Asking for Help (with student comments in quotes)

Learning R can be a grueling, demanding task, full of mistakes and confusion even under the best of circumstances. We have resources for you here, and I'm ready to stare down an error message with you, but there is no protection or exception from just having to get down in the weeds of mistakes and confusion, and that process is humbling but immensely constructive.

"I've learned that there are so many things that I just don't understand and there is no harm in asking for help."

Can I just say here: I have had to argue and reach out to so many reluctant students who confide "Oh I'm just not that kind of person who likes to ask for help." Here's some news: NO ONE likes asking for help, but EVERYONE SHOULD.

"I never seem to know enough for this class. In saying that, however, I do not use it as an excuse rather as motivation."

Heck, I don't know enough for all the questions that come up in this class, and I am very upfront about not knowing everything. I am also very upfront about using my incomplete knowledge as motivation. I enjoy how this class can be a place where we are teaming up and finding things out together. The main expertise qualifying me to teach a class where I confess I don't know everything is that I have direct and prolonged experience of knowing how to proceed under uncertain conditions. And I think students get to learn that skill.

The world is such a big place, we all have such varied perspectives, and it's kind of amazing that we get to do this sort of work together--in this class or, like, ever.

"I think the sheer number of mistakes I make in R have forced me to be more transparent about my questions and weak spots in this class. In addition, it can be pretty staggering how the things we talk about here are only the tip of the iceberg of math and physics and psychology and so on that give us what we know about statistical analysis, which is very humbling but very cool."

"I learned that I need less of the self-deprecating sort of humility, to be honest. Being in a context where I don't know what I'm doing generally leads me to be overly self-deprecating to the detriment of accomplishing learning whatever it is that I don't know, but I'm not actually anywhere close to as incapable as those feelings might lead me to believe.

"I guess I'm learning to balance humility with self-assuredness."

"I think coding just seems to humble students. Knowing that everyone is all coming from a tiny speck of knowledge and starting out into a vast expanse of information, analyses, and research really brings everything into context. Also, having to ask for help and work together really seems to build humility in any upper level class."

"I have come to have a huge respect for statisticians and their ability to accurately know what tests and models they are running. From the data I have looked at and the data that the rest of the class has chosen to interpret, I never realized just how much there is to look at. Also knowing just how many ways there are in the interpretation of that data, gives you an idea of why some analyses can or cannot be trusted and how the spread of such knowledge can influence a vast number of people for better or for worse."

Some people can approach this class in varied ways. So I guess I'll just recommend coming to this class with a healthy self-respect and with a readiness to learn.

"I left the first day feeling like garbage because I felt that the class was going to be so much more difficult than I anticipated. My ego took a big hit because I wanted to place myself above what the class was going to teach and I was rightly cut down to size."

Whoever said the above, I don't know because the comments were all anonymous, but I can attest that everyone in this group made large strides of achievement/accomplishment over the semester's work. I don't mean this class to "cut [anyone] down to size," but I do want to help give students experiences that will allow abilities to grow in sustainable ways that are not vulnerable to feelings of inadequacy after one day's introductions.

"Humility should not be self-debasement or self-sabotage. It is possible to go too far in either direction with the amount of humility you demonstrate. I often go too far in the harmful self-debasement direction and render the useful, humble stance of an empty, eager knowledge cup useless by convincing myself that the cup has a leak."

Humility ain't the half of it, though. Students learn they have skills they never knew they had.

Back to What you Learn, back to Longitudinal & Time Series Analysis, or back to In the Classroom.