At twelve, “I didn’t know” works. At twenty, people start expecting you to find out.

Somewhere in your late teens the rules change quietly and nobody announces it. Not knowing stops working as an excuse and turns into a task, because the assumption shifts from somebody will tell you to you can find out. It is not that people became less patient, only that the information became reachable and everyone knows it.

Keep a running list of things you nod along to without understanding. Rent, interest, how a form works, whatever it is. Look up one a week. Fifteen minutes each time closes most of that gap inside a year, quietly and with nobody watching.