James Drogan

I have often thought of myself as a generalist.  My sense is that I demonstrate this trait in my conversation, writing, and teaching.  Whether this is delusional is a conclusion I will leave to others.

I wasn't always of this ilk.  In the beginning I was a System 360 Assembler Language programmer -- pretty specific I would say.  Now, if you look at Research Interests and scan other material on this site, I think it fair to say that my interests have become fairly broad.  How I went from there to here is a subject for another post.

I bring this subject of The Generalist up to contribute to discussions of alternative life tracks.  You may recall that I have encouraged my students to tune in to this blog with the idea that some of what they find here may be of use as they move forward.  This post is intended to be useful.

I also want to point to two useful items from the Creative Generalist, a blog I have been reading for some time.

The first of these is a beautiful graphical depiction, Specialists and Generalists in 3D, of the essential differences and similarities between generalists and specialists.  I'm attracted to this because much of my thinking is done in terms of graphical representations.  I therefore connect very easily with it and find myself in agreement with its contents.

The second, What Specifically Do Generalists Do?, represents a considerable amount of detail which hangs on the framework of the first piece.  It is full of links to other items which I have not yet explored.  I also very much agree with the content of this post.

So, if you are wondering about specialization versus generalization, maybe there is some helpful leads here.