Right. I'm sympathetic with the general thrust of the arguments here (and agree the incentives are misaligned), but intellectual curiosity isn't a good beast-of-burden.
I work as a programmer, but have an MFA in creative writing (poetry).
The messy human story is that I started undergrad in CS and was quickly worn down by pulling all-nighters on projects I wasn't invested in while trying to hold down a part-time night job. I realized it was over at the beginning of my second semester, in the first session of my required technical writing course.
Writing was one of very few sources of joy for me, and I knew I couldn't throw it under the steamroller, too. I'll leave a lot out--it took me a while after this to even realize I could major in writing--but I eventually came back to programming through creative projects and literary analysis in grad school.
I realize _studying art for several years to find yourself_ is a bourgeois luxury few get, but I was just a bright lower-middle-class kid from nowhere who'd never been intellectually engaged. Being engaged helps you build muscles you won't build warming a seat, but then you can use them for whatever you set your mind to.
Many of us took strange paths to get to where we are today. But finding yourself isn't just a bourgeois luxury. I would argue that any society that does not allow the cross-pollination of ideas that emerges from those journeys is poorer both spiritually and economically.
I work as a programmer, but have an MFA in creative writing (poetry).
The messy human story is that I started undergrad in CS and was quickly worn down by pulling all-nighters on projects I wasn't invested in while trying to hold down a part-time night job. I realized it was over at the beginning of my second semester, in the first session of my required technical writing course.
Writing was one of very few sources of joy for me, and I knew I couldn't throw it under the steamroller, too. I'll leave a lot out--it took me a while after this to even realize I could major in writing--but I eventually came back to programming through creative projects and literary analysis in grad school.
I realize _studying art for several years to find yourself_ is a bourgeois luxury few get, but I was just a bright lower-middle-class kid from nowhere who'd never been intellectually engaged. Being engaged helps you build muscles you won't build warming a seat, but then you can use them for whatever you set your mind to.