Being wrong
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Image by Creative Teaching Press
One thing that used to strike me the most as a medical student in an Asian environment was the fear of being wrong. A
very common scenario that always seem to occur is a lecturer asked the class/
teaching group a question and all the students either look on the floor, avoid eye contact or even mutter the answer under their breath. Time passes in silence until the lecturer cannot
stand it and will either give the answer or asks you to go home to find
out. The time spent in silence could have been used to answer or ask a
few more questions and more knowledge would have been gained.
For those who have been in the same class as me, will probably know that I always try to answer after 5 seconds of silence eventhough I do not know the answer. This is because I feel really bad for the lecturers who try to create a better learning environment. Well, I would want my students to answer me if I was the lecturer.
1) Why it's ok to be wrong?
Better be wrong now as a student than when you are a doctor
Answering wrongly in teaching session does not cause much disadvantages unless your school has a system for penalising wrong answerers (not sure whether this word exists) then you shouldn't do it. Benefits of answering questions during teaching sessions:- Increases learning motivation if you managed to get the right answer.
- Give your lecturers an opportunity to assess you and your peers' current understanding. Asking around your peers that did not understand the lesson is like the blind leading the blind and you will actually waste more time.
- Makes the teaching session more engaging as it creates a two-way learning. It often helps for those who have minds that often drift off after 15 minutes into a monotonous teaching.
- Always keep in mind that you would want to be wrong now as you have your lecturers or clinical staffs to correct you and no life will be harm in the process of it. When you officially work as a doctor, keeping mistakes in minimal is the best as our patient's faith and trust are in our hands.
- Best of all, you get around 5 minutes of fame with all the attention on you while you're answering.
Image by QuoteFancy
At the end of the day, we are all humans. Therefore, it's ok to be wrong as long as we learn from it.
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