Love is a Wonderful Thing

That is all.

What I've Been Up To

I do honestly think that I am more busy this semester than I have ever been in my life. At Rochester, I'm taking seven classes, one sophomore-junior level math class, three sophomore-level general science classes (each of which has a lab), two introductory-level engineering classes (one of which has a lab), and an introductory-level specialized-science class. I'm also in the ballroom dance club, the swing dance club, the outdoors club, and, once snow starts, the recreational skiing club. I'm the webmaster for ballroom and (somewhat) for swing. I just got a script for a movie that I'm almost certainly going to be in, filming of which is every weekend starting in October. I'm learning piano from scratch with a combination of help from my girlfriend (oh yeah, I have a new relationship too) and online tutorials, and I'm practicing 4 and a half hours a week. I'm learning Arabic from the Rosetta Stone program which I'm doing for 3 hours a week. Come mid-to-late October, I'll be starting the freshman year of the OAC, as well as joining the cultural changes study group as part of Study Groups for Objectivists. Within the next month I'll have to start looking into finding research opportunities for spring semester or over the summer. Finally, I have this nifty little blog thing that I'm going to try to update regularly again.

With all of this going on, I've decided to put a strict limit on not adding any more responsibilities to my life for this semester. This puts a few things I wanted to do on the back-burner, including Physical Science by David Harriman, quite a few ARI lectures, part 1 of First History for Adults, learning about and possibly incorporating evolutionary fitness into my life, learning to cook, tutoring, and learning/trying my hand at investing.

I'm having the time of my life :^D

Lack of Specialization Within Academia

Many people complain that today's higher education is far too overspecialized to make it worthwhile, and in a sense this is true. Take a look at most undergraduate college websites, and you're likely to see a list of extremely specific majors available at the school. In another sense, however, a lack of specialization is greatly crippling today's universities.

In almost any circumstance today, in order to get a good research position at a university, you must teach. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, the better teaching jobs tend to require some sort of research. But why should this be so? The skills of creating new knowledge and of communicating that knowledge to students in a classroom setting are very distinct. Not only might an individual be far better at one than the other, but an individual may also only want to base his career around one or the other. If the two professions of teaching and research weren't so inextricably linked, then we might have teachers who are not dedicated researchers enter the profession and raise standards everywhere, and vice versa for researchers. Dear reader, can you explain this mysterious requirement?