"You don't know what you don't know," Kelly wrote in her e-mail. She wanted us to think about those words. I knew what they meant. We can spend our lives learning what we don't know.

As I stood in my dorm room at Eckerd reading those words, my mind began to wander. "Holy s---," I thought, "there's so much I don't know."

There was a time when I thought I had the answers. OK, at least most of them. And what I didn't know, I would analyze and, based on all of my past experiences, I would come up with an answer.

That was in my former job as a child advocate. It was my responsibility to make sure that children who were hurt or forgotten by their parents weren't hurt or forgotten by the state of Florida, too.

It was hard adjusting when I started that job. Many nights I would lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and process my day. My mind raced with the choices I had made, conclusions I had reached and problems I had solved that day. I prayed that I had done the right thing. The Monster of Second Guesses was a frequent, nagging guest in my closet.

Part of my job was to attend routine meetings. People from social services, parents, lawyers and someone from my office would gather to discuss shifts in a child's case, such as moving a child from one foster home to another, putting a child into a residential treatment center, or telling parents that their rights to their child were going to be severed and their child placed for adoption.

I remember attending my first meeting and looking around the table at all the faces, searching for a clue that they felt as insecure and uncomfortable as I did. I remember thinking that all these people went to school for this and knew what they were doing. I started out as the secretary and worked my way up. I had no social work degree, only experience. How could I ever be as good, as knowledgeable as they were? Soon it came time for everyone to give an opinion. The meeting facilitator went around the table asking each person. "Oh, God," I thought. "What am I going to say?" My brain scrambled into action and I was able to utter an intelligent-sounding response. Crisis averted.

Having no children of my own, and no formal training in social work, I had to learn about child development and behavior, and when that development was delayed or behavior inappropriate as a result of maltreatment.

But learning and experience helped me to dispel the monster. The days at my old job passed quickly; before I knew it I was marking my 18th year there. The life-altering decisions I was making became easier. But the frustration with the system became unbearable. I left for my new career in journalism.

Little did I know that I'd be faced with the same doubts and sleepless moments worrying if my work at the paper was right or good enough for the readers.

Just like that, the monster returned for a sequel.

To combat the monster this time, I wield a dictionary, a thesaurus and an AP Stylebook. Strunk and White have been helpful, as has my old grammar book from ENC 1101. Good thing I keep old textbooks - but that's another story for another day. I scrutinize each word when I'm on the copy desk - looking words up in the dictionary to make sure they convey exactly what I'm trying to say. "Mean what you say and say what you mean," a supervisor of mine was fond of saying, and he's right. We should strive to mean what we say and say what we mean.

I wonder about the confounded rules I was taught in J-school and struggle to know when to break them. Just when I think I have it figured out, I don't.

I know I have a long way to go before I can make decisions with little nervousness. I know one big step toward making that happen is to learn what I can each day and to practice what I've learned. Before I know it, I'll be able to draw on my past experiences to make the Monster of Second Guesses leave my closet, and again know of lots of things that I don't know.

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