During my college years I have always preferred general studies over special studies. For example in getting the MBA, I highly resisted focusing on a specialty such as accounting, economics,or human resources. I wanted to get a general feel for business rather becoming cloistered in an expertise. On the other hand in the study of literature, I came to greatly appreciate the insight that can be gained from an in-depth study of one author and close reading of a specific text. The tendency to parse the world according to labels and feel vaguely superior to the other side – whether specialist or generalist – simply misses the constituent requirements of knowledge and mental processing. In order to avoid intellectual blindness and keep up with developments, we must passionately maintain both generalist and specialist tendencies. That sounds like a big order, but in fact is how intellectual pursuits actually work in practice.
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