Well, you get the idea, there are a bunch of things you could do. Since it is impossible for you to learn all of SAS, you specialize. Everyone does that to some extent, but we\u2019re not talking about everyone, we\u2019re talking about you. My suggestion, if you ask me, which you kind of did, since you are reading my book, is that you don\u2019t specialize too early in your career. For the past 29 years, I have been using SAS, but that has been twenty-nine years of roaming all over the map. I\u2019ve written papers on all of those topics above and more \u2013 complex survey designs, macros, data visualization, logistic regression, data quality, mixed models. I\u2019ve published articles in scientific journals using factor analysis, repeated measures Analysis of Variance using PROC GLM and even SAS Enterprise Guide. The organizations where I worked ranged from one of the largest corporations in the world to a small consulting company I started with two partners to a university \u2013 and almost everything in between. I\u2019ve never worked for organized crime or llama breeders, although I have worked on a couple of projects involving buffalo (photographic evidence of actual buffalo submitted herein).<\/p>\n Given my own experience, I was troubled by the advice that the key to career success is to be the foremost specialist in some obscure application or language. That doesn\u2019t fit with my experience at all. If I\u2019d followed that advice I\u2019d still be trying to program in Foresight, Fortran, BASIC and Tel-A-Graf.<\/p>\n I could have done actual research, but that would have required reading some academic journals and reading them is almost as boring as writing them (trust me, I know). Instead, I sent a shout-out on Twitter, got responses from smart people and quoted them. This is not, contrary to false allegations by my enemies, a lazy way of avoiding actual work \u2013 well, it is, but it\u2019s also known as crowd-sourcing, accessing social media and leveraging Web 2.0 capabilities. That sounds so much better.<\/p>\n Responses varied, from statistician, Dr. Peter Flom<\/a>, who took the compromise view that people could have success either as a specialist or a generalist. Then, there was Jon Pelletier<\/a>, one of the foremost consultants in the nation, pushing the envelope with Excel. He, not surprisingly, thought whether specialization was a good thing depended on how in demand your specialty is.<\/p>\n The one who best summed up my view on the whole generalist versus specialist question was Evan Stubbs of SAS Institute in Australia <\/a>who said.<\/p>\n Fly high, fall far; pay\u2019s good for specializing until you go the way of the buggy whip. Generalists fit anywhere, learn faster<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Buffalo](\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/buffalo-2-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Sullys")
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