Being Well-Rounded

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Being well-rounded is nothing to feel well about. Yes, it can make life a breeze, but it can also be the forceful winds that hold you back. Yes, it can be the bridge allowing you safe passage over the rushing waters of failure, but it can also be the troll barring you from crossing to a future full of easy decisions about how you should live your life. Not too long ago, I yet again received A's on several tests in my AP classes ranging from chemistry and calculus to Spanish and economics. After hearing of this, someone congratulated me and made a remark about how good I am at everything. I thanked him and went on my way, but this incident got me thinking about how society paints perfection in all fields as the ideal goal and how colleges …show more content…

If being well-rounded is a struggle between perfecting everything now but having clue about the future, it is not good for specialization or planning. Charlotte Perkins Gillman once stated, "Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress." If being well-rounded prevents specialization, it is better to limit expertise than to have everyone try to do everything. This overall success, in a way, holds us back. It confuses us about the future and builds more pressure about the present. It makes others jealous of our performance, and it makes us jealous of the ease with which they plan their …show more content…

I'm not saying being well-rounded is entirely bad. It does help on a day-to-day basis and might be beneficial for the small things in life, but it has its limitations. As Harry Crews said, "So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design." It is easy to go through daily life as a well-rounded person, but to envy the well-rounded is to envy the Israelites during the Exodus. They are not the epitome of perfection, but a people wandering with no destination. A world in which everyone is well-rounded is a world with no progress. Well-roundedness is a curse disguised as a blessing. It is constantly having to live up to former standards while being unable to decide on plans for the future. The dark side of the well-rounded moon is the absence of specialization and progress. Rhetorical

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