Of craponomic and nose picking

My uncle had come home today. The conversation, as is the norm these days, was about my job. Among the many questions he asked me, one of them was - What are you specialising in?

Now, I pride myslef in being a Jack-of-all-trades. Specialisation has never held much allure to me. So when the question was posed, i drew a blank. The uncle, who is one of the most focussed beings i have ever come across, was aghast. He always thought of me as a highly focussed sensible girl. Little did he realise that i was someone who enjoyed writing about crap (literally) rather than the intricracies of Tamil Nadu politics.

So anyway, the question stuck on my mind and hanunted me throughout my hour-long bus ride to the office. This is not the first time I have heard about the specialisation craze. One of my professors at college keeps ranting about how we must leave our jobs after an year or two and go specialise - in anything, even anthropology.

Now imagine spending some of the best years of your life studying something like that. Sheesh.

Someone once told me that man is by nature, polygamous. I agree. One woman is not enough to satiate man's insatiable appetite. Similarly, one subject is not enough to engage man's attention for a lifetime. At the risk of sounding trite, Variety is indeed the spice of life.

So here's a word of advise for all you Jacks out there. The next time someone asks you what you are specialsing in, politely ask them to Please f*** off.

But then again, if they were awarding doctorates in Craponomics, I would galdly jump into the wagon.

p.s. talkin about specialisation brings me to the topic of absurd research. To compete with the Nobels, some smart-asses have come out with the Ig Nobel awards. Here's a gem from the website:

Ig Nobel for PUBLIC HEALTH
Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, for their probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents. [REFERENCE: "A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol. 62, no. 6, June 2001, pp. 426-31.]