Keith Humphreys says adults pay the price in humiliation if they are a beginner at learning new things.
Taking classes for beginners taught me how hard we make it to be a beginner.
I first learned this at a “beginner” horse-back riding class at a Bay Area community college, which I selected over the “intermediate” and “expert” levels. The first day’s icebreaker was to describe our experience with horses. “None,” I said blandly, puzzled at the question.
The next student said she had grown up on a ranch. The next after her had ridden competitively through high school but, you know, he felt out of practice. My anxiety rising, I wondered if the expert class was attended by John Velasquez…or did he go for intermediate because his last Kentucky Derby win was over 18 months ago?
I was the worst student in the class, an embarrassing beginner in a field of red shirt freshmen, punished for the sin of wanting to learn something new.