The other day I was talking with schoolkids at a college, so today in the “Students Are Curious” column, a question from them:
Tell us about the influence of fiction on a specialist. Should one read fiction?
Fiction should be read while you’re still in school. There’s a lot of free time, you can read anything and everything, and all these made-up plots can really hold a reader’s attention.
When you get older, made-up worlds and characters are no longer that interesting, and the time for that has sharply decreased. What becomes interesting is how the real world works, what real people did, how they achieved success, what they did well, what they did badly. Fiction books won’t help here in any way. Specialized literature will help: technical, political, books on business, psychology, self-development, and so on.
Though I do know people who, at 30, keep living in the world of elves and reading about a little mithril chainmail shirt.
In previous installments:
— Students Are Curious about choosing a major.
— Students Are Curious about completing a course after the deadline.
— Students Are Curious about choosing a programming language.
— Students Are Curious about submitting a thesis.
Interested in my opinion on any issue of university life? Send your questions to volodymyr.obrizan@gmail.com. Anonymity is guaranteed. Answers will be published as questions come in. You can also ask questions through the anonymous questions site http://ask.fm/obrizan