Being Critical

What does the phrase being critical mean to you?

Being critical for me means to ask an extraordinary question over a problem. Is that it? I wasn't sure till I grew up.

When I was 9 years old, the first time I asked my mum about her marital status with my dad. How did they get married and do they have the marriage legal letter? And straight away my mum said, hooray my daughter starts having critical questions, it means she is brilliant.

I absolutely had no idea what did my mum mean by me being critical. Since then on I assumed that to be a brilliant person, you have to ask critical questions that are out of the box. Then I always thought when I asked some difficult questions to my friends and they couldn't answer it, it means I'm brilliant and I'm being a critical person. So, whenever my school friends had a presentation, I always tried to be a mean person that asks killer questions and well I became satisfied.

But then after I attended university, I found that many of the questions that my lecturers asked during a presentation were rather simple (well, some lecturers asked some killer questions to me too). I then started questioning, are they really brilliant (I mean I'm sure that they are, especially the ones with PhD titles obviously), but why did they ask such simple questions?

I then kept thinking till I met some friends that kinda answer my question bit by bit indirectly. I found out from them (especially from my bf) that asking questions or giving criticisms should be done constructively. You can't just ask killer questions and then be satisfied of it while the people you asked will feel pitiful (it's like asking a fish to jump over a tree which is impossible, then the fish will think that they are stupid all their lives).

So, how can I be constructive? Yup, start asking some simple questions that are meaningful yet solvable. From there, people will be more confident in answering more questions. Then we can build up some more complex questions to be asked. If the people can't answer it, yes, we help to find the answer or lead them to get the answer by asking other questions that lead to the answer (only if we too know the answer..sort of like just testing the presenter).

For the people who are being asked, they need to prepare. They need to understand how to be diplomatic. Yup, if you can't answer the question, don't feel embarrassed. Instead, answer it diplomatically by saying "I'm not sure about that at the moment, but I will find out about it" or "I'm not able to answer it now, I'll check about it" or something like that instead of being silent and starring blankly. But anyway I'm pretty sure people have their own way to tackle stuff. 

At the end of the day, we all have to say that the people we asked or the presenter of the day have done a good job of standing up there presenting whatever they know. Whatever the questions or answers were, we will learn something from that.

I.