Not Knowing

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” ~Donald Rumsfeld

The other day a colleague and I were driving and I started talking about how I used to be a clown. She had no idea. She also did not know some other activity that I was fairly involved with at one point in my life. She was fairly surprised at the news of these two skills and remarked that she had not known I was so multi-talented.

We don’t know what we don’t know. I think that a lot in my job. The signers I work with have no idea of what they do not yet know. If they continue their training, many are mortified by what they have done in ignorance. Work has been rough lately due to this phenomenon of not knowing what we know. I was so frustrated by both staff and parents recently because they had no idea of how oppressive they were being to the Deaf student. I am tired of explaining it some days.

I know for myself as an interpreter I don’t always know that I have messed up but I often get an inkling. It could be linguistically or it could be culturally. Some untrained people think this interpreting thing is a breeze. They have no idea about a code of ethics or even how to handle themselves professionally.

I know that I don’t always know the full story either. I try not to be judgmental remembering I was there once but right now I just want it to be June 30th so that I do not have to deal with it for a bit.

Can you tell I need a break?

Peace,

Suzanne