Some smart people specialise in one subject and can put it in their bio so everyone knows they’re an expert. Some dumbasses like me just read a lot of books and follow a lot of proper experts and definitely cannot sum up all that shit in a bio. So, if anyone’s curious about what sort of thing I actually do have a sort of mediocre level of expertise in, I have compiled a partial list.
Primarily: I have a BA in Social Policy (highly specific to AoNZ, obviously) with a minor in Māori Studies. I would have preferred this to be the other way around, but you cannot major in Māori Studies unless you take te reo all the way through to third year, and I hit a wall hard at the start of second year. However as part of both of these I did a lot of papers on Aotearoa’s sociopolitical history especially focusing on Māori.
Secondarily: Because I was studying part time, in order to maintain my Studylink benefits I needed to study all year round without a break for summer so that I’d still be taking a full time course load, just spread out over longer. Since the university only offers limited courses in the summer I basically just enrolled in whatever sounded cool. Thanks to this I’ve also taken papers on Fascism, The Black Death “and other plagues” (mostly leprosy tbh), an anthropology paper on Food and Eating, Macroeconomics (which I hated), and a few others. In previous attempts to get a degree I’ve also studied things like English literature and Greek drama.
In the workplace: Disregarding food service and retail my main occupational experience has been a couple of years at the Red Cross processing financial aid for disaster relief and four years as senior technical support for a company I’m not technically supposed to name but which produces high end consumer electronics like computers, phones, tablets, smart tv devices, and smart watches. As well as specific product knowledge I was there long enough to learn a lot about systematic troubleshooting and general technical knowledge.
Special interests: All of that stuff at least has some formal grounding. I also think science is super cool, though surprisingly less technology and more things based in nature or anthropology/sociology – I’m fascinated by why things are the way they are and how they work. Some of my recent saves to my Pocket account include: the study of a Mesozoic era bird fossil, Navaornis hestiae; an literature review of academic articles on pitched ant battles; a piece about a man who salvages pieces of old cruise ships from ship graveyards; and a Scientific American article about people still in prison based on flawed evidence about the now-debunked Shaken Baby Syndrome. (Also an awful lot about long covid and current affairs.) As a kid my first major obsession was dog breeds and later fantasy worldbuilding and folklore. As an adult I’ve kept pet rabbits, including one who was disabled after an e.cuniculi infection as a baby. I adore native birds.