Soup Questions

In the movie "Finding Forrester" (2000), an African-American high schooler from the Bronx, Jamal, befriends a reclusive author living in his same neighborhood and learns to harness his guarded talent as a writer. Through an unusual event (Jamal breaks in to Forrester's apartment after being dared to do so), the two meet and begin a series of near-daily meetings to review the high schooler's work and in doing so, they become friends.

During one such after school session, Jamal is eating tomato soup that Forrester has prepared for him and while they're talking (and Forrester is bird watching), the soup is settling so Forrester instructs Jamal to stir the soup "so that it doesn't foam up." Incredulous, Jamal looks at the soup, stirs, and then asks with bewilderment, "how come ours never gets anything on it?" No reply. Forrester is distracted by his sighting of a Connecticut Warbler so Jamal moves on to other, more personal questions.

"You ever get that kind of yelling (the yelling generated by people fornicating next door)?" "You ever go outside to do any of this (bird watching)?" Undeterred and ready to answer Jamal's initial question about the soup, Forrester replies, "You should've stayed with the soup question. The object of a question is to obtain information that matters to us and to no one else... You were wondering why your soup doesn't foam up? Well, probably because your mother was brought up in a house that never thought about wasting milk in soup. That question was a good one, in contrast to 'do I ever go outside' which fails to meet the basic criteria of obtaining information that matters to you!" Astonished and reeling from the explanation, Jamal quips, "alright, I guess I don't have any more soup questions."

My questions

This scene has stuck with me since the first time I saw it in 2000, when I was 14 years old. To this day, whenever I ask a question, an imaginary t-chart with the columns "soup question" and "non-soup question" appears in my head and depending on what I'm asking, a virtual checkmark will present itself in either column. It's a little amazing and a little creepy. I can literally feel when I'm not asking a question with the intent of obtaining information that matters to me. This works wonders when I'm asking a technical question or trying to learn something, and not so well when I'm asking my girlfriend why she insists on squeezing toothpaste from the middle of the tube instead of from the bottom. The truth is, it doesn't matter why she does that. It makes absolutely no difference. She does it and to ask her "why" would be frivolous because the information doesn't actually matter to me.

While going through Dev Bootcamp and doing everything in my power to absorb as much information/techniques/syntax as humanly possible, I'm going to try my best to stick to soup questions. Of course, I'll have my moments when I'll want to ask people about different things that don't directly impact my learning and that's totally ok and what I expect, I just need to focus on asking specific, meaningful questions when I'm trying to nail down a specific concept or get clarification on a topic. By doing that, not only am I helping myself (I'm obtaining information that matters to me), but I might actually be helping others who have a similar question but aren't entirely sure how to phrase it. Ideally, I want to help ask questions for everyone.