A sesquipedalian I am not. A dilettante?

A few years ago, when I was reviewing applications from students for the Honors Program, I had to pause and re-read a word in one of the applications.  Sesquipedalian.

Sesqui... what?

I had to refer to a dictionary and understand that word.  The story of my life, actually!

Even a few months ago, when a friend commented that I was a raconteur, I referred to a dictionary to find out what he meant.  Relieved I was after finding out it was a compliment!  I then emailed him about the dictionary experience and he thought I was playing him for the fool. And, I proudly wore that badge!  I tell ya, some day soon people will realize that I mean it when I say I don't know a damn thing and that is when I will be fired.  Until then, I will keep collecting my paycheck; thank you very much! ;)

Throughout my formative years, I was very happy with the rather limited vocabulary I had.  It didn't bother me one bit that I didn't have a wide range of fancy words to choose from.  Whenever my father quoted something from Shakespeare, well, there were times I wondered whether that was a foreign language he was speaking.

The five-cent words served my purpose well.  Perhaps that is also why I so much loved, and love, the works by Hemingway and Bradbury, for instance.  Simple story telling, while the stories themselves are far from simple and are profound.

But then came the GRE requirement to apply to graduate schools in the US.  Those GRE words are something else!  I had no choice but to add at least a few more to my database.

Which is when I came across a word that caught my attention: dilettante.

If curiosity killed the proverbial cat, well, curiosity is why I am stuck where I am!  Anyway, the curious me looked up that word in the primitive dictionary I had in those pre-internet days.

I was shocked with the meaning.  I felt it was directed at me.  I was a dilettante.  No, I am a dilettante.

I worried that, given my limited abilities, I will come across, at best, as a dilettante after an undergrad in engineering and graduate studies in a completely different field.  While I have no recollection of what I found from that primitive dictionary, here is Google's explanation of the word:

a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.

You see why I was worried then, and why I am concerned even now?

It is one thing to be a polymath, but very few of us can be that versatile.  Most of us struggle to do even one thing well.  A polymath wannabe like me then risks being nothing more than a dilettante?

Maybe it is best to not know anything anymore.  Ignorance can be blissful, as my life experiences tell me.

Wait, maybe I should search for a fancy GRE word for ignorance, eh!