What Are You an Expert In?
Posted on 20 November 2008
I had to answer this question recently. I realized that the answer I gave had more to do with my degree of self-confidence than any actual ability.
The obvious answer is that I am an expert in education. I have a master’s degree in that field, and I have taught for 15 years. However, today when one of my students threw a fit and wouldn’t listen to me, I didn’t feel like much of an expert. What I felt like was quitting.
I thought about the other things that I know how to do. I am what you might call a “dabbler”. I know a little Spanish, how to do the basics of crochet, knitting, beading, scrapbooking and just about every other craft; and how to write. Actually, I do a lot more than dabble at writing, although writing thousands of articles for SEO purposes does not make me the next Stephen King.
So how long does it take to become an expert? “Experts” will tell you that you can learn just about anything in three months.
Does that include electrical engineering? “Cause if it does, I know what I’m learning over summer break!
I’m sure I could become an expert in something if I would focus. I’m also sure that I could present myself as an educational expert if I did the marketing right. Because that’s part of what being an expert is all about–marketing yourself as one!
At any rate, it’s the information age. It’s time to get expert in something!
2 responses to What Are You an Expert In?
I started out as a Computer Science and (Electrical) Engineering student, but soon after I realized that I simply cannot stand electrical engineering. I dropped the electrical engineering part, and became a Computer Science major with a specialization in linguistics (though I didn’t really put the linguistics part to work afterwards). I don’t think I can learn electrical engineering in 3 months. It’s something just not for me.
I also dabble a lot. I have a bunch of random skills such as puppeteering, video-editing, voice acting, web site building, juggling, etc. I am really not an expert in any of that. Even just in programming, I feel like I dabble and know a little bit in everything, but not an expert in any field. I’d like to be really expert in something but that’s just not me. I guess for dabblers, the best way to use that at your adventage is to somehow use several skills together to generate more ideas or products, but of course, nobody can really tell you or figure out for you how to do that, since your set of skills would be unique.
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Kelvin, from my perspective, you are totally an expert in puppeteering. So perhaps a lot of this is simply perspective.