and took the time to get on one another’s level of understanding.