When I was reading through David Foster Wallace's commencement speech one thing he said really stuck out.

"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties."

In my small high school everyone knows everyone and each academic "level" of classes consists of the same twenty or so kids. When you spend seven periods a day, five days a week with the same kids you get to know them all pretty well. In most of my classes there were two twins, Andrew and Steven. They're both really awesome but something about Steven always used to bother me and I could never figure out quite what it was. I now realize that it was his arrogance.

Steven is a fountain of knowledge almost useless information (though one can argue that all information has a purpose and is never actually useless and so on). He knows random fact after random fact and enjoys talking for the sole purpose of hearing his own voice. I always found this funny about him--I enjoyed hearing all the tidbits of information he would relay to us, but then he would make a statement that would end up pissing everyone off.

I realized that Steven's knowledge of facts made him think that he was always right. He would often make an outlandish comment about God or abortion during our religion class. He would boldly state ideas about our corrupt and damned government during our government and economics class. Even during English he would constantly criticize, saying this author sucks or that poet was an idiot.
Many of the things he said had no basis, they were just what he felt, and what he felt was, in his mind, absolutely right. He had no filter and spewed out his beliefs almost unconsciously.

I've always hated when people try to force their beliefs onto other people, especially when done in the wrong setting. You can't go into a meeting of cat lovers and try to make them love dogs instead. You can't use your religion as a basis to picket funerals of fallen soldiers and yell that God hates America. There's a time and a place for everything. I think that this ties into the "critical awareness" that Wallace is talking about. To me, that "critical awareness" not only refers to knowing and admitting about being wrong, but also knowing when to spew out your beliefs and how to get people to listen to and respect you. 

Steven hasn't received any "critical awareness" about himself yet and I hope after his four years at school he learns the lessons that Wallace conveyed in his commencement address.