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Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#191
post #3

Read a couple of books by Barbara sher: Refuse to choose [0] She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594863032/

I hope OP (and other "scanners") sees this - it might be worth knowing that you may have ADHD, especially if you also heavily procrastinate, are messy/disorganized and always run late. There is much more than I can type in a single comment but if someone wants more info I can try and help.

As much as I'd like to be a "Scanner" I think ADHD describes me more accurately. Procrastination is my entire identity but also being interested in ten things at once. But on the flip side I went back to school and for a project of minimum required 3,000 words I wrote 20,000 word. I do know a person with valid diagnosed ADHD and they seem far more erratic than me so I hope I only have a low to mild version.

It could be genetic too my Mom's sister's children are all doctors but one of them or some of them don't use their degrees and work manual labour jobs. Maybe I have that but to a lesser degree due to procrastination and my environment.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#193
Blog. Yes it’s cliche but it’s step 1 of many different paths. You can decide where to go after a year or two of consistent writing. You could

- write a book or ten

- become a speaker (TED talks, conferences, universities, etc)

- become hands on in one or more of those fields (not sure what that looks like but it came to mind)

- get a PhD and become a professor, after your children are older etc

- create a new field of study synthesizing several of your interests

Caveat: I haven’t done any of this, or anything like it. These are just ideas I had after reading your post. They may all suck. But I think blogging is the first step in many paths. It creates a perception of authority for yourself, where previously the only way to do that was to get a PhD or similar. (Some have no right to this perception of authority and they abuse it; they just blog a lot and convince some, but such is life.) Anyway, you can leverage this perception of authority to do any of the things I mentioned above, and more besides. If you’re 40 right now, you can squeeze in 2 full careers before you’re 80 if you want to go broad.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#195

> I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that? > From psychology to history of science to anthropology and sociology, to economics and politics, to philosophy and religious studies and cultural studies, etc. You guys may consider my comment as begging for down-votes but why to chose so lowball content only? Among the disciplines the topicstarter has chosen there is only one which may be awarded…

There is no Nobel Prize in Economics. There is a prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, which is not the same thing. And for the "not STEM" = "lowball" thing... "no math" does not mean "simple". Read through any serious sociology or anthropology work, you'll see what I mean.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. As you grow older you may find that you actually did lift some of the subjects to a "marketable level". For example, I'm now 40, studied molecular biology but my dedication to my home server, HN and tech podcasts is now paying dividends because I can talk with the big boys about infra-as-code, higher level system architecture and software development. This is really nice as the healthcare company I work for…

So you're working in bio but yearning for IT? I'm almost the opposite. IT pays the bills, but I wish I was in evolutionary biology.

Evolutionary biology as a profession is probably difficult to be a bill payer, it's afaik exclusively an academic exercise. Sure they need IT people (for bioinformatics, genome informatics, data science, etc) but you are almost 100% certain to be entering the academic "rat race". Which can be nice, if you're into it.

You could make a start by offering your IT skills to an evolutionary biology professor? Why not invite yourself for a coffee? Biology is IT-ifying at a very rapid pace (I sequenced 200 basepairs in one experiment in 2003, last week we did 120.000.000.000 on our midrange NG sequencer, the human brain is pretty useless in dealing with that raw data.)

Oncology has aspects of evolutionary biology, every tumor is in a mini evolutionary arms race with the host and its defenses, and Hospital Informatics is booming. It's an interoperability mess, they are struggling to "unlock their own data", let alone collaborate effectively. People with the right skills and fitting interests (like evolutionary biology) are really needed. But target the research side of things, or you end up what we sometimes call a "data plumber", you're just struggling to bring data from many legacy systems together when the professor or MD/PhD student asks for it... I heard from Data Scientists that are lured in and realize they are employed as Data Engineers. Which can be nice, if you're into it. But it's far away from biology. You could also go for healthcare companies like Illumina, Roche, Sophia Genetics, Philips, Siemens, etc. They all have hospitals as customers.

Anyway, I guess once you in the right environment you can start to move in small steps towards preferred positions, say you start as a data engineer but work your way up the IT chain and soon you're talking to Oncology professionals trying to understand their problems. But give yourself 5-10 years I'd say, it's not something you can do fast, you have to prove yourself at every little step.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#197
The obvious thing you could do to start with is review books on a blog. Use the book reviews as a way to explain yourself as a person, find your own thoughts, and as a pre-fabricated context to intersperse your own pieces.

Apart from that, more generally:

If you are writing at the moment, keep writing.

If you are not writing at the moment, start writing again.

Anything.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#198

I'm very similar and would just give you two pieces of advice: (1) buy books compulsively and don't do your research predominantly online, and (2) make sure you write often, whether or not you publish your work or keep it to yourself. I think the latter is the most important advice for those trying to pursue an intellectual path outside of academia -- if you don't develop a habit of writing, you aren't really synthes…

> It's very easy to get a visa if you're involved in the tech industry

I'm interested in more info on THAT!

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. As you grow older you may find that you actually did lift some of the subjects to a "marketable level". For example, I'm now 40, studied molecular biology but my dedication to my home server, HN and tech podcasts is now paying dividends because I can talk with the big boys about infra-as-code, higher level system architecture and software development. This is really nice as the healthcare company I work for…

So you're working in bio but yearning for IT? I'm almost the opposite. IT pays the bills, but I wish I was in evolutionary biology.

These domains are not mutually exclusive. Have a look at evolutionary algorithms.
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