Talking to strangers

As I’m waiting at the Apple store to get my battery replaced and clicking away on my typewriter, this handsome gentleman in front of me started asking me about my device and struck up a conversation. I’m just always amazed at how sort of bad I am at these types of small talk. I don’t know what it is about me; I spend most of my life with headphones on, trying to avoid these types of situations, for better or for worse. I personally prefer to spend that time in my head listening to a beautiful piece of music. I just got a whiff that the guy in front of me is in finance, which is the line of work of one of my good friends that I just made, who’s actually also, I’ve noticed, really good with small talk. 

I’ve noticed that the business type is really good at this kind of casual conversation. It is a small talk profession. There is a saying that people who are sort of smarter, I feel, have trouble with these types of personalities. I’ve heard that people in the workforce have something against individuals who aspire toward the 4.0 GPA: the awkward, nerdy stereotype. Yet I’m neither awkward nor really a nerd. I’m just sort of better, and I think this toxic mentality is used to justify not working as hard or getting more for less. I think most people in this world, at the end of the day, are still a bit lazy. The average person is very average. 

But back to business as a profession. At WashU, many people who couldn’t handle the premed curriculum there turned to the business school, which I’ve always found sort of interesting. At the end of the day, the amount of money made is about the same. Within our society, for better or for worse, I think there is currently such a strong focus on making money. For so many people in our society, success means amassing a lottery-style fortune and being able to stop working indefinitely. I don’t know if that’s my personal definition of success. It sounds like a very boring life, after all, and one that is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. I don’t know how I would respond to all that. 

As of now, pursuing architecture after a stint in neuroscience is a bit of a gamble. Neuroarchitecture as a field just sounds really out there. There are not many people doing that at the moment, partly because architects do not have the knowledge to understand neuroscience, and neuroscientists are not architects. I would effectively be a bridge between the two very distinct fields, and I think I would be able to carve out a unique niche that very few people can inhabit. It would be really interesting, actually, to do that job.