A fox or a hedgehog?

It is not a neoteric or brand new concept, it's not passe or outmoded concept either. I just expect this is as an everlasting, debatable, and not easy notion to judge for everybody. That is why I write this sort of writing for you guys. Well, it is between being a fox or hedgehog obviously. A Greek poet Archolocus says ”The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. In simply, it is about being a generalist or specialist. A generalist is the one who knows many things as he or she learns all kind of subjects (fields) he or she interests. This type of person does not have a so special technical skill as he or she spends the time to study many different things, they can be called master of none. A specialist on the

other hand is the one who only knows one thing but in an amazingly detail. He or she meticulously and impressively masters his or her own field, without any doubt. What an unfortunate thing for this type of people is that they don't really know about the world in general. They just stick on their field and know very little about others.

I am actually confused which one is better for me. I guess we in Indonesia are supposed to be generalists as from elementary school until high school we learn too many subjects at school. I don't say that the education system is bad or inappropriate, it is just kind of hard to figure all subjects out when I studied at school. The teacher gave us too many different lessons we have got to learn. Compared to the country such as America, in 2 last decades the people there are more specialists as the education shapes them to be so. Many of experts come from the uncle Sam starts from Astronomy, Business, Technology and so forth. As the matter of fact, USA leads and goes to be the leader or globe cop in this world as it has tons of professionals or experts in all fields. I didn't say that Indonesia is weaker that USA, for some cases we beat USA. In the natural resources for example we are equal or even more than Americans. The problem is, we cannot manage all of our forests, oil, ocean, fishery and all things well. That is why we entrust many expatriates from other countries to take care of all resources. It makes us even more sluggish in accelerating our growth as none of us fully know about so-called managing things we belong to. The best thing to do for now is, send as many students as abroad and take them back to this country after they master many specific things to be applied in this country. I know it's rather difficult to do so as many of smarts Indonesians settled abroad in hoping for the better living, indeed they get much more than if they stay here. So, who should be blamed then? Ah...I get no clue on this. The point is, we need more specialists than generalists for this time being as we need to advance our growth. Learning from Americans might be a good way to realize it.

To be honest, I feel myself as a fox as I master no one. It's my personal feeling though. Even so however, I thank God for what I've got. He grants me remarkably great bless by making me like what I am today. It does also make sense if search for new key advancement that will make me a bit more specialist as I think it's the time to know and familiar with something more than ever before, I just haven't found that yet. So, I need everybody's sincere input to find my nature.
Well, may you can find benefit from this short writing, kindly thanks for reading.

Wassalamualaikum