toastom@toastom-tech:~/Documents$ ls -a . .. "Curse of the Generalist".md toastom@toastom-tech:~/Documents$ date -d now %F 2024-04-20 toastom@toastom-tech:~/Documents$ cat "Curse of the Generalist.md"
This was originally written on 2024-04-20 and I'm just now posting it because I'm actually realizing it's not too bad. Read on, I guess.
I view myself as a generalist: someone who has many interests, who is terrified of being put into a box, have a label, someone who is able to do many different things and do them well enough, Jack of All Trades-style. I can answer a lot of questions over a variety of topics and I have a jumping off point to figure out almost anything on my own. I guess that's a byproduct of my independence, or maybe a reason for why I'm so independent. I don't have to rely on hardly anyone if I'm smart enough and skilled enough and naive enough to believe I can do anything alone that I put my mind to.
I'm not trying to stroke my own ego here. Or at least that's not the intent. Throughout my life, too, I've had people who are fascinated by this ability. I've always been told of how smart I am (especially from my parents and people who are outside of my field or engineering in general). Almost so much it gets boring after a while. Wow, I sound like a dick, but it's true.
I had two major projects this semester that I led, one of which done entirely self-guided and alone, the other leading a partner. Everyone seems impressed by the amount of work I've put into them and the amount of peripheral knowledge I have about a lot of different things. Even one of my professors came to talk to me after class one day. For context, this class was our final Senior Capstone class where we had to design something with elements of software and hardware. He noticed I'd always ask a question or try to help guide others after their presentations and wanted to ask how it was that I was so well-read on such a variety of topics. From manufacturing to circuit design, microcontrollers, programming, even a little (admittedly terrible and very base knowledge of) AI/ML. And this is not to even mention the peripheral knowledge I have of machining and metal fab. He's hardly the first to be impressed by it and it feels good! It seems there's some market for this skill I suppose.
But unfortunately, it seems this work and knowledge, and the side effects of tinkering almost don't matter at the end of the day if you have nothing to show for it. At the Research Symposium I was the only one out of our group in Senior Design to have two posters - one for the project itself and another for my own research project. I had stretched myself thin, but was twice as likely to win an award. I put tons of work into the background research, design, and implementation on both of these projects and only worked a few months on each simultaneously. Yet there's not much to show for it all. The guitar pedal doesn't work with both effects yet and there's a lot of noise. Hell, the housing is only halfway done and it remains non-functional. My research, too, has been in progress since November and I'm only at the stage now where I can start to do data analysis. Recruiters want to see actual results on a resume. "Yeah that's cool that you put so much work and thought into this but what was the impact?" People want numbers, they want conclusions, they want an end goal. Skills can be learned I suppose. I saw someone on Reddit post just yesterday about a company wanting an "achiever," not a "doer," which seems like bullshit to me. One can't achieve without doing, and if you're an unlucky sap who is placed into a BS Sustaining project during one or two of your internships then your opportunity to achieve cool things at work is stripped away from you, and then you're just "not the right fit for the [next] company."
Maybe it's not so much a Curse of the Generalist but instead a Curse of the Toe-Dipper. Someone who likes to dip their toes into a wide array of things but can never put a mirror-finish on their projects before another one crops up is not someone that companies or universities want anything to do with. I've had so many people ask me about grad school recently too. Just let me get a JOB first. Anyway...