Not the parent but "passionate" can come across as code for things like all-consuming interest that I will do morning, noon, night, and weekends. It's just one of those BS words used in phrases like "We only want team members with a passion for their work" that turns a lot of people off and makes them suspect that what they really want are team members who will put in 80-hour weeks.

Read the definition of passionate. People mean enthusiastic and misuse passionate. I have no idea why, they do it, other than as a completely arbitrary way to discount others whenever they want.

That's not passion. That's a reasonable, experimental approach to problem solving.