STEM Major

In college (at the University of Washington (Go Dawgs!)) I was a "STEM" major. STEM is, of course, "Science, technology, engineering, and math." I was an engineering major (pulp and paper engineer to be exact, which meant I took a lot of chemical engineering classes; never worked so hard for "C"s in my life). But when you take engineering, you take a lot of math (up through differential equations in my case), science (three years of chemistry), and, of course, engineering. You don't have a lot of time to learn about literature, art, history, etc. So I am the first to admit when subjects such as literature come up, I'm not the most educated person in that subject (doesn't help that I mostly read science fiction, too).

Now I have managed to learn some things along the way. When I was younger my brain was a sponge and picked up all sorts of things. Now days it's more like an old, dried out sponge that doesn't absorb very well. But, for instance, when I watch Jeopardy, art and poetry are usually my weakest subjects.

Now I do have this skill. For music from 1960 - 1990 I can "name that tune" quite often and usually identify the artist, too. I didn't try to learn them, my brain absorbed them. And slowly I learn more. I finally found out that his is what Nude Descending a Staircase looks like:

Meh, modern art.

The people who impress me are people who understand their STEM area of expertise, but also have knowledge of literature, art, humanities, etc. I'm not, at the moment, one of them.