A Little Career Advice From Albert Einstein

Forbes

21 hours ago

Albert Einstein statue in Washington, D.C.
Many years from now, historians will look back and see Albert Einstein as much a philosopher as they do a scientist. Here's one example of why.
For nearly 40 years years, friends of ours hosted a lovely New Year's Eve party where many local friends, who have known each other for what seems to be forever, celebrate together. We're all well into our seventies and eighties, and parties like that are history, but lessons remain.
Get a broad-based education
Of all the subjects I've addressed over the 22 years I've been writing, the one that came up most at these parties was my series of articles imploring college students (with the support of their parents) to get a broad-based education, not just an intense, narrowly defined four-year vocational training in chemistry, finance, communications, or anything else. Interesting, no?
Here's why this is interesting. By now, all of us are way past putting our kids through school, so we've got a deep perspective on it. Not only that, but as I looked around the sixty or so revelers, what I saw was a house full of very successful people: business executives, entrepreneurs, a published novelist, a judge, a doctor and other healthcare professionals, a creative advertising executive, a former mayor and other elected officials, a film festival executive director, IT professional, a couple of professors, school teachers, and the list goes on.
What struck me is, we all had something in common; to a man and woman, we all enjoyed the benefits of great liberal arts educations as underpinnings of our specific areas of success. And decades later, we'd all had interesting, successful careers. Proof of the value of being well and liberally educated was all over the place.
As a career coach and teacher, I've been strongly critical of the heavy over-emphasis on narrow training while ignoring broad education, of the rising number of college students who are pressured into selecting a major in their freshman year, of teenagers who are being asked to decide what to do for the rest of their lives and then putting the blinders on, of the loss of the opportunity to fill out as human beings. It's only gotten more extreme.
Delay the declaration of a major
If I had a magic wand to wave over the higher education system, it would be to delay the declaration of a major until a real education has taken place. To those who argue that graduates with degrees in finance, accounting, engineering, and IT are the ones who get the highest paid jobs out of college, I say you're right – in the short term. I also ask you to take a longer view.
From the perspective of a career coach, I can tell you that, after years in the workforce, these things tend to level off, for a very compelling reason. Leadership demands – among other things – perspective, versatility, multi-dimension, a sense of social responsibility, and an identification with global citizenship. So go ahead and get into chemical engineering if that's your interest, but while you're at it, take courses in literature, history, logic, ethics, world affairs, writing, psychology, sociology, and – for sure – a foreign language.
Starting a career well is one thing. To keep rising is entirely another. From the perspective of just one person at a great party, I can point to example after proven example of this point.
Take it from Einstein, if you must
Now let me elevate this point. Coincidentally, I've been reading Ideas and Thoughts by Albert Einstein. Published a year before his death, it's a collection of many of his papers, letters, and lectures. In a 1952 essay entitled 'Education for Independent Thought' published in The New York Times, he wrote:
'It is not enough to teach man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.
'These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not – or at least not in the main – through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the 'humanities' as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.
'Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.
Independent critical thinking
'It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system).'
Adamant as I've been on this subject, if I haven't made my point well enough or often enough, I should think 'Education for Independent Thought' does.
Useful machine, well trained dog, or harmoniously developed person. The choice is all yours.