Being a generalist can be a great move — especially if you’re interested in taking responsibility and leadership roles.
The question is how to educate yourself as a generalist. No one can read the entire library.
Even a gen-ed, core, or unstructured curriculum only provides a certain type of breadth. It will not necessarily prepare you to succeed as a generalist, per se.
Successful generalists don’t merely know a little about a lot. Instead, they’re successful because they’re able to connect the dots between the things they genuinely know something about.
So go ahead and make this gutsy move. But be prepared to take even more ownership for which dots you collect and connect. Finding coherence within a prospectus is, after all, good preparation for the work of a real-world generalist.
Colin Steele 