Lifelong Learners. Preferably in Private.

Education is an interesting profession in which to admit you do not know something.

We encourage questions, value revision, and remind students that understanding takes time. Then someone uses an unfamiliar term in a meeting, and we write it down to investigate later...discreetly.

We believe in lifelong learning. We would simply prefer to appear further along.

That tension becomes especially pronounced in a profession with so many formal ways to demonstrate how far we have come.

The Credential Crawler Knows the Territory

In education, there is always another qualification available. Another degree, certification, publication, or conference where we might become sufficiently informed to stop wondering whether we are sufficiently informed.

For the Credential Crawler, this is an excellent business model.

This is the monster that greets every accomplishment with another requirement.

Earn the degree, and it asks about experience.

Gain the experience, and it asks about publications.

Publish, and it would like to discuss the journal.

Its standards are exacting and conveniently mobile.

Continued learning can be rewarding and necessary. The difficulty comes when we ask it to settle a question it cannot answer: Am I finally enough?

A course can deepen our knowledge. It cannot guarantee that we will believe ourselves qualified to use it. And when that reassurance fails to arrive, we may keep preparing long after we are ready to contribute.

When Preparation Becomes Permission

Imposter feelings can be difficult to recognize in a profession that values preparation.

Reading one more article looks responsible.

Revising a presentation again looks conscientious.

Waiting to contribute until we have considered every possible objection can pass for scholarly restraint.

Sometimes, that is precisely what we are doing.

Other times, we are trying to remove every possibility of being wrong before allowing ourselves to participate.

The distinction is in what we expect preparation to accomplish.

I want to understand this better gives us a purpose.

I cannot let anyone discover what I don’t know gives us a task with no finish line.

Meanwhile, we tell our students that thoughtful participation matters more than a perfect answer. The advice is sound. Applying it closer to home can be awkward, especially when everyone around us appears to have arrived fully prepared.

Of course, we rarely see enough of other people’s learning to know how prepared they felt...

We hear the clear explanation without hearing the questions that preceded it.

We read the published article without reading its first draft.

We encounter someone’s expertise without seeing the work that developed it

Then we compare that finished work with the unresolved discussion in our own heads. The comparison rarely favors us.

Even among generous colleagues, we can interpret someone else’s knowledge as evidence against our own. Their expertise becomes a list of our omissions.

But a colleague can know something we do not without that difference becoming a performance review.

There is room to be capable, experienced, and occasionally the person who asks what the acronym means. Often, someone else is grateful we asked.

Recognizing that makes a different response possible. We can spend less time assessing what a gap in our knowledge says about us and more time deciding what to do about it.

A More Useful Standard

When I catch myself thinking, I should know this already, I try to make the concern more specific.

What do I need to learn?

Does it affect a decision I am making?

Who could help me understand it?

Those questions lead somewhere. A general indictment of my competence tends to take up the afternoon.

I can apply the same scrutiny to the next credential.

What would it help me do?

What knowledge or opportunity would it provide?

Would I still want it if I already felt secure in my work?

The answers may give me excellent reasons to proceed. They may also reveal that I am asking an enrollment form to resolve a belonging problem.

With that distinction in mind, I can make my learning less private. Ask the question. Acknowledge when a colleague changes my thinking. Share an idea while it is still open to revision.

After all, we ask students to trust that their present understanding is a starting point. Our experience should allow us to extend that trust to ourselves.

There will always be more to learn.

Even the Credential Crawler and I can agree on that. We are still working on letting me ask a question before doing the background reading.