It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time

In our managing in the high tech sector class today, we had a guest speaker. He is a Kenan-Flagler alum who works for a local company that sells open source software to customers nationwide. He had with him a list of things he planned to say to us but said he’d be willing to make his talk flexible if there was a particular area we wanted him to talk about.

 

At one point, there was a pause as he was transitioning from one topic to another. He asked “should I give you an overview of what open source is?” He waited for an answer and no one said anything. It was then that I decided to take the lead and break the silence that had enveloped the classroom.

 

 “Ahhh, today’s reading assignment already covered that.”

 

The speaker said “I guess that means you all know it then” and went on to another topic. But judging from the looks I got from some of my classmates in the ensuing 10 seconds, that was probably not the case.

 

I should remember for future references that in some situations, it’s better to keep my mouth shut than to risk saying anything that’s considered uncool or uncharacteristic of Kenan-Flagler. At the very least if my mouth is closed, it’s physically impossible to put my foot in it.