"...I'm interested in things."
(Woo Dr. Worm)
It really strikes me as strange when people aren't interested in things. Even at MIT this happens -- people go into engineering because they have an aptitude for it, and because they can make money at it, not because they love it. Ditto (and possibly even more so) for premeds.
Of course, there are things I'm not particularly interested in, such as proper makeup application technique or the Byzantine Empire (or makeup in the Byzantine Empire). But I'm sure there are people who find these things interesting. (With enough enthusiasm and a twisty enough mind you can make anything into an intellectual exercise.) Take less bizarre examples, say, particle physics. Particle physics is cool and all, but I don't find it particularly interesting. (Watch Chad Orzel beat me upside the head with a rubber mallet.) This aside, I can see why others would find it interesting, and I share their interest by some kind of analogous empathy -- "they feel about it the way I feel about biology, I can understand that".
I think the line to draw is that my default assumption for new fields is that they are interesting, and it takes a while for me to decide they're not -- whereas for lots of people, the default assumption is that a new field is uninteresting, and not worth finding out more about until something is shoved in their face to prove it's interesting.
...What a boring way to live life.
It really strikes me as strange when people aren't interested in things. Even at MIT this happens -- people go into engineering because they have an aptitude for it, and because they can make money at it, not because they love it. Ditto (and possibly even more so) for premeds.
Of course, there are things I'm not particularly interested in, such as proper makeup application technique or the Byzantine Empire (or makeup in the Byzantine Empire). But I'm sure there are people who find these things interesting. (With enough enthusiasm and a twisty enough mind you can make anything into an intellectual exercise.) Take less bizarre examples, say, particle physics. Particle physics is cool and all, but I don't find it particularly interesting. (Watch Chad Orzel beat me upside the head with a rubber mallet.) This aside, I can see why others would find it interesting, and I share their interest by some kind of analogous empathy -- "they feel about it the way I feel about biology, I can understand that".
I think the line to draw is that my default assumption for new fields is that they are interesting, and it takes a while for me to decide they're not -- whereas for lots of people, the default assumption is that a new field is uninteresting, and not worth finding out more about until something is shoved in their face to prove it's interesting.
...What a boring way to live life.