ABSTRACT
My students were entirely too quiet. I stood at the front of the room, material for the day up on the projector, looking at a room full of humans working really hard at avoiding eye contact. It was still early in the semester, but we’d already begun establishing rapport. Opening the course with conversations about TED Talks helped loosen things up, establish that I was more interested in productive dialogue than in proving that my thoughts were the ones my students should think. So on this particular day, I was perplexed. Why are they so quiet? I couldn’t figure it out. As my confusion grew, I decided to just, well, ask. Somewhere in the awkward exchange that followed, I caught a glimpse of someone—Me. I saw my fear. My fear of being wrong, of making a mistake. And it dawned on me that I was overcompensating. I was so concerned with looking like I had it all together that I was projecting an image. An over-inflated mirage of being filled with endless answers and no unresolved questions. My insecurity-fueled pretense was eating the possibility of connection alive.
