During high school and university, I've
had classmates that seemed to be multitalented. It seemed as though
there wasn't anything they couldn't do – while consistently
maintaining a high GPA in a difficult major with a full course load,
they also managed to find the time to participate in a senior role in
student government and as an executive member in numerous student
clubs/organizations , volunteer at the hospital, conduct research on
multiple projects in their department, hold onto a part-time job or
two and have enough time to party.
I will admit that I've tried to emulate
these outstanding peers of mine, but it was a constant juggling act
which bought me only a fleeting sense of happiness. It also meant
sacrificing quality over quantity or just time to chill out and
relax.
This blog is called “The Aspiring
Polymath”. I had a lot of goals in mind when I first started this
blog – improve my language skills (French, Chinese), learning a
programming language, picking up a dead language (Latin, Egyptian
hieroglyphs), brainstorming ideas for a novel, getting my name on as
many peer-reviewed articles as I can in my field, finishing some of
my licensing exams...all this on top of a full course load along with volunteering and some extracurriculars.
In hindsight, I'm not sure if I was just overly ambitious or merely exhibiting signs of delusional thinking.
Somewhere I lost sight of the forest
for the trees because in attempting to do too much at once, I
actually ended up making less progress overall.
Therefore, my goal for 2014 is simply this: Do less but
do it well.
