Thank you for this comment. I absolutely agree with you on your last point. If you realize that you are deliberate trying to make yourself sound smarter and obscure, then stop! But I think that it’s easier said than done for a lot of people.

My graduate advisor, Forman A. Williams, speaks and thinks in equations. To him they are like colors to normal people, I think. He just understands every little term in 20-page asymptotic derivations. So many times he would speak to others around him, although they too had that incredible understanding. In reality very few people do. But at the same time, as you pointed out, it was simply natural to him and he is one of the nicest, down-to-earth and kindest people I have ever known.

You are absolutely right! I can’t be more agreeing to what you stated about the Absent Mindend Professor Theory. I have to admit that I was also a victim of this theory some time ago (even though I am not a professor. Only a junior stress engineer who has very strong potential to work and present too) during my University years, and because I was one of the top-ranked students, many of my classmates would come and ask me to explain some subject, and I would just throw in a lot of technical jargon (because I felt like that was true engineering), and somehow -probably because of my presentation skills- they would understand what I wanted to say. Nevertheless, later on in my life, I noticed that you don’t need to be too complex to prove that you’re smart or that you understand something. Maybe it would’ve been better just to lay it out nice and easy for people to easily grasp it. It’s really a challenge towards elevating the Communication Skills and narrowing the gap between the Speaker and the Audience.

Another point I want to highlight is: One way for someone to know if he/she is of the BS-G type or not is to ask yourself this question: Am I doing this out of nature or am I deliberatly trying to show off my knowledge? Of course you can’t fool yourself, but I think Einstien, Newton, and all those other true geniuses did it out of nature. THAT is simply how they imagined things and how they were able to express it, not that they were trying -artificially- to show off their knowledge to the audience to impress them.

Do you agree?

Thanks

Great idea to submit the article to Benchmark! Maybe I can contact someone there to see if they might be interested.

Thank you for you kind comment. The engineering industry really needs to start evolving, and I think that communication is one of these areas where a LOT of improvement can be made.

Good catch! I changed Robert to ROBIN Williams. As a disclaimer, I mentioned that I do not watch a lot of movies

Thanks for pointing out the typo!