Parallel Lines - When do you "Waste" A Degree ?

When I was quiet and a shy student out of high school, I was asked all too often why I wanted to become lawyer. The practice of law essentially meant ending up in courts as litigating lawyers and courts are not the best place for someone as quiet and shy as me. I lived through that, and became a lawyer nonetheless.

Honestly, it wasn’t out of a crazy desire to go to courts, fight fiery cases and change the constitution. I couldn’t ever remember having such fancies even as a child, given that I did once fancy winning the Wimbledon (note, I play no sports till today). And no, “To Kill a Mockingbird” played no role in it, as well.

With everyone around me already decided and certain about what they wanted to be when they grew up, I only knew that I loved consumer psychology, having spent hours watching advertisements and street shopping for my fodder, and I was disheartened to know that I could not study psychology without mathematics, which I couldn’t do to save my life. Worse still, I didn’t even know what profession really allowed me to research on consumer psychology. So when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, even till the end of school, I had no answer.

As disheartened I was, I still loved humanities, and not knowing ‘exactly’ which under-graduate course was going to help me with a closer to understanding human behavior, I decided I would do a lottery and choose whatever chit I picked up. Fortunately, such extreme measures were not needed, because I came to know that I could study four humanities subjects + law through an integrated five year course and it was going to get me a job at the end of five years. So there, that’s how I became a lawyer – as the best practical way-out to my crisis then.

Then, a decade after that, I realized I still loved consumer psychology, and now the love had turned into crazy love that I could no longer ignore. Now, I knew of professions that would let me delve into it, but I was already five years into law profession and I lost count of how many professionals asked me why I wanted to change “streams”, and if I wanted to, I needed a professional degree like an MBA. I didn’t want to study more, and yet more, and yet more, and wanted to get to working on field directly. I had been O.D-ing on behavioral psychology literature for years, and I couldn’t bear the idea of doing it for some more.

The only option I was left with was now the only option I didn’t have the courage to pursue – quit job, don’t give a fuck, and jump into business. How I survived the ordeal for six months of self-loathing and extreme self-doubt to finally jump into deep water is another story, but in essence, I did. And nearly two decades after I fell in love with advertising in newspapers, I approved (still, didn’t write!) the copy for full-page insert I did for a business I ran in Ahmedabad. And, which didn’t get a single response – but that’s another story again.

Irrespective of whatever was happening around me, I was, at this point, very happy with my life. I was un-successful and struggling, but I went to bed with peace at finally being able to make up my mind to do what I wanted to do for so long.

Not everyone was as elated as I was. I thought it was a phase, and it would pass once I sink into the job. But it didn’t.

The same group of people that questioned my becoming a lawyer + some new group of people (which equals 99% of my world) began asking me even more disdainfully why I chose to “quit law”, having put a decade’s effort in completing my degree and then being a practicing lawyer (very few though understood how corporate law was different from litigation). Some went further, and accused me of “wasting a seat” or worse still, “wasting my degree, education and knowledge”. At the age of thirty-one, I often cannot decide exactly what should make me angrier between being asked why I am not getting married, or being asked to justify my choice to “quit law”.

In India, one expects a young adult to have crystal-clear clarity on what she wants to be at 14 years of age, and such pursuit must be pursued doggedly through competitive exams and such till 18. Very few that I know wanted to be beyond engineer, doctors or lawyers. For one, most like me, did not even know of professions like market researcher or advertising illustrator even existed during high school – so the question of choosing them didn’t even arise! But what is more disturbing is that it is socially acceptable that one’s under-graduation degree must define one’s future course of education + profession for the rest of her life, and any deviation is looked as having lack of determination and clarity. I couldn’t choose to study history as under-grad and then choose to write codes for the rest of my life. Or vice versa. Or whatever versa versa combinations that are available.

Why do we feel so constrained and limited in putting our intellectual existence into such air-tight containers? I would still understand if such constraint came from people with less exposure and education, but that’s barely been true for my experience. When I put in my resignation, a partner at my law firm, with more experience than my years on earth, told me with utmost anger (bordering on ‘rage’) that choosing to “quit law’ for starting up a business at this stage showed how less focused I was about life, and that I should done a degree in commerce and not law if that was my intention (which I should have known at 18, of course).  He could reconcile with a young associate quitting law for marriage or a better offer at another law firm, but not for ‘changing stream’, which was absolutely impious.

So what exactly is “Changing Stream”? And why are we, Indians, so paranoid about it, and equate it to doing drugs and flunking exams? Is it like three parallel lines of Humanities, Sciences and Commerce that separate at higher secondary level and cannot ever, ever, meet mathematically till eternity?

To think of knowledge as drains running parallel to each other as disconnected entities is very disturbing. Of course, knowledge isn’t disconnected and understanding of humanities and sciences are most beautifully entwined to understand greater philosophies of life. Paul Graham’s brilliant book ‘Hackers and Painters’ talks about how his experience at learning painting, made him a better hacker.

Indian education system choses otherwise. It is impossible for anyone to study physics and music together. And those brought up in the system and ingrained with the same value, irrespective of how professionally successful they are, continue to believe likewise. The only ones to lose out in this is us, for knowledge so limited cannot produce brilliant minds.

In recent years, there has been a significant amount of writing in the pop-business section on how technologists should learn humanities, for it teaches “empathy”, which is essential for better product design and such, instead of focusing just on just mathematics. Literature on finance has been also moving on the same line – asking more and more investors to seek wisdom through understanding of humanities.

All these are true. I agree with all of them. But these writings only focus on the limited application of humanities on one’s professional purpose. None really ever emphasize that there is a difference between the practice of a subject and the subject itself (for eg. the difference between being a lawyer and a student of law).  In this, Professor Noah Fieldman makes an excellent argument:

“Apprenticeship training can’t prepare you to see the world that way. Learning from a master is the most conservative form of education possible: Practitioners of an art or a craft teach their students exactly the skills they themselves have learned through generations of practice. If you want the best shirts, go to the Neapolitan women who learned to sew them from the previous generation. If you want the best shoes, there’s a London shoemaker who apprenticed at his master’s last. You can apprentice to be a good tax lawyer, but that won't prepare you to face the big questions.”

To be an engineer better at making products, or an investor making better share portfolio investments, or a lawyer focusing on tax practice isn’t enough to ever seek wisdom to look at the “big questions” – on the core values of our lives, the underlying philosophy that guides us and to understand greater policy decisions on how our lives are determined and controlled, vis-a-vis others. For that, we must allow for the highest degree of integration of humanities as possible, without limiting it to small compartments. And stop living in the paranoia that any knowledge is wasted like left over food if one choose to diversify and expand to other fields.

Now, back to reality and to the more immediate question – How do I stop people from asking me the same questions over and over again?

Especially now that I have a third question being thrown around at me – How will you become a pharma business-woman if you didn’t do B.Pharma ?

My brief answer is by learning business intuition +  general overview on the technical aspect of pharmacology like anyone doing a B.Pharma degree learned by reading books.

If you are asking the same questions to people, just get the facts right – no knowledge is ever wasted, and no one “quits” any knowledge or discipline. Like, such a thing doesn’t even exist ! Are we clear ?