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blingdomepiece 
Joined: 03 Aug 2007
Posts: 4358
Location: Ottawa ON Canada
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 Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 4:48 am Post subject: |
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| woozerkristen wrote: | | I think both are valuable, and thus I strive for both. I'm one of those PhD-possessors skinnywhitecomic is mentioning, and what I am an "expert" in is rhetoric and teaching it to college students |
What is Quality?
(If anyone got that, you are as big a nerd as me. Congratulations).
Re: Thread, I do think you need both. Having a superficial knowledge of a lot of stuff probably isn't good for a lot except appearing on Jeopardy. You need to know SOMETHING well enough to pay your bills from it. But having a breadth of knowledge is good too because I think it keeps you flexible.
I work in software and I've seen Masters' graduates who excelled due to the specialized knowledge they obtained past their undergrad, and I've seen PhDs who struggled to do anything practical because they had become masters of some specific discipline our company doesn't practice and they'd lost everything else.
Having a breadth of knowledge also increases your interdisciplinary potential, the ability to see something in a way that isn't anticipated by people who study in a more linear way. An example of this (and I risk exposing my own lack of DEPTH if I get this wrong, I suppose) would be Jared Diamond's combination of linguistics and biology in his work, or to cite a specific example that might not have been discovered by him, the fact that they were able to trade the indigenous people of Madagascar as having originated near Australia and not the near side of Africa (as you would expect from the proximity). They were able to do this by tracing commonalities in the language spoken by the indigenous people in all three places. This is something that might not have been readily noticed by a study that ignored linguistic elements.
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GesterX 
Joined: 24 Dec 2007
Posts: 1242
Location: Birmingham, UK
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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I'm surprised no one has brought up the saying:
| Quote: | | Jack of all trades, master of none |
In terms of applying knowledge to the real world in my opinion the depth of knowledge is more important for an individual. Individuals provide depth of knowledge; as a society we obtain breadth of knowledge.
Obviously knowing everything about one thing and nothing about EVERYTHING ELSE is somewhat pointless but in reality that's not going to happen. |
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Squirrel 
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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I like to consider myself, jack of all trades, master of one.
I think that's the best, being you have best of both words. General knowledge about the majority of things (I can do basic plumbing, basic electrical in a house, carpentry, mechanics), yet I consider myself an expert in electronics. Not PhD expert mind you, but being that in my job, I have senior engineers coming to me for specific things (like my heatgun fixes and whatnot for HP laptops), I like to consider myself an expert.
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joekickass1234
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 1436
Location: Cherry Hill NJ
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 4:37 am Post subject: |
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I'm the jack-off of all trades, master of none. XD
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CorpusCollosum 
Joined: 28 Nov 2007
Posts: 1823
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| CorpusCollosum, on p.1 wrote: | | Jack of all trades, master of none, as they say. |
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| footballtom3685, locking a thread about VH1's 100 Most Metal Moments wrote: | | These threads don't have much potential to begin with, and unfortunately even the ones that do have potential burst into flames. I guess that's pretty metal though, so thanks for staying on topic! |
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Syfatalityz
Joined: 02 Mar 2009
Posts: 198
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 7:22 am Post subject: |
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Depends on the context I guess.
Say in school (Im using my country's system here), if you are an "expert" in Math and get 90%+ for every test and exam, but get 50-60% for all other subjects, it's not gonna look good on the L1R5 system. However, if you attain 65-75% on all subjects, it'll look much better on the system than the other route.
If you were to apply that in society when you get a job, having average knowledge of your job isn't going to help in beating others who are experts in that area. So in that context, it's best to have a high level of expertise to get you the job that'll pay for all the bills and stuff.
Then again, Im still 14 years old taking my 9 subjects without any kind of focus on a certain area, that'll be in 2-3 years. Shouldn't worry about these things. |
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woozerkristen
Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 1917
Location: Auburn/Tuskegee, AL
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| blingdomepiece wrote: |
I work in software and I've seen Masters' graduates who excelled due to the specialized knowledge they obtained past their undergrad, and I've seen PhDs who struggled to do anything practical because they had become masters of some specific discipline our company doesn't practice and they'd lost everything else. |
That's a good illustration of why I've always valued both. I've worked with people who are brilliant about the one thing they know a lot about and barely functional in any other way. At one point while I was in grad school someone was trying to arrange for me to have a second assistant position along with my usual one helping run our writing center, with the additional one being a sort of IT liaison to the English department faculty (running that first line of assistance along the lines of the IT Crowd's "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" for professors who can't get their computers to work, replacing ink cartridges for them, etc.). They decided I could only have one of these positions and couldn't find another graduate student who they felt confident could handle it (!?), so the main lady doing this did it on her own and then resigned a year or so later. The lack of practicality among the highly educated is kind of staggering.
| blingdomepiece wrote: | | Having a breadth of knowledge also increases your interdisciplinary potential, the ability to see something in a way that isn't anticipated by people who study in a more linear way. An example of this (and I risk exposing my own lack of DEPTH if I get this wrong, I suppose) would be Jared Diamond's combination of linguistics and biology in his work, or to cite a specific example that might not have been discovered by him, the fact that they were able to trade the indigenous people of Madagascar as having originated near Australia and not the near side of Africa (as you would expect from the proximity). They were able to do this by tracing commonalities in the language spoken by the indigenous people in all three places. This is something that might not have been readily noticed by a study that ignored linguistic elements. |
Also very well-put. I hadn't really thought about that, but my wide range of interests is responsible for both my most interesting research and also some of my best teaching ideas. People who stick to just one subject are eventually going to run out of ideas.
There's only so much you can say about Shakespeare without incorporating something besides literature in the discussion. 
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