During this nearly a year of conceptualizing my movie, I've thought quite a bit about what appears to be useless information. I hear from lots of undergrads the aggrevation of having to take courses outside their interest or major area. Our typical response is that a University's goal is to give students a broad range of general information and knowledge along with more specific knowledge in a single subject area. As we progress further in academia, to a master's and then the PhD., we are increasingly specializing by continuing to narrow the subject area.
I was there, too. When I had to take a lab science before I got my B.A., I chose geology. It seemed so outside my interests, but at least I could rationalize the choice by a) having a son, I thought that by knowing rocks I'd be the cool mom, and b) political science and geology are forever united in issues such as water, climate change and other policy issues. I was more interested however in attaining the cool mom status. A turning point with my son was picking up a chunk of gypsum and, knowing it only ranks a 2 on the Mohs hardness scale, I easily broke it into two pieces. He thought I was a super human. He knows better now.
Anyway, in spite of the poli sci/geology connection, I did pick up a lot of (seemingly) useless information along the semester. And not only geology...so many classes which at the time felt needless and dull and insignificant are today finding their way into my movie. Crazy how that works. One grad class that has caused so much brain damage has been philosophy of science. I won't go into why it frustrates me to no end, but it was during this class that I found the key to making my movie concept plausible. I still have the reading that triggered the inspiration and someday I will frame it. So much for useless classes. From now on, I'll just take whatever classes I'm told to take and then say thank you.
Stepping down from soapbox.
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