What’s wrong with being “Duck”?
Have you ever heard of the Thai saying “Do not be a duck”? It refers to a person that can do so many things, but master of nothing. It also have the same meaning with the British idiom“Jack of all trades.” In my education pathway so far, I was taught to live with that kind of mindset even I love to do so many things which crossthe line between art and science. I do believe that there are lot of children that were educated that way. A couple years ago, I had a chance to talk with one of the most brilliant Thai scientist, who is working on the new bioengineering project(Sounds super fancy right?). We talked a lot of issues, but one of the question that I asked him is about “Whatt is your strongest characteristic?” The answer that he gave me totally blew my mind. Hetold me that his strongest trait is being a duck!
I know that his answer might seems pretty awkward, and may not be favorable for you. However, based on what I knew about him, many of his multidisciplinary projects are truly successful, so there might be some advantages from that kind of trait. I even keep on wondering and thinking about it even until now.IAs of the moment,I’m in one of the largest and borderlessresearch institute in the world, and what I have learned here remind me of my curiousity.
Recently, I had a discussion with one of my project mentor onwhat are the traits of a good student in the United States. One thing that he mentioned to me was to be a well-rounded person, which in my perspective is totally different from the idealistic Thai student, who has to be focus on something specific, like focusing on the books and the theories…I’m not saying that American students are better compared to Thais, but the reason I am saying this is because based on my experience,real world, problems do not come in the way that the classroom assignments were handed to you, they do not come with specific tags that say “This is math problems”, or “This is science problems”. Most of the time, you need to use more than one knowledge to solve the problem in your life like using different kind of tools for doing different jobs. However, you might argue to me that a lot of stuff that are so beyond the daily life issue are useless, and there are no reason for knowing it. However, I would say that the moretools you have in your mind, the better way you can use it to face your obstacles, even you don’t need to use all of them at once.
Furthermore, based on my interest in Biology, there is a famous quote by one ofthe most influential figures in human history, Charles Darwin. The quote state that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” This concept does not only apply for the survival of species but also apply to our modern life.(Even the concept of species isn’t that accurate in the modern biology any more!) In the world where lots of jobsdidn’t even exist in the past ten year witha prediction saying that 65 percent of today’s students will be employed in jobs that don’t exist yet, howcan you be ready to adapt yourself for thoseopportunities, if you are doing only one specific thing?
I believe that a lot of people have a concern, that by doing a lot of stuffs in the same time, you won’t be able to focus and will fail them all. This has been controversial for a while, but the advancement of research in Educational neuroscience, reveals that people can have multiple talents, which means you can be good at doing more than one thing, and each talent will tend to promote each other. So, do not underestimate yourself and limiting yourself with only one or two things that you are interested in because there might me another thing that are really exciting for you. And if you keep doing and enhancing all of them, you might develop some skills thatyou will truly enjoy, which is unique for yourself.
There are a lot of proofs that show people or an organization that value in multidisciplinewill be extremely successful. For example, the idea of being “the intersection point between technology and liberal arts” from Apple CEO, Steve Jobs created a new phenomenal standard for today’s advanced technology. As you may experience, Apple products, which includes iDevices, and Macintosh computers, are so unique among other high-tech products. There are so many reasons behind this true success, but one of them is the multidimensional thought process. For example, to make an iPhone, the team leader need to understand that not only the mechanical part behind the touch screen is important, but also the sense of ease navigation through the touch interface.With this, Apple a phone that is powerful, in terms of technology, and also a phone that can be used by everyone. These are all involved in different aspect of knowledge from material science, through psychology and design. Without this thinking process, Apple would not be able to create a technology that is so friendly to everyone. All of this lead to my final statement that there is nothing wrong for being a “Duck”or the person that can do so many things. There are a lot of fascinating things out there so go and explore. Also,please remember that you can be captivated by so many thing. The factthat people may consider you as a master of nothing, I believe that once you allow yourself to explore of all of what you like and what you can do to fuse together, you can be master of it — of your own unique way.
Published in The Aseaner : Brain Candy
