There never was a pop quiz.
All my childhood years, I was waiting for—dreading—the proverbial moment I’d been warned of, when I’d be seated at a school desk and slipped a piece of paper with those two fateful words.
The teacher would lock the door for some reason. Thundering clouds would roll in as I stared at the paper’s strange symbols and hieroglyphs. What’s worse, I knew every other student would have the answers. Like gnostic priests, they would have received these hidden mysteries in a dream the night before. I’d be the only one to fail the surprise assessment.
But it never came.
My entire conception of the “pop quiz” comes from advice I was given by adults.
At church, every Sunday lesson was driven home with this Swiss army knife of an illustration:
Prayer? Pray for help on a pop quiz.
Strength? God can strengthen you, even for an unexpected pop quiz.
Honesty? Don’t cheat, even when your teacher surprises you with an impossible quiz that will ruin your grade for the class.
At school, teachers themselves threatened them. You’d better be paying attention. This could appear on a quiz someday. The pop quiz was the teachers’ cudgel, but none ever administered one.
Maybe I’m alone. Maybe you lived through a litany of surprise test moments. Personally, I was warned about a pop quiz at every turn and arrived at adulthood relatively unscathed.
What’s the point I’m getting at?
It starts here: The adults in my life had great advice—but poor application. They’d done the hard work of living. In transferring their wisdom to me, though, a certain level of awareness was missing.
They had an abundance of lessons but only one application.
I wonder how many perfectly valuable lessons I didn’t apply because I anticipated them in different packing. I was prepared for situations I wouldn’t face.
Were all those lessons to waste?
All my childhood days, the pop quiz never came.
But there’s a test we take daily, and it’s equally unannounced. We’re assessed—whether recognized or not—on our aptitude to listen as speakers.
These days, I’m known to teach some English. I’m learning challenges unique to a classroom setting. Before then, all of my jobs have dealt with explaining of some sort—standing in front of others (or sitting behind a keyboard) and trying to get big ideas across.
You do the same thing.
Service calls, sales calls, working the field, working a desk. We all communicate to others in one way or another.
For all communicators, there’s a lesson in the pop quiz parable: don’t quit too soon.
You have a message to convey. Great. But your task may be half unfinished if it’s lacking application, that part connecting your content/material/whatever to your listener’s real life.
And application may be the hardest part if, like me, you don’t really like to listen.
I don’t want to be the detached teacher. I want to my students to learn, and that means tuning in to the needs of the student in the moment.
The problem is, it’s not easy.
We often get communication backwards. In the abstract, we may feel it’s selfish—to want to be heard or put effort into getting our point across.
Applied, it’s anything but.
Clear communication is an exercise in listening. It’s hard work. The truth is, consideration of others’ lives is required to ever bring a point home (to their home, not yours). Otherwise, you’re wasting your breath.
Clear communication is an exercise in listening.
The question we can test ourselves with is this: Am I offering perspective for my life or theirs?
We all have a penchant for repeating the same stories. Save consideration for our hearers, we couch our ideas in examples overused and underdeveloped.
It’s the pop quiz we take daily.
And it’s the reason I write As It Were.
I’m aware of the irony; as I write about clarity, my writing is not always the easiest to access. If I thought what you needed were more social media soundbites that make less sense the longer you stare, I suppose I would write them. For the right people, though, sometimes-obscure essays will do the trick.
Effective communication is not necessarily moral. But it is valuable.
I’m grateful for individuals near and far who, at key moments of my life, have conveyed to me ideas worth remembering. I bet you have similar examples.
We’re all going to speak. That being the case, we might as well not let our breath go to waste.
True communication is a selfless act.
Poor listeners need not apply.