What would you study?

[Beestie]

I learned a valuable lesson in college. I loved sports - college football, basketball and baseball. I was (and still am) a huge fan of the college game. So, while in college, I joined the sports staff of the newspaper and eventually got some big assignments that put me at the writer's table on courtside of nationally televised basketball games, in the dugout at baseball games and on the sidelines of big intersectional rivalry football games.

After one year, I left the staff because I couldn't be a fan anymore. I couldn't cheer, couldn't get plastered after the game, I got way too close to the players and coaches for whom its not a game but their lives.

I love astrophysics and quantum physics but I fear that if I try to study it too hard, I'll lose my sense of wonder and curiousity and get bogged down the complexity and uncertainty. I'm content reading a Hawking or Feynman book -leaving the tireless calculations to them.

If I were to study something else... something new... it would be to acquire knowlege and skill that I could use everyday. I'd choose a degree from the American Culinary Institute (I SUCK at cooking), Survival school (learning to live off the land), or (even though they don't exist in their prior form) a Shaolin Temple to learn all the ancient wisdom the Chinese had to offer before the communists destroyed it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Beestie

I love astrophysics and quantum physics but I fear that if I try to study it too hard, I'll lose my sense of wonder and curiousity and get bogged down the complexity and uncertainty. I'm content reading a Hawking or Feynman book -leaving the tireless calculations to them.

Excellent point. Getting into something you love, that deeply, can have unintended results. There is a real risk in mixing vocation and avocation.