At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:

You obviously want to be genuinely understood. (So do I). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"

What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?

A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy, a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part automotive robot (that partially disassembles and reassembles cars) and nine parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).

If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?

At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:

You obviously want to be genuinely understood. (So do I). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"

What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?

A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy, a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part automotive robot (that partially disassembles and reassembles cars) and nine parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).

If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?

(P.S. If you'd like a bookworm's place to start, you might try Please Understand Me!)

At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:

You obviously want to be genuinely understood. (So do I). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"

What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?

A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy, a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part surrogate automotive robot (that physically disassembles and reassembles cars) and ten parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).

If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?

At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:

You obviously want to be genuinely understood. (So do I). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"

What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?

A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy, a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part automotive robot (that partially disassembles and reassembles cars) and nine parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).

If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?