Sumedha at Bits of Fluff: 3 Idiots and Education:
After school, during the mad months of college applications and terrifying decisions, I sat down to talk to my father about which subject I should choose to study for the next four years of my life. The main problem I was facing was that while I knew what I didn't want to study, I had no idea what I did want to study. I knew I didn't want to study Science, but I didn't know enough about History or Economics or Philosophy or Literature to make an even remotely informed choice.
My dad told me something that made a lot of sense. He said that there are some very lucky people who have a passion in life. They have a direction, they have a purpose. He said that that group of lucky people is a very small group (1% of the population, as he put it). My dad's a professor and a researcher, and he's excellent at what he does. But he got into engineering and science not because that was his passion, but because he didn't know enough to choose anything else. He didn't have a strong inclination towards anything, so he gave JEE, got his Master's and Ph.D. and somehow "ended up as a professor".
Anti-Imperialism in 3-D: a review of Avatar by Nagesh Rao aka LeftyProf.
Ranga at My Cup of Tea: Cat in the Basket [Alternate title: Invention of
traditionsuperstition!]Poor Brijesh Nair! He seems to have had an uncanny ability to choose only the nasty kind of Desi professors to interact with in the US. He has suffered enough; there's no need to add to his suffering by saying nasty things about his stereotype-filled post.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
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Filed under: Art, HigherEd-India, Media
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1 Comments:
Now, there's a juicy Galdwellian Diss-Ertation waiting to be written -- there no such thing as "passion", it is all just the right exposure at the righ time. If there is no such thing as a predisposition to skill (genius), there is no reason why there should be a predisposition to interest (passion). "Ember" would be a nice catchy title, though the ghost of Octavio Paz may not like it, and come haunt.
The popular cognition (Pop-Cogn for short, rather appropriately) genre makes a living by watering down folk psychological categories. The more chunkier ones have have been hazed by (Denial) Dennett -- consciousness (explained), intenionality (stanced), free-will (elbow romed) and God (I forget the title). But Passion seems to be hanging there, though its sister fruit, reason, has already got the dissipation treatment. I am sure one of the squeaky guys with funky hair-dos living in NY has his eye on it.
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