For the longest time, I’ve struggled with having too many areas of interest. I’ve always felt like I don’t know enough about anything. While most people have a specific area of passion, I want to know it all.
This might seem like a neat flaw on the surface, but the lack of depth in my knowledge base depresses me. Is it better to know a lot about one thing or a little about many things? I love the idea of being a practical expert on an issue, but I don’t want to sacrifice the time that would take away from learning millions of other things.
I know that I prefer speaking seven languages half-assed to speaking one amazingly well and I think most people would agree with that preference. At the same time, I think I should master at least one language. Just like how I should master programming since it’s the profession of my choice. I spend hours and hours wondering about this dichotomy in my personality.
Today, my Italian literature teacher talked about the “Renaissance Man” analogy that people like Leonardo DaVinci symbolized. He talked about how Dante sort of started that era by being a political figure as well as a poet. He mentioned that these people were into experiencing the totality of life.
Experiencing the totality of life. That’s exactly what I want to do!
I want to play musical instruments. I want to draw and paint and sculpt. I want to speak nine languages. I want to study literature. I want to study Math and Physics and Biology. History and Politics. I truly can’t think of subjects where I have no interest at all.
Leonardo and Dante were both amazing at everything they did, which is why they are the quintessential Renaissance men. I don’t share that quality, but at least I share the drive. And that can’t be bad, right?
Totality of Life. Doesn’t it sound so wonderful?
Previously? Tunes and Memories.
My friend Natalia and I had some coffee Thursday night after work to figure out which classes we wanted to take. She just came back from a ski vacation at the Alps. She mentioned the people she met and how interesting they were. That’s when I noticed her pattern. Each time she described someone she liked she consistently used the adjective ‘interesting’.
I do the same thing. When Jake tells me about someone new he met at work, the first thing I ask is, “Is he nice?” I don’t care if the guy is a billionaire, drop dead gorgeous or triple Ph.D. candidate. I just want him to be nice. We’re talking real nice, not the fake kind I mentioned a few days ago, the kind that smiles to your face while stabbing you on the back.
As I told Natalia my preferences, she said, “Yes, I like nice people, too, but imagine a real sweet person that’s not interesting at all. Even if she’s the sweetest, that won’t be enough for me.” Word.
The thing is if I had to pick between a totally boring but kind person and a really interesting cocky prick, I must say I’d easily choose the sweet person. I don’t think I could move past the fact that the guy is a jerk to even notice that he’s fascinating.
A look at my past would easily justify my obsession with kindness. Let’s just say I’ve had my share of mean and uncaring people. Enough of them to conclude that all that matters to me is a genuine kind soul.
At the same time, I can totally see Natalia’s point of view. Everyone has different priorities. If I had had another past, I might even feel similarly.
I have a wide variety of friends. At a glance they seem to have nothing in common. But if you looked closer, you’d notice the pattern.
Previously? Sick, Sick, Sick.
One of the greatest side effects of taking so many classes and learning so much is that you start feeling invincible about learning. The more you learn, the more you feel capable of learning. When I fist came to the United States, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by my classmates who seemed to have been born with a keyboard attached. Many of the Carnegie Mellon Computer Science students start programming well before they get to college. I, on the other hand, had never seen anything more advanced than a Commodore till the minute I stepped on campus. During college, I somehow figured out that the only difference between me and these people was a few months/years of experience that I could catch up to much more quickly that I’d imagined.
Since graduation, I took classes in Italian, French, Sign Language, Yoga, 3-D graphics, Art History, Novel Writing, Alexander Technique, and Japanese. At least six of those were subjects I’d never previously been exposed to. The neat thing is that the more classes I took, the more I got inspired to take. Next semester, I want to start learning how to play the saxophone, and take cooking and ballroom dancing classes. A few years ago, all of these would have sounded implausible to me. I have no ear, I am extremely clumsy, and I definitely can’t cook. The difference is that less than a year ago I felt equally hopeless about Japanese. When I got the offer to go to Tokyo, Jake and I opened the language portion of Encarta and listened to a voice pronouncing the first ten digits and I told him, “There’s absolutely no way I’m gonna learn that language.” Today, numbers are the least of my problem.
The more I learn, the less I fear learning. I feel powerful and invincible. I feel like the only difference between me and a doctor is that he chose to go to medical school and I didn’t. I feel that these options are available to me. If I wanted, I could be a lawyer or a doctor or a pilot. With the right amount of time and practice, I could be whatever my heart desires. Anything.
Isn’t that a neat feeling?
Before?
More Than Words
I’ve decided to try something new. I will post a lyric from a song everyday but I won’t tell you who it’s from. If you know the name of the band/person and the song, email me and the next day I will have the answers as well as the names of the people who guessed correctly.
Here’s today’s: “I just don’t understand how you can smile with all those tears in your eyes”
Have suggestions?
Goody Links
If you’re into words like I am, checkout a collection of word oddities and trivia. It has a page of names that became words, commonly misspelled words and much more. Thanks Cheryl, for the link.
If you have science questions, you should checkout Mad Sci Network. As they put it, it’s a “collective cranium of scientists providing answers to your questions. For good measure we provide a variety of oddities and other ends as well.”
Thoughts
The interesting thing about a sign language class is that you can have several in the same area. Where I take my classes, we have two different levels being taught in the same room. Since the students are not allowed to speak during class, the two classes don’t interfere with each other. Kinda neat, eh?
It’s amazing to me how much we underestimate children. A woman I know told me yesterday that her 3.5 year old son can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. Not only does he speak both but he knows to talk to his mother only in Cantonese and his father only in Mandarin. He figured out, on his own, that each parent can only speak one.
I think we should try to teach as much as possible to kids at a young age. I wonder what slows down our capacity to take in and adapt to new information as we get older. Anyone will tell you that learning a new language is much easier if you’re young. I wonder why?
Going hiking in New Hampshire today. Happie!
So the McSweeney‘s reading was a flop. We got there at 7:15 and the line was already a block and a half long. And that’s outside. They also had a weaving line inside the place. By the time we made it to the actual entrance, they were already full and sent people back home. Bummer. But I guess it’s been that kind of week for me.
Slashdot discusses the NYTimes article about teenager programmers who’d rather take a high paying job than go to college. For me, college was so much more than classes. The slashdotters make some great points about the computer science information you learn in college that you really wouldn’t learn anywhere else. But on an even higher level, college is the only time in your life that you get to be away from home and make your own decisions. Yet you don’t have to work all day long, you don’t have to pay rent and you are in an environment where you’re surrounded by other people your age. People in college spend hours philosophizing and talking about nothing. I just think that if you skip college, you miss out on a lot of great memories and lifelong friends. While making money is nice and makes you feel like a grownup, you have the rest of your life to do that. What’s the rush?
I remember sitting at a speech Kernighan gave at Carnegie Mellon my junior year. He was funny and interesting which is a lot to say about a computer science person. Especially one as bright as he. A student at CMU recently interviewed him for a Romanian magazine and translated the interview to English and posted the link to slashdot.
If you’re into programming, I think you’d find the interview informative. Even if you don’t care about programming, I think it’s fascinating to hear what he has to say. When asked about teaching programming classes he comments on how schools should not be teaching things people can learn in trade schools and goes on to say, “That’s not what universities should be doing; universities should be teaching things which are likely to last, for a lifetime if you’re lucky, but at least 5 or 10 or 20 years, and that means principles and ideas. At the same time, they should be illustrating them with the best possible examples taken from current practice.”
Another interesting point is when the interviewer asks him what areas a student who’s interested in computers should enter, amongst other things, he says, “I think unfortunately the best advice you can give somebody is “do what you think is interesting, do something that you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise you won’t do it well anyway”. But that’s not any real help.”
As I said, it’s an interesting interview.
This is for those of you who always wanted to drive the wienermobile.
Man, Japanese is hard. I have to learn around 100 kanji for the exam in December on top of all the grammar and vocabulary. In fact, the language is so hard that many native speakers cannot read the newspaper. The kids in Japan go to school six days a week. What’s the point of making your language so hard that even the native speakers cannot fully learn it? It just makes so little sense to me. But I do find it fascinating and really fun to learn. I like the way they put meaningful symbols together to form words. For example the two symbols which make up the word telephone (denwa) are the symbol for electricity and the symbol for speaking. The symbols for electricity and car make up the word for train (densha). Neat isn’t it?
You should read this article in the New York Times. It’s about a new Charter School that opened up in the Bronx. I think it’s amazing how some people sit and complain while others decide to take charge. The world would never improve if we all did nothing more than whining and thanks to the boom in the Economy, fewer and fewer young people choose their life according to their ideals. Most people go where the money is and stay there until more money shows up somewhere else.
When I switched from a full-time job to a part-time one, giving up quite a sum of money, to spend a bit more time volunteering and learning, people looked at me like I was insane. There are two kinds of people in the world, it seems; those who want to help the world and those who wish to climb the corporate ladder. These two don’t mix. Except in my case, where they do. I wish more people did both because sometimes the connections in the corporate world have the monetary power to make things happen.
When was the last time you volunteered?
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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