All The Magic is At the Intersection: Why Specialization is Dead?

“You are an engineer but you can write?” it sounds weird. “You’re an engineer who’s also into media, are you okay,” another asks. I don’t know how many times I have been bombarded with all sorts of questions, surprised looks, some shocked, some repulsed. It’s become so obvious that I now don’t even tell people that I am a graduate of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. I leave them to find out for themselves. 

When I was at campus, I attracted the same questions. Many couldn’t understand the part of me that was a voracious reader. While everyone was waiting for the next lecture, I would pick up a random book on any subject, whether philosophy, political economy, biology, and name it all and I would read it as I waited for the lecturer. My fellow students found me awkward. The feeling though, was mutual; I too, found them awkward. Similar to how an American gets surprised when a Ugandan is eating grasshoppers while a Ugandan gets surprised when the French man is enjoying his snails and frogs. 

The problem today, is that the education has been split into folders. Engineers think there’s no need for them to learn public speaking skills. Journalists don’t take time to learn any engineering skills. Doctors on the other hand have given up on handwriting skills, while artists have failed to pick a leaf from lawyers on organization. We are taught that there’s no connection between Biology and Geography. No wonder, Arts students are always in their own classes while Science students are in another world. 

In my freshman year at University, I had one book that I used to jot down all the seven course units I offered. They were six, but I took on the option of Technical French just to make the whole experience better. I soon noticed that in most public universities in Uganda, one could drop in a lecture in a different faculty and suck in all the free knowledge. Once in a while, I attended the Food Science Practical sessions and enjoyed the free cakes, juice and cappuccino. Other moments, I attended the computing classes in the Computer departments. 

I saw my education as holistic. Soon enough, lecturers from other departments would get surprised when they found me in Mechanical and Production. Most thought I was offering their courses. I made friends among those ones too. 

Back to my main point; as long as we continue offering education to students in a Folder based manner, we are soon to face problems. Because we are creating a divide between subjects that has never existed. Music students should know that physics and biology is part of what they do. Procurement and Logistics students should embrace engineering skills. All the recent improvements in this field came from discoveries at the assembly lines in industries. 

We need to move away from the Folders to something better-a spider web. Yes, we need to awaken to a realization that knowledge is all connected just like the spider web. Each facet links to another that links to another. That’s what we call a holistic education. 

And the moment we accept those links and intersections, the magic begins to happen. All innovation and invention has sprung out of the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. It’s something you could call idea sex. You combine a physics concept with a biology concept and you have an innovation or an invention. You bring humanities and sciences together and the world begins to make those quantum leaps. 

I don’t explain to be the most intelligent Ugandan but much of what I have achieved in thought process has come from my ability to stand at the intersection. When we started www.bigeye.ug with a lawyer friend of mine, our combined skills of an Engineer and a Lawyer starting an online media company is what made us tick and within no time, we were on top of this country. 

We pulled off the same with www.campuseye.ug and once again, we are now among the top 70 websites in Uganda. That’s within less than a year of our existence. Why? We stand at the intersection. 

This also requires humility. Often, we think there’s nothing to learn from people in different fields. That’s not true. When I sit down any of my little nephews and nieces, I learn something from them that I later apply to my bigger path. When I meet an app designer, I know there’s something to steal from them that my future self will always be thankful for. 

So why then are we having lawyers who can’t code? Engineers who can’t write? Doctors with zero dating skills? Musicians with zero business skills? Because they have been heavily sold on the folder system, that subjects and fields are totally separated.

Perhaps, we also need to start dropping the labels. Labels box us into zones that we can’t escape. When we label ourselves, we limit our potential. As a person who’s been tortured by my potential, I gave up on labeling myself. When I say I am a writer, I have boxed myself. Just because I do something doesn’t mean that’s what I am. For example I sleep everyday but I never wake up to call myself a sleeper? Why then should I put a label to myself for certain things I do. 

Guess, my philosophical treatises are now beginning to take over. On the whole, we need to begin finding the links between fields we previously ignored. The cure for HIV/AIDS could be in a geography class not in the laboratories. The secret to saving our planet from global warming could be in a Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. What do we know? 

We need to realize that we know nothing, that our fields of specialization are not complete in themselves. Specialization is for insects, so they say and we need to take that serious and evolve into expert generalists. People who go deep in a number of fields. That’s the future of the leaps we want to make. That’s the future of our progress. All the magic is happening at the intersection of the humanities and sciences.