How My Curiosity Began

It’s been bothering me for a few months now. 

The younger version of myself saw everyone in the workforce as the quintessential master of their craft. But with three internships under my belt, I have already seen that that is not always true.

On the verge of graduating with a degree in Political Science and no job, for no valid reason, I feel tremendous pressure to have a wildly successful career. Even without employment, I already feel like I need to ascend quickly in my profession, earn a lot of money, and become distinguished in my field- to make the education I got worthwhile. With my whole career ahead of me, it feels like anything is possible, but at this very moment, nothing is available.

I know where I want to get to. But the more I envision my dream, the more I question when I’ll know that I’ve reached “level: expert.”

Experts are all around me. My dad is an expert. My professors are experts. The maintenance man who came last week to fix my air conditioning is an expert (or at least I think he is, the air conditioner has been working much better since he left). Experts exist in every field- so how do I make sure that I become one?

The term “expert” works as a great goal, but not a good measuring stick of progress. I know exactly where I want to get professionally, but I still do not know how to take the first step towards expertise, or how to know when I’ve gotten there. Consider that expertise is a level on a larger workforce hierarchy, from least expert to most expert. What would be between me and an expert?

I was immediately drawn to the notion of job specialization. Experts are experts on a relatively small breadth of information. Specializing is the practice of picking that small niche within a field to hone into. As a lawyer specializing would be simple- I could just pick to specialize in something like real estate or civil rights issues.

But the more I began to observe specialization in my life, outside the context of being a lawyer, I noticed that it was not always what I wanted. Sometimes specialization is inefficient. 

I’ll offer an example: A few weeks ago a very high pitched squeaking noise sounded every time I pressed on the brakes of my car. I was hesitant to get it looked at, knowing how long car mechanics take, but ultimately I decided that the sound needed to be checked out. 

I went online to make an appointment at the Ford dealership near me, which had no available appointments for over three weeks. I was uneasy about driving for weeks on squeaky brakes for that long, but with the alternative being perpetually driving with squeaky brakes, I booked the appointment. 

Three weeks later, I drove my car to the dealership and explained to the man behind the desk that the brakes were squeaky and I was concerned for my safety. The dealership employee checked his computer screen once with an unsettling grin, then a second time. He explained to me that I made an appointment with the oil change and tire rotation team, not the brakes team. 

I didn’t even know they had different teams. I just wanted the squeaking to stop.

After waiting three weeks for this appointment, I was angry; how could there not be a single mechanic at the whole shop who knew how to fix my brakes? These “teams”, which were created to promote efficiency, had now wasted my Thursday morning. 

There were probably several mechanics on the tire rotation team that had the skills to check my brakes and determine the problem. In reality, all I needed was to have someone wipe down my brake pads. 

The issue that the dealership had was that no one who they deemed to specialize in brakes had time to check out my car. But I didn’t need an expert- ​​after I got my car back, the mechanic told me I probably could have wiped down the brake pads myself. I just needed someone with slightly more information than me.

So then my answer to becoming an expert was still not answered. Specialization is not linear with expertise sitting at the very end. It is more nuanced than that. In some situations, like with my brakes, less specialization is optimal to more specialization.

Maybe there are some instances where you can bypass specialization to get to expertise. Perhaps there are situations where some expertise did not stem from specialization in any sense.

Is there anyone that everyone considers an expert?

A few celebrities stand out in American society as plainly accepted experts: Gordon Ramsey is an expert chef, and Dr. Anthony Fauci is a disease transmission expert. Those are people that are constantly referred to and quoted in the media, and who’s advice or recommendations would be blindly accepted by nearly every American, simply based on their credentials. 

But if my mom told me to add more cumin to a recipe, I would listen to her recommendation just the same as I would Chef Ramsey.

It is not true that the value of experts relies on our acceptance of their opinions, because we accept the opinions of people we plainly do not regard as experts as well. 

And at times we reject the suggestions of experts. Sometimes when we don’t like what the doctor tells us, we go for a second opinion, fundamentally ignoring the first expert.

There are some people who’s advice or opinion I would always accept, though.

The person who stands out to me as among the most objective experts in America is Tom Brady- expert NFL quarterback. Brady has more seasons played, played in more Super Bowls, and won more Super Bowls won (the list goes on and on and on) than any other quarterback in NFL history, and he is still actively playing. But if we accept that Brady is a certified, unarguable expert, the question arises: when did he become an expert? After his first season, or his first championship, or his third championship, or his fifth championship? 

I don’t aspire to be an expert like Brady. No one is like Brady. I would be more than happy to be an expert like my dad. 

My dad is a rabbi. For the first sixteen years of his career, he worked at a synagogue. Now, he is the CEO of a non profit aimed towards helping Jews in hospice. My dad has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and World Religion and a masters degree in Hebrew Letters. Yet, with almost no formal business training, he has found a way to run a very successful business.

My dad, according to nearly every metric, is not an expert at running a business- he doesn’t have any business degrees or years of experience running a business. When I think of a business expert, I definitely do not think Rabbi Krakoff. Yet even without all the credentials that I thought it took to be an expert, he is actively running an efficient well oiled machine. So does that make him an expert?

These sequences of thoughts were the first seedlings in my skepticism of expertise. As a child, I plainly accepted that adults were all experts because they all knew loads more than I did, so I was in no place to question their skill. Relative to the person I was, everyone seemed to be an expert.

However, relative to the person I am now, that notion is shifting. As I apply to jobs, I have questioned more than ever what other candidates have that I do not. Plainly, there are a lot of people in the workforce that I no longer consider an expert, because I am confident that I could do their job the same, or better than they do it.

I decided to take this opportunity and to create a focused thought experiment where I evaluate the value of expertise, especially among popular job fields in the American workforce. 

My examination is focused on asking hard questions and searching for the answers. I felt that it was appropriate that my project reflect that exact mindset, and I have highlighted some of the key thought provoking questions that guided my exploration. These are the questions that perpetuated my understanding of what it means to be an expert.

Plainly, I want to be an expert. But what does it take?