I’ll admit it: At times, I can be a bit of a fangirl—can’t we all? So, you can imagine my excitement when I heard Anderson Cooper was coming to speak on campus. And judging by the event turnout, I wasn’t alone.

I arrived at Knight Hall with friends at 10 a.m. sharp in order to wait in line for Cooper (Yes, we were fully aware when we left that tickets would not be dispersed until 2 p.m.; we’re just dedicated, and we were also first in line, I am proud to say; so, waking up early on a Saturday was beneficial, for once). The whole ordeal was quite the experience: The line wrapped all the way around the lower level of Knight Hall, slowly creeping up the stairs as the hours went by. I remember seeing the faint glimpse of his snow-white hair as he casually strolled down the sidewalk before entering the building. As expected, the crowd broke out into a muffled but wonderous chaos, as we knew “The Man of the Hour” had arrived, and we were mere moments away from hearing that all-too-familiar TV voice in person.

Eventually, the line digressed away from the stairs and found itself compounded into tight rows in Emerson Auditorium, my friends and I in prime seats, seated in the second row, front and center. After a few welcoming remarks from Chancellor Mark Wrighton and Executive Member of the Alumni Board of Governors Steven Siegel, Anderson Cooper graced the stage. The crowd’s reaction was just below the equivalence of seeing a musician take the mic. It was wonderous.

Despite my obvious (and quite truthfully, irrational) adoration of Anderson Cooper, the intended purpose of this article is not to speak on my perspective as a fan but to share my perspective as a person in academia. I took something with me when I left that auditorium, something that is somewhat of a “key to success.”

As a journalist, Cooper has a difficult role to play. How do we set aside our own ideals when faced with an issue or an interview? One student asked such a question, to which Cooper responded with “everyone has inherent bias, some that we’re aware of, and some that we’re not.” There is an immense validity to this statement, one that I think is often poorly addressed—if addressed at all. It goes without saying that everyone has some form of bias; it’s simply human nature. The way that we are raised, the environments that we are in, the friends we make—they all ultimately shape who we are as people. Our experiences develop our personalities, forming us into a composition of ideas, and as a result of our varied life experiences, bias is inevitable. But what people fail to realize is that there may be biases of which others aren’t necessarily aware. After hearing Cooper’s statement, I realized that I, and many others, are victims of that unrecognized bias.

When assessing this truth, the immediate danger is clear; when we place ourselves into situations, there is a piece of us which already has preconceived ideas about the situation we are in, fogging the clarity of our judgement. And the worst part? We aren’t even aware of it. So, how do you go about acknowledging the biases that you don’t even know you have?

According to Cooper, the answer is to enter a situation with what he referred to as “soft eyes.” When asked about foreign conflicts and their portrayal on television, Cooper spoke about the importance of knowing the facts and going into a situation with just the facts—in essence, having “soft eyes.”

This, undoubtedly, is a skill of grave importance for a journalist, but this importance applies to more than just the realm of news media. In everyday life, people operate solely on feeling—their own bias. But what of fact? It’s almost as if genuine information is a supplement to our emotions, only used if it bolsters our own opinions. I myself am a culprit of this. It’s easy to disregard what’s real when the ideas and feelings we have appear to be much stronger “evidence” than fact itself. Plus, no one likes to be challenged, and that’s exactly what happens when facts overpower emotion. It’s uncomfortable to be complacent with the notion that what you think and what you feel are inaccurate.

But at the end of the day, facts are facts. They don’t lie, as we sometimes do to ourselves. Entering situations with Cooper’s “soft eyes,” inevitably makes us more susceptible to understanding. When we place aside the judgments of only our own mentalities, we allow ourselves to be filled with more knowledge than we may have had before, and this is the “key to success.” Enabling ourselves to assess facts alone gives us the ability to acquire an unfathomably large realm of knowledge, something that ultimately is priceless to personal progression.