How To Be The Dumbest Person In The Room

Over the summer, I had the chance to study abroad in South Korea. While I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and wouldn’t have changed it for anything, it was incredibly humbling. 

Between June and August, I thought about Joan Didion’s 1961 Vogue essay “On Self Respect” at least once a week. In it, she explains that whether or not someone has self-respect is determined by their ability to abandon the habit of inflating their self-image and avoid the temptation to insistently punish themselves for past mistakes.

She famously writes, “However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.” 

Surrounded by other students learning Korean, many of them much more comfortable with the language than myself, I was sleeping in that self-made bed a little too often. 

Just an hour south of the more well-known and incredibly busy city known as Seoul, the little “countryside” city of Cheongju was everything the capital is not: small, narrow, green, and old. I found myself very happy there.

In the two months I spent roaming around Cheongju making friends and buying too many cafe drinks, I was always haunted by the thought that I did not belong there. My four semesters of Korean felt like nothing against the guy from Utah who had an impressively extensive grasp of Korean history or the girl who could converse with our Korean friends like she had known them for years.

Over time, I kicked myself for not trying harder in class, taking up my friends’ offers to practice with me, or forking over the money to a private tutor. Eventually, I was practically green with jealousy and convinced that the people around me could sense it. They couldn’t. It wasn’t until after I had returned to the States and stopped stumbling over Korean every day that I realized I had, in fact, improved.

In hindsight, I know that every time I forgot a word or made my language partner turn red with second-hand embarrassment because I had mispronounced a word and accidentally said something lewd, I was unknowingly collecting the experiences necessary to understand what Didion meant when she says self-respect is a matter of “private reconciliation.” Self-respect doesn’t liberate you from shame, but it does allow you to live with it. 

It was hard to acknowledge that despite all the work I could put into something, there would be times when it would not pay off. 

By the summer of 2024, I had studied Korean for six years. I went to office hours, chatted with strangers over language apps, signed up for and received a language partner, and practiced by myself in the mirror so many times that it began to feel questionably comfortable. I put myself out there. I seized the moment. I took the chance. And just like twenty-something-year-old Didion, who was convinced she would make it into Phi Beta Kappa, I was convinced I would “get around” Korea quite well. 

I was wrong. The moment I stepped off the plane and had to explain to customs how long I would be in the country and what for, broken-wheel suitcase in hand and tongue poised with undisciplined confidence, I faltered. Suddenly, the big, bold “FOREIGNERS” sign felt like it applied only to me. For a while after, I blamed it on the thirteen-hour plane ride, being tired, hungry, alone, and this, that, and the other thing. 

It took a conscious decision to behave incapably and be okay with it, which eventually transformed my wildly ambitious pride into subdued self-esteem. This shift was sufficient to encourage me to learn by accepting that I was not the best student in the program, not by a long shot. 

This brings me here, not as an expert but as a case study. “Dumbest person in the room” is not necessarily the title you stick on your resume, but it is somewhat of a scarlet letter you can wear across your chest. Once you own up to it, the big bad wolf is suddenly a puppy, the gray clouds hovering cartoonishly over your head begin to clear, and you are no longer a victim of inhibition. 

Given the difficulty expected of a task as deliberately disconcerting as accepting one’s own incompetence, I have chosen to format my three pieces of advice in the most sensitive yet intuitive format possible: a wikiHow-inspired list. 

Toss the Pride

There’s no use in thinking you’re the best in the room because that room has a door, and anyone, at any time, could walk in and snatch that Party City crown right off of your pretty head. It’s important to remember this when approaching things that are not new to you.

Hyping yourself up before starting something new can be beneficial to kickstarting your progress, but when it comes to the tried and true—the types of things you have already put a lot of time and effort into—it’s never worth losing to unrestrained inflation of the ego.

This isn’t to say being ambitious is a bad thing. Walk into the rooms you aren’t qualified to be in, but meet the consequences of the leap with grace, not excuses. 

Be a try-hard

I was nowhere near cool enough in high school to delude myself, or you, into believing that bullies, despite being removed from their most natural pasty-walled habitats, do not exist in “the real world.” They’re there, and some aren’t paid enough to think up new tricks, so they’ll resort to calling you out for doing too much, or not enough, or, god forbid, just right. This whole allusion is to say there is no use in thinking about what people think of your progress or lack thereof.

It can be embarrassing to ask the professor to reexplain a simple concept over your peers’ nodding, unaffected heads, but it is necessary. Some are motivated to ask stupid questions or speak up about an unclear task on the off chance that other people are similarly confused—to that, I say not all of us are so diplomatic, so think of yourself.

Consider the fact that to the people around you who aren’t stealthy online shopping or watching themselves through the reflection of their dead computer screens, you are insignificant—a background character. Everyone is taking it day by day, so let yourself be confused and corrected without feeling bad about it. There is no shame in trying to better yourself.

Be Wrong

And do it a lot. Say the wrong thing on purpose just to hear the right answer. Don’t apologize for it. Hear it, repeat it, and restart. It’s hard to be vulnerable around people, especially if you don’t know them very well, but people like being the know-it-all; they like being useful—so use them.

There is a community in learning, but sometimes you have to be one to initiate it. Some people might respond to you with less-than-desirable answers or strange looks, but that doesn’t concern you. Not everyone is a teacher, and that is okay. Discomfort is okay. The more you find yourself wishing you hadn’t asked, that’s when you know you are moving in the right direction.

We tend to quickly forget successful cases of vulnerability because the relief that washes over us after doing something risky drowns out the excitement. Conversely, instances of failure linger in our minds because they’re raw, uncut, and alone in anticipation. You’re forced to feel it. Try letting yourself sit with the discomfort without trying to remedy it or send it away. Maybe you seem weird. Maybe they hate you now. Maybe. Not likely, but maybe. The magic of it is that you will never know.

Additionally, take an extra beat to remember and internalize your wins by writing them down, texting them to a friend, or even physically patting yourself on the back. It sounds silly, but eventually, you will grow more comfortably acclimated to the limbo of uncertainty between success and failure.

Your mistakes are but a moment in time, so let them pass. 

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