What are those demon professors thinking when they ask a question in class? Are they just trying to show how clueless and lost you are? Are they just trying to see if you’re awake?

Actually, it’s neither. They’re trying to get you to learn.

Here’s the deal: answering questions is a highly effective way of learning even if you don’t get it right. It’s always nice if you get it right, you can breathe easy for the moment, retain your dwindling sense of awesomeness. But getting it wrong is ok too because it’s the thinking process that makes your brain grow and your understanding and knowledge deepen. Finding out you’re wrong and then making sense of where your thinking led you astray, now THAT’s learning!

Learning is about making and strengthening connections in your brain. When you are coming up with an answer to a question, it is not the correctness of the question, it is the coming up with, that is making you smarter.

So when your professor is up there lecturing and she tosses out a query, take a stab at forming a response rather than waiting for some other brave soul to speak up. It will get you more connected to the material, and help you connect what you know (or think you know) with what she’s teaching you.

Why is it important to speak up? Let me count the ways.

Forming words and articulating them takes your thought process into fertile territory that helps you make sense of what you’re learning. Thinking but not speaking doesn’t give you the full benefit of articulating and testing your thoughts.

You’re here to grow as a person and as a thinker. Growing means pushing yourself to do uncomfortable things, like speaking out, risking embarrassment, and even actually getting embarrassed and finding out you can live through it.

Since most students sit quietly (I’m being optimistic here that you’re listening and not surfing or texting) and think about what she’s lecturing on, all the good stuff is coming in, but it’s not being integrated into your brain too well. To learn, the new must be tied to the old. To make that connection, you need to think and articulate.

It’s not butt-kissing to answer a question

Nobody wants to look like the smarty-pants dweeb trying to suck up. The supposed norm is that answering or asking questions means you are That Kid. Since everyone around you is sweating silently and not responding to the question, even if it’s “any questions?,” you think they’re thinking the same thing, so you don’t offer a response. That’s pluralistic ignorance at its finest. But really, if you ask or answer a question, they’ll just be relieved the awkward silence is over.