Expertise or Well-roundedness?
April 10, 2002
Today I wrote my first exam and unfortunately I am reasonably sure that I failed it (and therefore failing the course). I’ve failed an assignment or two in my life but never a whole course. I’ve been close a couple of times but not truly fail. Am I disappointed? Yes. I studied quite hard for the exam but sadly I still didn’t understand all the material covered. It was the ‘advanced’ accounting course that I keep complaining about.
I then began thinking about this soon to be fail and how it applied to the rest of my persona. I didn’t do too bad in the courses leading up to this one but for some reason I just choked and died. I then realized that I do that in everything that I’ve ever done. I try something, get kind of good in it, but never reach the threshold where I would consider myself very good. It’s as if something (within me?) holds me back and won’t let me go.
And I guess to compensate for this, I try a lot of things. I have so many hobbies, so many interests, so many things I like to learn about or talk about or do. To put it best, I’m a jack of all trades, but a master of none. No matter how hard I try, I’ve never been the top dog so to speak in whatever I’ve done. I’m not really sad about it because I know I put in a lot of effort and I can look in a mirror and say that it was the best I could have done. It’s just, it was a few steps short.
As I began lamenting over this weird quirk, I also thought? was this really a bad thing? I started debating over which was better: to be able to do a lot of things fairly well, or to be able to do a couple things (or maybe even one) really really well? My conclusion is that I don’t know.
I look back into my past and think of friends that were superb in something. They might have been great musicians, excellent sports players (one single sport), really intuitive computer dude, or an artist who can turn ink into beauty. I appreciated their talent and their effort and wish I had their skill but when I turn to the next ‘activity’, their name leaves my mind.
So for me, to be really great at something is only good when people are thinking about it. Otherwise, you may be forgotten or even passed. I never picked the computer guy for my soccer team nor did I go to the musician for help on homework. And when it came to financial success, my artist friend would probably be the last person I think of.
But then again, a person who’s not really great at many things wouldn’t be thought of too. What a dilemna: should people concentrate on one or two things that they can do really well or should they try to broaden their scopes and try many things and not be too concerned about being that great?
