Do you hate it when people tell you to be well rounded?

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I know I do. My mom's boyfriend is always trying to shove the idea that I have to have a large variety of everything in order to be successful in life down my throat, and that's first class BS. He and many others love the idea of more friends, more skills, more talking, more everything. My beef with this is that they don't get the idea that quantity doesn't mean quality. So what if all I want to do is build robots and speak Japanese? I'd rather be good at only those two things than be okay to moderately sucky at everything! And I'd rather have one good, close friend than ten crappy ones! I say screw this "well rounded" business! Now I'll try new things quite often, but I shouldn't have to do them if I find out I hate them! I have the inalienable right to do what I love in life, and settle for nothing less!

They might as well tell me to hang out with bad influence kids because I need a "colorful pallet" of friends

I'm on the fence with this one. I am a more well-rounded person that when I was younger and I think it has helped me a bit. Still though I am not nearly as well-rounded as other people, and I see that as a strength as well. You are right though, people that are just very well rounded are somewhat unremarkable.... they know a little bit about everything but they don't know all that much about anything. To me this just makes someone boring, I really don't like people that just aren't distinct.Being well-rounded has its advantages though, for whatever reason the rest of the world appreciates this in people.

Having more friends, a wider variety of skills, talking more, etc. does make you a bit more adaptable to the world as a whole. Lots of people that the world sees as extremely successful--famous scientists, musicians, etc--are probably not well rounded. I guess it depends on what you want to be, if you want to be someone that is extremely good at what you do then being well-rounded shouldn't be your biggest concern (but it wont hurt to work on it a bit). If you wan't to be someone who fits in with the rest of the world just like any other piece in the puzzle then being well-rounded is important.

[philosophy]
I think people are like puzzle pieces, they are either the 'inside' puzzle pieces which connect to four other pieces or the 'edge' pieces, who have fewer connections but play a very important role. The 'edge' pieces define the boundaries of our world while the 'inside' pieces make it all fit together. People who are 'edge pieces' are probably always going to be 'edge pieces' and the same goes for 'inside pieces'... the trick is figuring out where you fit in!
[/philosophy]

I don't know what the right answer really is... I think the world probably needs a bit of both types.

Edit: I voted "I'd rather have a few good skills that I love and are valuable to me." because that is the right choice for me.

lol @ poll results

apperantly we're all anti Space Marines, go Eldar! If you'll excuse the nerdiness for a sec..

Quality will always be better than quantity.

Yes, I hate it when people tell me to be well-rounded! I'd rather just have a few strong interests than have a bunch I have little or no interest in at all!

Yes, especially as I am well-rounded, being decidedly rotund.

OK, so I see that I am in the minority here. I favor knowing a lot about everything. I have always had an intense interest in learning as much as possible about anything and everything. There have been periods in my life where I would do a deep dive into a subject, learn all I could about it and then move on to the next thing. Knowledge is power. To truly understand the world and the people around us, we need to have a grasp of a great many subjects: the sciences and math, history, philosophy, religion/spirituality, languages, literature, and much more. As Robert Heinlein so aptly put it:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love

Thankfully, I think, many people are actually plain narrow-minded. How many guys can you pick out from a crowd and their four interests will be alcohol, chicks, a favourite sport or activity and showing off? Too many. It's the remainder who have strong interests outside of this that are more worthy.

Espicaly when I ask why potential vet students need so many credits in literature and am told that the vet schools want you to be "well rounded". I'd personaly rather have a vet that knows nothing other than animals and science treating my pet.

I was always told as a kid that I needed to "widen my horizons" becuase people were sick of hearing about my obsessions and special intrests. I am finding it's very easy to have a special intrest or obsession as an adult than it was as a kid. My Sonic obsession is the easiest obsession I've ever had.

Last edited by MagicMeerkat on 13 Aug 2011, 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're not the only one though .

I'm refusing to answer this poll because neither are accurate to me. I want to learn. Learning itself is valuable to me. I won't sacrifice depth for breadth. But I won't only research small numbers of things either.

I won't go so far as to identify with not being an insect, though some people would qualify me as not being an insect, because while I want to learn everything the order of which I go through things is affected by my interests. I'm unlikely to get to some things, because I'd be likely to go through all of math before getting to them. It's not that I don't want to learn those things too.
I guess its just that my specializations are so large that I can't get out of them easily without others triggering me having reason to know other things.


I will put depth before breadth. But I will put learning before at least most other things, and have breadth be a high priority as well. I refuse to know only a little of everything. I also refuse to only know a lot about one thing. I want to know everything I can period.

If I have reason to learn about something I'll learn everything I can. And then it might become a special interest. If I don't have a particular reason to learn about something I'll default to my "special interests" and research those more.

However, the fact that I want to learn everything I can about all subjects has rather made me well rounded anyways.


I know that quote so incredibly well. If there is only one quote that I'd associate with my boyfriend, that's the first one I'd choose.

It's quite an ambiguous phrase and, I think, often misused by universities and jobs looking for a 'certain je n'ai sais quoi' out of many many hopeful applicants. In other situations, like perhaps your step dad, 'well rounded' can mean 'anyone who likes what I like'..

Personally, I don't very many people are especially 'well rounded' and in day to day life it's not really an issue. Most people seem to get by with just a little bit of literature (or popular tv show), a splattering of current events (including sports/celeb rubbish) and then one or two hobbies that are fairly mainstream (gardening, guitar etc.) that most others will have heard of; just stuff to talk about when amongst strangers/colleagues. Then there's work, mutual aquaintances, family... you could probably come across a lot more 'well rounded' with a bit of practice without having to take up 8 different languages and 4 musical instruments....

Lol, on one hand, having anybody tell me that I *should* or *shouldn't* be a certain way because that's the type of people they prefer is something I would so easily disregard and possibly rebel just to show they're not going to control me, but I do agree with the general notion that having a good grounding in the "basic universal skills" is optimal for anyone, though it's up to the individual to acquire what skills they desire to have and accept whatever outcomes/consequences as a result of that skill set. That said, you can compensate for lacking certain needed skills by partnering with others who have those skills (Like, say, with coworkers or your boss), so it isn't particularly critical to lack certain skills, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have them!

I think I should've mentioned this in the original post, but I'm not saying it's good or bad to be one or the other, it's just that other people need to know that they can't make people change to be like them.

Yeah. My mom always says to me, "Sei kein Fachidiot," which means basically "don't be someone who's stupid at everything but his own subject." I disagree with her, though. I'm built to be a specialist. While I love studying just about every area of academics, I'm not interested in most things outside academics, and I'm not going to learn about pop culture or baskeball or fine cuisine or whatever just because it'll make me more of a generalist. When I learn, I learn in-depth rather than broadly. It's what I do. The world needs both generalists and specialists, and I'm a specialist. There's nothing wrong with that.

Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean. Slay the xeno.


I learn a few subjects because I enjoy them, nothing else factors into my decisions on what to learn. I would rather be very good at a select group of skills and subjects than have a wide range of average-good skills and subjects that I dont really care about.

Last edited by Oberoth on 13 Aug 2011, 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'd rather have a few things that I'm good at than be well rounded. Some people go on about how being well rounded is the most important thing in the world.