Keep it Stupid, Stupid

In high school I was taught to be stupid. And stupidity was what made me succeed.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, a town populated by people Urban Dictionary artfully describes as “left-wingers, weird hippies, Buddhists, old people and hobos” (and don’t forget all the “granola moms” or “college kids who smoke pot in circles”). “Laid back” wasn’t the norm—it was the rule.

At my high school, a mere mention of your AP load or busy extracurricular schedule was a sure invitation for a heavy dose of ridicule. Try out those fancy new words you learned from thesaurusizing your English paper? Say goodbye to your social life.

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question” was the mantra we lived by—and as such, pretty much anything went. Stupidity was both accepted and encouraged.

But being “cool” was being apathetic, or at least appearing to be, and for a while, I couldn’t wait to get out.

When I arrived at Harvard for the first time last fall, I, like many other students who hail from a state outside the New England bubble, was greeted with quite the culture shock.

I was stunned to find that people didn’t want to appear like they were doing less than they were—if anything, they wanted to seem like they were doing more. Ask someone to recount the day and be prepared for a long string of activities followed by the exact count of the hours spent in Lamont. No longer did I feel it necessary to craft cover stories for the long nights I spent with my math textbook.

Yet while I’ve grown to accept, and even like, my neurotic, blunt, and fast-paced northern atmosphere—I still don’t understand how I end up trailing every group outing by at least a half a block—I’ve started to become increasingly nostalgic for my hometown.

What I miss most aren’t the sprawling mountains, beautiful sunsets, or even the pungent smell of marijuana that looms over the city, but rather the very thing that drove me away: its tolerance for stupidity.

What I failed to realize in high school was that from stupidity comes creativity, and from creativity comes growth. My classmates and I weren’t afraid of shouting out a wrong answer, asking what something meant, or sharing that random tangent that suddenly popped into our heads, no matter how irrelevant or incoherent. And for every thousand bad ideas came a fantastic one that would never have seen the light of day, were we even slightly wary of the ridiculous.

Upon coming to college, my proclivity for stupidity was quickly reversed. In every lecture, seminar, section, students spoke in perfectly crafted, articulate sentences, using words that went far beyond the scope of thesaurus.com. Gone were the days of dumbing down my language or shouting out the first stupid idea that popped into my head. Gone were the days I actually spoke in class.

At Harvard we pride ourselves in being tolerant, accepting of all. Yet often this circle of acceptance is much smaller than we like to imagine. When someone asks a question others perceive to be obvious, judgment is quick to ensue—stupid comments can be nearly impossible to live down; ask what state borders Montana and this lapse suddenly becomes your defining characteristic for the next four years.

In many aspects, rejecting stupidity is not such a bad thing—if you make a racist or sexist remark, you had better be prepared for the wrath of your peers. And in no way do I think this type of accountability should stop; some types of stupidity are, well, stupid. But there are certainly times when failing to express yourself in the most politically correct terms or forgetting the “right” way to say something is unfairly misconstrued.

Living by a code of say and say-nots, meticulously picking every word you utter, isn’t beneficial to anyone. An environment that inhibits your ability to fully express yourself is hardly conducive to self-growth and discovery. Sometimes when you struggle to articulate your thoughts, you end up uncovering an idea you never knew you had, and other times stupid ideas really aren’t that stupid at all.

To quote The Beatles, every now and then you must "turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream."

So leave some room in your life for the stupid. You may just trip over something worthwhile.

Gabriela E. Weldon ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Currier House.