There are teachers you remember for what they taught you, and then there are teachers you remember for how they made you think and feel.
Recently, a professor handled a situation in a way that stayed with me. They could have followed the obvious course of action, applied the rule, and left it there. Instead, they took the time to understand what had happened and looked for another way to approach it. Not to excuse what happened, but to find a solution that actually helped.
It made me realize how much can be learned from the way someone responds to a situation. We spend years being taught to analyze texts, build arguments and develop opinions, but some of the most valuable lessons happen outside the actual lesson plan. Sometimes, they come from watching someone make a decision.
There is a particular kind of teacher—or person in a position of power—who understands that fairness doesn’t always mean treating every situation exactly the same. They know that circumstances matter. They listen before deciding, ask questions before assuming, and are willing to consider an alternative when the obvious answer doesn’t quite fit.
That, too, is critical thinking.
We often associate the term with questioning information or finding flaws in an argument. But having judgment also means being able to recognize complexity. It means understanding that a situation can look one way at first and completely different once you know the context. It means resisting the impulse to make the quickest decision simply because it is the easiest one.
The teachers who have stayed with me are the ones who have done this in different ways. They challenge an opinion rather than immediately correcting it. They ask where an idea came from. They make you defend what you believe instead of accepting the first answer that sounds convincing. More importantly, they show that changing your mind is not a failure of judgment. Sometimes, it is proof that you have used it.
This feels especially relevant now, when answers are constantly available before we have even had the chance to form a question. We can look something up instantly, receive a summary instead of reading the whole thing, or find hundreds of people who already agree with us. Information is everywhere, but knowing what to do with it still requires discernment.
The professor who inspired this piece probably didn’t think they were teaching me anything beyond the situation itself. But by choosing to pause, listen and consider another possibility, they showed me something I wouldn’t have learned from a textbook. They showed me that authority can come with empathy, that rules can coexist with judgment, and that helping someone does not always mean making things easier for them. Sometimes it means giving them the opportunity to move forward differently, and I don’t think this quality belongs only in a classroom.
Image credit: Irving Penn; “Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Cannes”, 1992