Hello everyone,

 

I'm still in PhD, electrical engineering, and have been thinking. How could someone acquire expertise and become skillful in more than three different areas at the same time ?!. I mean how can i be very good with electronics and circuits, .. science/maths/physics, ... scientific writing(to publish papers) , and having good teaching skills.

Each one of these fields require lot of effort and time to be mastered, and i wonder how researchers are managed to do that.

 

What are your opinions ?

These skills all overlap to a degree: teaching is a different skill to maths say, but while learning to teach you will also be going over your knowledge in maths, filling in blanks. I've found teaching to be a great way to learn. In your scientific writing you can also focus on the science you know best, again allowing you to mull over what you think you already know while developing the skills to write.

From the research side I would advise against being too broad. It is much harder to get funding if people think you are not a specialist. Instead, collaborations are preferred during which you learn additional things without specializing in it.

If by skill you mean teaching, leading, bench skill, writing skill, administrative, then it is mostly by doing and learning along the way. Key is good time management as it will take a lot of time.