Scholastic honesty

I had part two of a paper due in Philosophies of Ed last week. Part of the assignment was, "At this stage in your journey, what questions should you ask about Child Development and learning and how could you go about answering them?" I procrastinated like crazy because in all honesty, I really don't know. I'm the type of person to recognize a need (my degree), gather as much information as possible (what I'm taught in class), head to the situation (a classroom) and test it out in action, and then ask questions with things that don't work. So I will absorb as much information on education as I can, go to the classroom and apply it, see where it doesn't work, and then gather more information based on the differences in environment and the individual children who don't fit with what I've learned.

I do the same thing with job interviews. Basic things like pay and job requirements are usually covered in the initial stuff, so I really don't ever have questions for them. I don't know enough about the job environment yet to know what else to ask.

So back to the paper; I decided that since I honestly couldn't answer the question, my overall grade was strong enough to just take a risk and say so. I wrote about how I have questions about my own education, but not really any about Child Development yet. It was four pages of lovely BS.

Here's the comment I received from my instructor on my paper:

"80/80! Why I enjoy reading your papers, Jess, is because you are not afraid to show you still have some learning to go. This paper truly says it well…that you still have work to go as far as developing a philosophy. In spite of not knowing exactly which area your career will be concentrated, you are taking the information from your classes and processing it into what you want to do in the future."

So basically, I just aced this assignment by extensively writing "I don't know".

I am so incredibly amused.