Smart Until Proven Stupid

One morning last week, I opened an email from my publisher, requesting I put a link to iBookstore on my website. There were two attachments. The one labeled Marketing Guide turned out to be instructions and restrictions for placing the oversized iBook logo on my website. The other attachment, Affiliate Program Overview, was a one paragraph sales pitch for something called Linkshare and a bunch of frequently asked questions that seemed to assume I already knew what Linkshare was.

I didn't, so I followed the link in the document and discovered I’d actually have to sign up before I found out what I’d signed up for. Now I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, and normally, when I encounter this sort of vague teaser and a request for membership, I blow it off as a scam. But it came from my publisher, so I worked my way through the signup process, until I hit the terms and conditions, screens and screens of legalese so dense it would take a team of IP lawyers to detangle it. Overwhelmed and confused, I closed the browser window without signing up.

Later that day, a well-groomed woman, just past a-certain-age and wearing a seasonally appropriate sweater featuring jingle bells, approached the internet stations at the library, with the timid, apologetic smile I’ve come to associate with the compu-phobic.

“Can I help you?” I asked, although I was almost certain I couldn’t. Most of my technology-challenged clients give up long before we’ve mastered Mousing 101.

“It’s my Excel homework. I just don’t get it.”

Excel homework! Well, I might be able to help her after all. “I’ll be happy to help if I can. Tell me about your homework.”

She plopped a large, embroidered canvas bag on my desk and extracted a folded piece of paper. The page had been crumpled, then smoothed out again before being folded. Clearly, this assignment had caused considerable frustration. Hoping her homework didn’t require the beta probability density function, or some equally obscure feature of Excel I’m clueless about, I smoothed out the paper to look it over while she chattered on nervously about how she’d never been good at math in school and this was her first Excel assignment and it was due tomorrow… I held up my hand to stop her talking so I could read the assignment, which turned out to be a standard beginners “budget” problem, listing amounts for rent, utilities and food over January and February. The instructions said to find the average cost per month for each item without using any functions.

“It seems straightforward,” I told her when I finish reading. “I can help you, but it would probably be better to discuss this with your instructor.”

She looked down at her lap, her expression halfway between mutinous and embarrassed. “I don’t want to talk to him.” Given her age and proportions, it seemed unlikely her instructor had hit on her. Still, I’d never met the man, and you never know what jingles someone’s bells even when you have met them.

I turned over the paper and handed her a pen. ““Okay, let’s take a look at this. What have you figured out so far?”

She drew a three column table, wrote the months across the top, the item names in the leftmost column and filled in the amounts. She sighed heavily. “I just can’t figure out where to put the equal sign.”

At this point, I realized we were embarking on a steeper learning curve than I’d originally anticipated. It was a slow day at the library, the book I’d picked up to read was boring, and although I probably couldn’t get her to the end of the assignment, I might be able to put her feet on the path. “Let’s break it down,” I said and began her initiation into the mysteries of Excel.

We got as far as referencing a cell by its coordinates before I had to break off for a few minutes to help someone change their profile picture on Facebook. When I came back to my desk, I was surprised to see she had not only figured out where to put the equal sign, she had finished the assignment. She’d used ‘x’ to indicate multiplication instead of an asterisk, and an old fashioned division sign “÷” instead of a forward slash, but she was obviously quite clear on the concept.

After showing her the correct symbols for multiplication and division, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked her why she didn’t want to talk to her instructor. Without uttering one even remotely derogatory word, she left me with the impression her class was being taught by one of those nasty teachers who make themselves feel smart by making their students feel stupid. He basically treated her as though she was stupid, and if she bought into it, her reluctance to be denigrated was going to make it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The world is a complex place. No one can be an expert at everything. That doesn’t make us stupid, and it doesn’t give anyone else the right to treat us as though we are because they know something we don’t. It just means we have to choose what’s important for us to understand and what isn’t worth the effort.

I went home after my shift and took another look at the Linkshare documents and contract. With its pompous assumption I’d love to affiliate myself with something it hadn’t bothered to explain and its obscure technical language, Linkshare failed the worth-the-effort test. I binned it.

Did I foolishly throw away the opportunity of a lifetime? Time will tell. Until then, I prefer to think of myself as smart until proven stupid.