By Kate Mack, Editor-in-Chief

I stood at the top of the stairs outside my bedroom, leaning on the railing as I looked down at my mom on the floor below. Covering my face with my hands so that she wouldn’t actually have to witness my eyes roll towards the back of my head as she knew they were, I braced myself for the infamous and inevitable argument about college.
“Your father and I would just like to see an application done, so that we know that you’re going somewhere next year,” she said, using overly-animated hand gestures to suffice for the restraint she forced on the tone of her voice.

Equally as frustrated but not quite as experienced in this argument since it was my first time through the process and her third, I immediately put myself on the defensive. “I just feel like you’re waiting for me to get rejected,” I accused her, “like you almost want me to fail.”
As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back. Not necessarily because I thought I had hurt my her feelings, but just because it was dumb. She looked at me with an utterly confused expression, and I conceded. “That was really stupid,” I apologized, laughing at myself, “I have no idea why I said that.”

We both stood there for a few seconds longer. We laughed a little, and then my mom turned and walked away. And that was the end. I couldn’t believe it. That was not the way our parent-child war over college admission was supposed to work. We were supposed to throw things, bring in a third party (maybe even a therapist if it was really exciting), or at least cry. Why was that nothing above embarrassing?

Then I realized that it was probably one of the only times that my mother and I had argued, and one of us had admitted to being wrong. In fact, it was probably one of the only times that I’ve ever been able to admit I was wrong, which may explain why the situation seemed so foreign. However, I found myself pleased with the outcome and interested in testing my tactic.
So I started admitting I was wrong more often. First, I did it when I really thought that there was a possibility I was incorrect. Then, I started doing it more often simply to see how people responded. Eventually it became so entertaining that I just did it for fun, sometimes forgetting about what the point of the argument was in the first place.

I found that it is amazing how difficult it is for people to give up on an argument. In fact, I recommend that other people try it out, just to experience the humorous awkwardness of the situation.

Do it right in the middle of a political debate, an area where people tend to get overheated.

Warm your opponent up by challenging his or her views on the war or the president, and do some research so that you can really create a foundation for the debate. Then right when things are about to get really intense and the person you’re talking to drops his or her most powerful point – the one that shows that you’re really pulling out all the stops – pause. Think. Look around. And say, “You know what, maybe you’re right. I just don’t know enough about the situation to really confidently say that I disagree.”
From what I found in my personal experience, I would bet that this type of response will come as a great surprise. How can your “opponent” argue with that? Instead of the greatly anticipated rebuttal, the conversation comes to an abrupt stop, and both people will probably just nod and sit a little bit longer, unsure what to do with the time that they were expecting the rest of the debacle to take.

However, in all the entertainment I found in my unscientific experiment, I also became a little disturbed. Are we really that surprised that we can agree with each other? And further, if we’re always arguing against each other, are we really arguing with purpose?
Greenhill places a lot of emphasis on respecting differing opinions. But perhaps the well-intentioned effort to make people comfortable has made us even more stubborn in our own opinions. What is the point of having a discussion if neither party involved has any intention of changing its mind? And if we are all so confident in our own beliefs, why do we feel the need to express them so passionately? As long as we know they’re right, do we really care if everyone else agrees?

It seems as though the recognition that we all think differently has given people the idea that there is no way to change someone’s mind. Rather than providing a different point of view to allow someone to formulate an opinion from it, we’re parading our own judgments as if they’re irremovable labels that everyone wears and no one replaces. If we’re at a school where we are allowed to express almost any view, why just let such ideas exist individually? Why not learn about them and consider them a possibility? I have a feeling we could accomplish a lot more if we would listen to each other with the intent to understand rather than the intent to win.