Saturday 5 November 2011

Conflicting Messages

Yesterday, if you had asked me who I wanted to be like, I might have given you the name of Richard Florida. This extremely gifted American academic, private consultant and public speaker is versatile enough to be known as an urbanist, economist, sociologist and more. His Twitter profile reveals that he's a guitar player, so perhaps I should call him 'the rock star of economic theory.'

Looking at Richard's CV, he has taken a pretty traditional meritocratic approach to career development: The last bit of study he did was at Columbia University, a PhD. He's also a senior editor at The Atlantic.

So imagine my surprise to read Tweets today and discover this one of his:

"I have always love to discover and learn. But I never liked school."

I like him even better now. And I've never been more confused about whether to grin and bear a traditional university education or to continue making my own path and hope it will all work out.

(?)

*

I had a dream that I was locating a spot on the map just off the east Norwegian coast. That it was in and around this area that I would find it rewarding to study at a university.

My research into studying in Norway as an exchange student led me to find this para:

The academic profile of the University of Bergen has two major focuses. One is marine research - the city of Bergen is considered to be one of the largest marine science centres in Northern Europe. The other is global development research, and the university has earned a distinguished reputation both in Norway and abroad for its excellent, result-driven collaboration on research and education with universities in developing countries.

Is my intuition telling me that Bergen would be the perfect placement to explore both the oceans and the land in complementary ways? There's something about Bergen that draws me...

No comments:

Post a Comment