Admit When You’re Wrong Already

Admit when you're wrongThroughout most of my career I’ve held a second job as an adjunct instructor at a local University.  After my salary at my main job got to a certain point, I often wondered why I was doing this.  I didn’t need the money, I was doing fine without it.

But I did need the teaching outlet.  I wrote about how I overcame a horrible stutter though my childhood and young adulthood by taking a teaching position at my main job.  I did that job for about 4 years, but eventually moved to another position.

I soon found, however, that I missed teaching.  A lot.  After all, it helped me conquer a major challenge in my life and I knew I couldn’t just abandon it that quick.

So I eventually landed an adjunct position at a large local university that didn’t require too much of a time commitment.  To be honest, it’s a really sweet gig.  I only teach one or two classes a year and once I wrote the original curriculum, the teaching part is easy.

 

The Sweet Spot

For the most part, my classes go very smoothly and the students are great.  I usually don’t have too many undergrads in my classes since I teach in what the University calls the “Professional Education” part of their school. 

My class is part of a technical certificate program, so my students are often mid or even late career professionals looking to augment their skills or even change careers.

With that comes maturity.  When the average student is in their 30’s or 40’s, they tend to not be hung over and sleep through class.  It makes the job even easier. 

Great hours, a subject I love, very good pay, and engaged students.   The perfect second job.  

 

Credibility

One of the things about teaching, and it’s especially true when teaching technical curriculum to mid-career professionals, is that you have to establish and keep your credibility.

Admit When You’re WrongMany would say that credibility is the #1 thing that you must have as a teacher to be effective, and I would tend to agree. 

The last thing you need is someone to do a quick Google search after you just made an important declarative or factual statement and say “Uh, this says you’re wrong….”

You can lose credibility instantly.  Bottom line, you have to have mastery of your subject and material, and when you aren’t sure of the answer to a question, you say exactly that. 

You can’t make stuff up, guess, or assume things.  Once you’re found to be wrong, poof – again, there goes your credibility and attention of the class right along with it.

One of the subjects I teach is the Global Positioning System, or GPS as you probably know it.  I do a lesson on the whole system, from soup to nuts.

When you ask your phone to navigate you to the local park, it magically gets you there using GPS.

 

Setting The Stage

Without boring you to tears and losing you as a reader for good, I’ll try to get through this part quickly.  But I need to lay some nerd stuff out to make the point.  Please don’t cut your wrist with a rusty razor.

The GPS constellation went fully operational in 1995, and for the fist 5 years the government purposely degraded the signal for national security reasons. 

This policy was called “Selective Availability”, and Bill Clinton signed an order ending the practice in May 2000. 

In short, with Selective Availability the accuracy of your GPS was only about 300 feet, but when it’s turned off you have the accuracy you’re used to now, which can be as good as 10-15 feet. 

Your phone wouldn’t be able to navigate you to the store easily with an accuracy of 300 feet. 

Phew, done the nerd stuff. 

So after I stated to the class that President Clinton signed an order to end Selective Availability in May 2000, one of my students called out – didn’t even raise his hand – and said “that wasn’t Selective Availability”. 

I stopped, and calmly reaffirmed to him that it was.  He again insisted that it wasn’t.  I asked him if he knew the policy by another name, and he just said “no, but it’s not Selective Availability”.

The rest of the class started getting kind of tense as they saw that the student and I were in clear disagreement.  And remember that teaching to these established professionals can be difficult, they know stuff!  This guy if I remember worked at Raytheon or one of the big defense contractors.  In most classes my students teach me things, but always something new and tangentially related to the material. 

Being challenged about a clear fact in my curriculum, that’s a whole different ballgame. 

So I told him “we’ll chat at the break”, and continued with the lecture.  I wasn’t going to interrupt the flow of the presentation by Googling it and showing him, but I could see some other students doing just that. 

After lecture as the class dispersed I showed him the GPS website itself, the FAA’s website, and after he was still defiant I pulled up President Clinton’s own words right off the White House archive site. 

At that point, he just robotically kept saying, “yeah, I see that, but that’s not what Selective Availability is”.  By now it was becoming Twilight Zone-ish. 

I didn’t know this guy, I thought for a second that maybe something was wrong with him.  I left it by saying something like “Look, if you’re going to challenge me in front of my class at least have your facts straight.  I’m not going to lose my credibility with the rest of the students over false statements from you.” 

We left it at that, and when the rest of the students made their way back in you could tell they knew that my facts were correct. 

What was his issue? 

Well, I could see it in his eyes, I challenged him back and when blatantly caught being wrong he just refused to back down.  He had no defense, no facts, he was just backed in a “corner of stubbornness” and refused to admit he was wrong. 

This behavior will assuredly not get you far in life.

 

I Used To Be A Know It All

Admit When You’re WrongThere was a time in my 20’s I’m ashamed to admit when I was a know it all.  I didn’t behave as bizarrely as my student when faced with clear facts that showed I was wrong, but I definitely leaned toward the argumentative side of things. 

Maybe it was some of my adventures in stock picking that started to set me straight, or perhaps it was my Mother who still at 89 has a much sharper memory than I do.  But thankfully over time I’ve distanced myself from that 20-something punk. 

I don’t think I would have achieved financial in dependence as early as I did had I not changed.  I would probably have kept picking stocks, thinking I knew more than others or was just smarter. 

At my job I would have probably kept barreling forward at 150mph, knowing that my ideas were the best.  Instead I “learned to learn” from others.  I learned that diversity of opinion is one of the best catalysts to new ideas.

 

It’s Okay To Be Wrong

The Happy Philosopher, as he tends to do, did a great post on being wrong recently.  Ironically, he’s right.

The hard part is getting to the moment when you realize you’re wrong and more importantly, take action to change course. 

Maybe you were wrong in thinking you’d like to be a software engineer.  You know it deep inside, but keep plodding on.  If so, admit it to yourself and move on.  You got it wrong. 

Perhaps you retired early and thought it was going to make you happier and solve all of your problems.  Is that working out?  If not, you might need a job 🙂

Don’t get stuck in the “stubborn corner” like I did with my Cisco stock. 

As someone who thought he was always right, I can attest that admitting when you’re wrong builds humility, and puts a healthy check on hubris. 

I’m FAR from perfect in this practice and realize it’s likely something I’ll be refining for the rest of my life.  But I enjoy practicing.

But I know I was right about Selective Availability. 

Your turn – were you ever a know it all like I was?  Do you have an easy time admitting when you’re wrong?

 

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Dave @ Accidental FIRE

I reached financial independence and semi-retired in my mid-40's through hard work, smart living, and investing. This blog chronicles my journey and explores many aspects of personal finance including the psychological and behavioral factors that drive our habits.

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29 Responses

  1. When I started college, I thought I knew everything. Luckily that got beaten out of me through wrestling practice and real life. It’s good though. It gives us more to write about. 😀

  2. Tonya says:

    No, I probably fall too far on the other side of that coin and don’t have ENOUGH confidence in what I say. An equally as bad of a trait methinks. OK Warning, I’m about to get political here: I think Trump is a perfect example of someone who can’t admit they were wrong. It comes from a HUUUGE overly inflated ego and perhaps to some degree, narcissistic disorder. Well, to be honest ALL politics feels this way to a huge degree. I think it takes away from our humanity quite frankly, depending on the severity. It’s all wrapped up in our pride, which gets in the way with us being able to connect to other human beings. OOOOH, going deep here! lol!

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      I personally think most politicians are narcissists, especially compared to normal folks. Some obviously way more than others

  3. around year 2000 i figured out a problem my employer was having. we refined silver from spent catalyst for a huge conglomerate. the huge conglomerate team came to our little facility armed with a phD statistician who i really liked. she spent an hour or more pasting sticky notes on the walls and “brainstorming” with groups from both sides. it was all b.s. really but i let her talk and lead. i asked her a question and she said (we had just met that day) “i’m about to tell you that.” and my reply was “no, donna, i’m about to tell you.” when i couldn’t sit there any longer. i gave her my data, told her what i had done differently in calibration and it still took another month of convincing. i ended up spending a week in west virginia as part of proving it all (a real adventure). turns out there was something fundamentally wrong in the initial calibration set up and it was that simple. the proof was in “how does the result for this sample turn out that it’s composed of 100.6% silver?” we still had to go down all the wrong rabbit holes when the right one was staring us in the face.

    all that being said, i don’t mind admitting i’m wrong or that i just don’t know. then on to the next.

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      wow, if something is 100.6% silver then it must be ‘negative’ something else 🙂 i like your attitude – on to the next

  4. Cooper @ Two Corporate Millennials says:

    Isn’t this the prototypical Social Media conversations? Some points out a fact or a well grounded opinion and then comes the hoard of folks telling you that you are wrong, but offer no fact of proof?

    I wonder if the anonymous social media posting that happens today is manifesting itself in other ways. People just flat out calling you out and doing it knowing they don’t have proof. So strange!

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      VERY interesting take on this Coop. Perhaps social media does have an influence on this behavior, it’s definitely permeating every other aspect of our lives.

  5. xrayvsn says:

    That is bizarre behavior by that confrontational student especially after being shown evidence to the contrary. I have always been pretty humble about my intelligence. I find people challenging my viewpoints often makes me understand things from a different perspective and aids in my overall knowledge.

  6. Doc G says:

    I have found that the more stubborn I argue with a colleague about a patient case, the more likely I am wrong. It’s hard to back off, reevaluate, and even accept another opinion when you have “fought yourself into a corner”. It Is, however, a sign of great maturity.

  7. Humility and not “knowing” everything is such an important daily goal we should strive for as often I have had difficulties with not so much being right but more defending myself that I’m not wrong. Letting go and allowing people to have their own opinions has been important for me in mindfulness of their perspective but having clear points and knowledge to defend mine is what i have found to be most important.
    #2 – awesome link to Happy Philosopher, I enjoyed that post
    #3 – on gps stuff, I don’t use my Garmin at all anymore for almost two years now. I have been using ViewRanger exclusively on my iPhone 7.

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      I’ve heard about ViewRanger but haven’t tried it. Should give it a go. Another good phone GPS app is GPS Essentials.

      • I’m friends with a few ACMG guides and they are promoting CalTopo usage and then loading into Gaia Maps. Check out Vern at Explor8ion.com as he has well over 500 summits in the Canadian Rockies and is exclusive with ViewRanger now too, he also wrote a small article on one of the earlier version

  8. What a coincidence that I also worked on projects with GPS in the 90’s. Selective availability! Funny that our being RIGHT, is like our own brain having selective availability, huh?

    Once I was tutoring Chemistry 1A, while taking Chem 1B. Some expert, right? The professor didn’t want to do a review prior to the Final and he set me up without telling me to do my tutor session as a review. I normally had 4 or 5 students wander in and we would work problems together. Instead, I arrive in a lecture hall of 200+ people. Asking me to work just the tough problems nobody could crack. It was brutal. As I stumbled to try at the board, people would yell out that I was wrong. Many were getting up and leaving as I tried to work things out. I have to laugh at myself. Why didn’t I just announce that I was as clueless as they were on these hard problems and their precious study time would probably be better spent without my “help”!

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      Cool – we’re GPS friends!

      Wow, that must’ve been a nerve-wracking experience. It probably would have been better to just bow out before it started but I like your guts!

  9. Joe says:

    Wow, that’s a strange behavior from the student.
    I think we all went through that know it all phase at some point. It was never that bad for me, though. I always accepted that I could be wrong.
    As for GPS, I think it made life way too easy now. People can’t read maps anymore. What happens when the phone is out of range? You’re screwed. 🙂

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      Studies do show that reliance on GPS is indeed weakening people’s sense of direction. I try to use it sparingly

  10. RoperatCandC says:

    Great post! I wrote a few weeks ago about how my early-career inability to say “I screwed up” ended up being a major source of anxiety for me. You sleep so much better at night when you realized you don’t have to be perfect.

  11. Wow that’s an insane story! I’ve never seen it that bad before, but I have known friends that wouldn’t let certain topics rest even when everyone knew that they were wrong (may have been me a couple times too!)

  12. Learning to admit when you’re wrong is certainly one of the hardest things to accept, but it’s really bizarre to me when someone will still try and argue in the face of blatant facts.

  13. Gasem says:

    Sometimes it hurts to be wrong. I took a grad level physical chemistry course in college. It was the hardest course I ever took. When I finished the final I went to a bar and had a beer and realized I knew the equations which predicted the bubble formation on the bottom of the glass and the precise angle to control the head foam. I realized I understood the basis of the universe. My prof was a smart guy known for giving tests where the average grade was 20. One test I took had 4 questions. I worked on the first 3 and realized I had 2 minutes for the last Q. I zoomed through the calculation. The correct answer was a temperature in degree K In my haste I wrote degree C but everything else was correct. He removed 24 of 25 points and I got a 76. To my query his answer was “I told you to be precise on the first day.” He was right, he did tell me that, my answer lacked precision, but in the end I still understood the universe.

    I taught electronics to a professional crowd at a local U before I went into medicine. It was truly enjoyable.

    • Accidental FIRE says:

      Ha, sounds like he valued attention to detail. I wouldn’t have done well in that class, I can be absentminded. And as I get older it only seems to get worse. But for whatever reason when I’m teaching I’m on point, perhaps because I care about the class and really focus hard.

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