Questions

Questions are awesome.  They can be funny, thought-provoking, or just straight-up useful.  Others are obvious, like, "Why is this doofus writing an entry about questions?" or "Why am I reading a blog post about questions?"  I, personally, love questions, and I think they are the best way to learn about something.  

If you, as a student, learn something because you asked yourself, "I wonder if there's a pattern here."  You will remember what you learned much more effectively.  I love asking questions in Math because, 9 times out of 10, you can determine the answer in a manner that enhances your understanding of the topic to the furthest possible manner.  For example, I will always know exactly how slope theory applies to quadratic functions because I asked myself in Math class if there was a pattern in all of the graphs.  I found the pattern in terms that I can understand, and I doubt it would make sense to anyone else.

"What if" questions are excellent.  They can be deep, like "What if I got to design a religion?  What kind of rules would my followers adhere to?  What holidays are there?  What do we consider holy?"  or "What if I don't exist?"  Sometimes they can be nerve-wracking, like "What if this debate doesn't go smoothly?  What if I concede a big argument?"  Other times, though, they can be pesky, such as "What if this weren't a rhetorical question?"  Very rarely, however, are they conclusive, such as "What if I weren't finished with 'What if' questions?"

My downright favorite type of question is "Why?"  "Why are we here?"  "Why am I here?"  "Why does that behave the way it does?"  "Why" questions are the deepest, most philosophical questions.  They, more than any other question, reveal what you really don't know.  You ask them once you have all the facts, and you know all that is necessary on the topic, and you are ready to take it to the next level.  Instead of reciting some memorized fact, you are analyzing the facts.  

Who questions are interesting also, because they can be either really deep, or really shallow.  It could be "Who was the emperor of China when Jesus was born?"  or "Who am I?"  I try to avoid "who" questions.  The deep ones should be rephrased with the word "Why" and the shallow questions should be avoided because there is no need to ask a shallow question.  You don't learn anything from them.  

"Where" questions are no good, but the topic of where can be of vital importance.  Knowing exactly where you are can be essential to avoiding embarrassment, as there is a distinct difference between peeing in a pool, and peeing into a pool.  A "where" question wouldn't help here, because if you don't know already, it's not funny.  It's hard to come up with a good situation for a "where" question, unless you count, "Dude, where are we?  Where is the ground?  And why is it so windy?"  as good.

Another good series of questions might be "Where is the concluding paragraph?  Why is this guy so lazy?  Who is he to tell me what questions to ask?  Why did I read all of this?  What if I don't care about questions?"