Being wrong is never ideal if you want a fulfilling life. But, why is that? Why is it that error and mishaps and any form of mistake is frowned upon on campus? The main reason must be that conformity breeds unity. At least that’s what my crazy psychology professor once lectured. Today my physics professor asked a question about time, space and the space-time continuum. If one person is sitting in a fixed position and another person is sitting next to that person, is their measure of time synchronized? Or, if one person is in a fixed position while another person sits in a nearby position at a different time, is their measure of time synchronized?

The idea is that there are two possibilities in a coordinate system that shows time depending on space. In both circumstances, time is synchronized, but in the second case, it is especially so due to the fact that both people are sitting in different positions, but with respect to each other. There are 32 students in my class. 31 nodded their heads at the first option while I raised my hand and said both were true. I sat there, freaking out that everyone in my major just gets physics and I do not because I am neither prepared nor capable of doing physics. I lowered myself into the seat and sulked, feeling defeated. The professor looked at me, smiled and said “How come?”

How come? I just tried to think about the idea. I made up a story in my head and explained to him my thought. I didn’t look around the room to compare the head nods to my own answer. I dared to be wrong, and because of that I let myself work it out. Was it scary? You can bet every last dime you owe to your college campus that at that moment my heart was racing at the speed of light. The very last thing I wanted was to look around and see people staring at me weirdly or laughing. Both of those things happened. In fact, the kid sitting next to me felt the need to look at me like I was a rabbit on a stick of dynamite.

The idea was not hard to understand. The question was simply one none of us had anticipated before, given our exposure thus far to the fundamentals of physics. Classical physics says time is universal and invariant. We were taught the wrong thing until now. I took the risk to be wrong, even with the knowledge I had been given regarding the definition and the derivation of time.

What I did not expect was to be correct, or to receive any form of positive reinforcement from my professor, after being the only person to raise my hand. I just expected to be seen as the dumb one. It felt surprisingly good to just try to work out the problem. My main issue is dealing with the fact that it is not acceptable to be wrong. Every time a professor asks a question, it feels like the whole class gets nervous and judgemental. In any major, here are the know-it-alls, but these folks are prevalent especially in the sciences.

How come? Why are all physics, or science, or any STEM students, so dead-set on being correct all of the time? I miss being excited about learning, and pretending to be a scientists and being observant and inquisitive and just enjoying the idea that I did not always have to be correct. Did we all nonverbally come to a mutual consensus that after the third grade people who enjoyed science needed to be correct all the time about everything? Did I miss this while I was busy letting myself make mistakes?