"Kids' Brains Are Sponges. Adults' Brains Are Bricks."

This is what one of my students told me one day, and, after I caught my breath, I paused. Crap, I thought. He’s right. Adults’ brains are bricks. Man, those adults, thinking they know everything already, that they’re done, that they don’t need to be down here in the trenches with the rest of us trying to figure out what it means to be a person in this world. That they — wait, hold on a second.

And that’s when it hit me. Double crap. I’m an adult! Albeit, I’m not a very good one —irreverence and tactlessness driving way too many of my actions — but still…

This is a tough brick to swallow. I want desperately to be right all the time. I need it. I need people to think that I’m the smartest, most insightful and most correct person around. I regularly tell my students, “The worst that could happen is that you’re wrong, and if you are, the world will keep spinning.” But, how okay am I with being wrong? Not okay. Not okay at all.

I’m no scientist, but even I know about all the synapses and axions and dendrites in a child’s brain — clicking and clacking away by leaps and bounds, thinking and questioning and wondering. When was the last time I did these things? I thought about adding the word “dendrite” to that previous sentence. I questioned what a dendrite actually was. I wondered if someone who did know what a dendrite was would comment on this post and make me look like an idiot.

Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the same thing.