The Thing I Learned From Being the Least Experienced Person in the Room

I was the youngest person on a project once. The least experienced. The one who did not know the acronyms or the history or the unwritten rules.

I spent the first few weeks trying to pretend I knew more than I did. Nodding along. Smiling at things I did not understand. Googling under the table.

Then I gave up. I started saying I do not know what that means. And something shifted. People started explaining. I started learning. The pretending was keeping me behind.

I think the willingness to not know is a skill. And it is one that gets harder as you get older because you are supposed to already know things by now.

Are you good at not knowing? Or do you pretend when you could be learning?