There's only one university course that I've ever really liked; only one course that I am really happy I took. It was a year long honors college course I took during my first year of college. Intellectual Traditions of Western Civilization. Man, I loved that class. It was a hodgepodge of various topics - religion, science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and history. I loved discussing the wide range of topics, looking for how all those different topics were inter-related, and in general just the celebration of knowledge the course represented. That was a rare, shining moment in a system that pushes people towards specialization.
I spend a lot of time lamenting the specialization I chose these days. I'm not really that interested in it; I ended up in engineering because it comes easily to me. There was a sort of positive feedback loop - I'd do well in a course while skipping 50%+ of the lectures, meanwhile I'm spending that time doing other things that interest me more, so I stuck with the program.
I went on to grad school because I had this degree in mechanical engineering, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Staying put was easy. And I picked easy. And I'm not sure I like where it's taking me.
I spend a lot of time lamenting the specialization I chose these days. I'm not really that interested in it; I ended up in engineering because it comes easily to me. There was a sort of positive feedback loop - I'd do well in a course while skipping 50%+ of the lectures, meanwhile I'm spending that time doing other things that interest me more, so I stuck with the program.
I went on to grad school because I had this degree in mechanical engineering, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Staying put was easy. And I picked easy. And I'm not sure I like where it's taking me.