One of the things that always amazes me is the inability of some people to say “I don’t know!”.
When I first started working in aerospace, I didn’t want to show how little I knew and wouldn’t admit my limits. Instead, I kept quiet and set about finding out what I didn’t know. Later in my career when I was more comfortable with my position, I admitted to not knowing things and set about learning about them. Management appreciated the later admissions and had more confidence in my reports when I got back to them.
Yep, when I 1st started out in this business I always hung around with the older seasoned techs and would pay close attention to what/how/why they did things, also watched the mistakes of others and learned a lot by just watching…
My 2 biggest mentors and friends (still close) were back home from the Vietnam War before I was even born… And yes I taught them some of the newer school stuff way back then as well…
One of the things that we were taught, prior to going to our Student Teaching assignments, was to say, “I don’t know, but I will find out”. As Dr Lott said, “NEVER attempt to fake it”.