Hubris

 Occasionally I have a dream where I relive a particular lecture from my university days.  The professor was teaching ecology to a group of 250 students and he was telling us that he thought that Climate Change would be mitigated by extra cloud cover and less sunlight reflected back into space.  It IS what he said.  I thought at the time that it was simplistic.  It was also twenty-five years ago.  Occasionally, I have the dream where I speak up and tell him that I think that his views are overly simplistic.  The dream goes from there to him saying that he attempts to bully me by suggesting that, maybe I want to teach the course then?  

The first few times I had this dream, I said no and sit down.  The next few I get up and try to do what he says.  It is one of those naked dreams where your soul is naked to everyone and you are embarrassed.  I would wake up and think about what I would have started with..  I had the dream again and in the dream I negotiated with him saying that I would do that, but it would take five lectures to teach the basic stuff to get everyone up to speed.  It was a Biology class and the lecture needed to involve Physics and Earth Sciences.  

It was my belief and still is, that most university professors only see a portion of any problem and that they are too focused to see the big picture where the problem lies—when they say things it is from their limited perspective.  They know their own field and they know a bit of other subjects, and by bit, I mean very small bit, but their expertise gives them a belief that they are more expert than others.  Of course the worst person of all these is the person like me, who reads a lot and grasps hold of small pieces.  Do I know enough to make a educated guess, or more likely am I fooling myself into framing myself an expert?

Am I?