<p>I know somebody that is very intellectuallly curious. Most careers require specialization.</p>
<p>What is out there for people who are intellectually curious over a vast number of areas?</p>
<p>This guy has read the Bible cover to cover (he is not religious). He has read the entire internal revenue code. He is into politics, sports, economics, science, philosophy, food, etc. He is not an expert but he has written software programs.</p>
<p>He is thinking of law school. </p>
<p>Anyway, this doesn’t have to be about the guy I am mentioning.</p>
<p>What’s out there for those that are interested in many fields?</p>
<p>Agree with law. Would add market or consumer research, industry financial analysis, business development. new product development, change management.</p>
<p>I think of intellectually curious people as problem solvers, not just information absorbers.
A good career for those people, might be something along the lines of an ergonomics engineer.</p>
<p>Architecture can be like this. Each time I do a different kind of project I learn how that business runs. I don’t do a lot of commercial work any more, but thanks to various jobs I know a lot more than I did before about: factories for trains, laundries for hospitals, restaurants, Montessori schools, daycare centers, laundromats, and boutique stores. I also learned about Anthroposophical beliefs from a client who wanted us to use colors based on those ideas.</p>
<p>I agree that law is a good choice for such a person. There are many different areas of the law that will be continually intellectually stimulating, certainly not all areas but there are many. The key, though, is that those areas usually are for the top performers in law school.</p>
<p>My husband is that kind of person. He is a lawyer. He doesn’t find it particularly intellectually stimulating and feels that most jobs in that field are not. Even when is is working on an interesting case, the fact is that there is a lot of tedious work involved in doing research, etc. and you are often stuck learning about one very particular subject. For those who have multiple and varied interests, it might not be that stimulating.</p>
<p>I am surprised by the inclusion of law as a career for the intellectually curious, but that might come from my own misunderstanding of what lawyers do. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be to explore an academic career.</p>
<p>He would make a good librarian. You have to be able to help people find information in all fields, and the broader your interests and education, the easier that is. You can get a master’s degree in information science, and specialize in one aspect of that.</p>
<p>It will definitely depend on what type of practice you have and the area of law chosen, as I mentioned above. There are many areas of the law that are tedious and repetitive, but not all lawyers do that type of work. Having been married to a lawyer for 35+ years who is probably the smartest person I know and who is an intellectually curious individual, I can say that he has found his work to be intellectually challenging and interesting for most of his career, once past the first few years. He is very successful at what he does and not everyone can reach that level so it’s clearly not the type of work/position that every lawyer is going to achieve.</p>
<p>I vote for academic. Sure you need to specialize to get a PhD, but for the most part you have freedom to study what you want (especially post tenure). If you choose a more interdisciplinary field, such as my own, even moreso. We need more people that can span disciplines and make connections between them; some of the most amazing discoveries have emerged from taking what was understood in one field and integrated into another. And by nature, academics are intellectually curious and constantly trying to figure things out, so you have lots of company.</p>
<p>^Honestly I never got the impression my father a foreign service officer ever learned much beyond the politics/economics of a country on a very macro level. Well he visited a lot of schools and coffee plantations. It always seemed incredibly boring to me.</p>