Taking time to recognize assumptions

Evaluating assumptions and their impact on thinking is a crucial step in critical thinking.  No matter how much practice a person might have at this, it always amazes me how easy it can be to make an assumption and fail to recognize that it is not a fact, and then make an inaccurate inference.

Everyone has their own beliefs, and for many, they may seem like facts.  For example, a person might believe that anyone willing to live on government financial support is lazy and abusing the system.  Such an assumption looks fairly obvious to be a belief or opinion.  We use prior experience to build these ideas, and new information is shaped by our assumptions.

Last week, I thought it was a fact that graduate students must be matriculated and taking graduate courses in a university.  When I learned my students were graduate students taking courses in our intensive English program, I assumed they were also enrolled in other graduate courses and so there would be some differences in the way their schedules worked compared to the undergraduates in the IEP who have not yet matriculated.  I went ahead and inferred that the schedule for these graduate students would necessarily involve just 2 or maybe 3 meetings per week, maybe 2 hours per meeting.

It turns out that these graduate students are in fact enrolled for 20 hours per week of intensive English, for the most part.  It turns out their schedule is nearly identical to other IEP students.  All of this means I need to be on campus every day, in the afternoon.

Having inferred that these students were somehow a special case with a different schedule also stemmed from my assumption that my teaching request form for the fall would have been considered in scheduling.  I indicated that working past noon would be problematic, so I assumed that I would be given some course that takes place in the morning.

None of this needed to come as a surprise, had I thought more about the circumstances of graduate students taking courses in the IEP.  My prior experience with this comes from other institutions.  The fact that these courses are being offered through our intensive program should have prompted me to ask more questions in the beginning.  I also know that my tendency when it comes to schedules is to not spend much time thinking about them. 

It's easy to look for ways to excuse or rationalize poor thinking.  I was busy, I was distracted (my favorite), I have two kids to care for, I don't spend enough time thinking about details that I believe I already understand well.  It takes discipline to stop and rethink what you take for granted; it's always more exciting to consider bigger ideas or novel topics and just speed by the things you think you know so well.