I think my personality leans more toward the jack of all trades answer, however my professional and academic life has been the complete opposite. My academic and professional pursuit has been to master one particular field, however my hobbies are extremely varied. My hobbies range from blogging to jewelry making, to novel writing, playing instruments, watching tv shows and movies, partying (Jamaican style), reading, and sewing - crochet, embroidery, regular sewing, among others.
I've recently started thinking that I need to take a more varied approach to my academic and professional life as well. Life is just so much more interesting when your interests are varied and some of them can be combined to create more interesting projects. For example, I want to merge my Statistics background with Geoinformatics (in particular GIS - Geographic Information System). Just the mere thought of it excites me :).
On the other hand, mastering specific skills are important for us to be proficient at our jobs. We don't have to become proficient in only one area though. Maybe we should network of proficiencies. For example, an Economics and Statistics bachelors degree, a masters in Geoinformatics and a PhD in Urban Planning. At first glance, the connections may not be evident but a deeper look shows that they actually are connected.
I recently stumbled upon something I wrote in an academic paper that links directly to this topic -
"Hausmann et al. (2011) point out that the amount of productive knowledge in a country does not solely depend on how much knowledge each individual has, but it depends more on the diversity of knowledge that each person possesses and their ability to combine diverse pieces of information to create new knowledge."
As it turns out, the question my friend asked is in fact a question that has been on the minds of Economists for a while. How neat, whenever in doubt, consult an Economist :).
Source of Pictures; Jackofalltrades; Master; Graph
No comments:
Post a Comment