Intimidated

Last night, as I sat in a Red Cross class, it occurred to me that I have no idea what it would be like to feel insecure in the classroom. There was lots of participation expected, based off the videos and workbooks we were using. And my attitude in this class, and in most classes I've ever taken is "I have the answer."  Academia has never intimidated me, and the particularly mundane ARC classes have left me feeling inappropriately superior. It's not that I think I know all there is to know about disaster work...I DEFINITELY don't.  However, I just feel that if I was asked to respond to a question, I'd be able to come up with an answer. 

But what about the people who aren't good in the classroom? I wondered about them last night. Does the interactivity of the ARC classes inhibit people from volunteering? What if you're not very good at reading or writing or synthesizing printed material into actionable steps? Does that necessarily make you a useless volunteer? Well, of course not. But are we making that clear? I'm not so sure.

I spend so much time teaching and learning, doing research and exploring terribly abstract concept, that I forget what's it's like to be new to the learning environment. (Furthermore, I forget what it's like to do something, dare I say...useful. Yes, sure, what I do is useful, in a really theoretically way.  I write research papers about violence, so that hopefully it'll change the way we do business in regard to prevention and intervention. But I hardly, if ever, see the tangibility of that. I suppose that's why I work with the ARC, so I can feel more connected to doing something immediately useful. And I guess that's why I'd really like to get more into disaster epidemiology (particularly as violence plays into disaster affected locales). 

Coming back to my initial thoughts, though, is it possible for me to ever truly know what it's like to feel intimidated by the classroom?  I'm terrible at chemistry. I sat through organic in college, hated it, and didn't do super well, but I never felt afraid of the learning process.  Why do I even want to understand what that's like? Well, I think it could improve the way ARC courses are taught, for instance. But also, I think I need some humbling when it comes to academics.

Ultimately, though, this make me wonder: what am I intimated by?