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RunnerGrad

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  1. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to BiochemMom in The Ph.D. Pay Gap   
    As a comment on parenting in grad school:

    Let's say a woman does every thing traditionally, by the book, and gets lucky and into grad school, post doc, and tenure track position on schedule without delays.

    18 when graduating high school.
    22 when graduating college.
    27 when finishing PhD
    30 when completing post doc
    36-37 when eligible for tenure.

    So at what point in a biological time period should a woman have a child? If our own peers don't think we should have a family, not even factoring in everyone in positions above us, why does it not scream to people loud and clear why the difference in the amount of women completing a PhD vs holding a tenured position is staggering?

    This isn't even regarding a stipend or subsidy. This is just referencing the people who feel grad school isn't the time to have kids.

    And that age is just assuming you get in first try, only do one post doc, etc. There are those of us who serve in the military prior to college (and in my case also have spouses in the military which caused it to take six years and five colleges to get my bachelors). I'm in my thirties starting graduate school (well PhD, I have an MS)--I already have one child and my husband and I will have another while I'm in school.

    Thankfully, the school I'm attending has a large amount of parents and older students, and all of my rotation PIs are not only aware of my desire to have another after oral candidacy, are fully supportive of it. Hopefully if any of my peers feel the way as some of the posters here, they'll keep their mouths shut. Either way, it's no ones business but mine and my husband's when and if I have children.
  2. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to fuzzylogician in Trouble with my PhD supervisor - advice please   
    Regardless of whether or not you tend to over-analyze and read more into things than there is, here is the deal. If you are 7 months into a job, have received 2 warnings about your performance, and then had a third conversation where your boss says they are so unhappy with you they are thinking of firing you, would you try and guess what your boss wants from you and act just on that, or would you have a conversation with them to explicitly ask what their expectations are, and come up with a plan to meet them, possibly with some built-in measures to hold you accountable? Which plan do you think has a higher likelihood of making your boss happy, and which one has a higher likelihood of failing? Now factor in your tendency to over-interpret things. Does that make you more or less inclined to coordinate expectations as opposed to guess what they are? 
  3. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to fuzzylogician in Trouble with my PhD supervisor - advice please   
    OK, I'll say it. All your posts in this thread read weirdly sexist and completely oblivious to your situation. If I didn't know any better, I might think you were describing a fight with your girlfriend.
     
    Just from this latest post: She yelled at you on Friday, you were fearing a repeat. This morning she was in a better mood than usual, but she ignored you except for frowning at you once. (This setup, mind you, is all happening in your head.) You had a normal professional meeting in the afternoon, discussing a paper you are working on together, and making plans for the next couple of weeks. (Back to stuff in your head:) She apparently wasn't in a bad mood. Therefore, you are now less convinced that she is out to get you, but you still think she is volatile and might react poorly if you have to take time off for a medical problem later. And the kicker -- you think you can now put this fight behind you, so to speak: "She at least appears to be willing to move on from the idea of me being the bad guy, just as much as I'm willing to be more astute with my organisation." I think you are misreading the situation on many levels. They have been pointed out ad nauseam so I won't repeat them again, but you really don't seem to be getting it, despite saying over and over that you accept responsibility and are willing to change. You need to realize that this is a professional job situation, and she is your boss, not your friend and not your equal.
  4. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to fuzzylogician in Trouble with my PhD supervisor - advice please   
    I think you are still not getting it. You are comparing yourself to her, but there is no basis for comparison. She is the one who has proven herself, has a PhD, and is running a lab. You are a trainee, and you are not allowed to do everything that she is. It's none of your business if she spends time talking to other professors or checking her email. 
     
    You are also ascribing all kinds of ill intent to her. She deliberately waited to talk to you to hurt you the most. She deliberately kept you off the email to the conference coordinators. Is there any evidence to support these claims? Usually in these situations the professor has other things on their mind other than inflicting maximum pain on a student. Since she waited until Friday I wouldn't be surprised if she was trying to give you a chance to approach her and fix what you've broken, and you failed to act on it. Frankly, I don't think it's too much to ask that a student send a quick email to let me know they are not coming into the lab after a vacation; a quick 'hey, my flight got delayed and I only got in this morning. I didn't get much sleep so I'm going to take the day off to recover and will be in tomorrow morning' was probably all you needed. Then you didn't apologize to her or say anything about your new results for another three days. Maybe by that point she was pissed. I would be. She's giving you a chance to fix things now; I'd take it, and stop trying to blame her for everything.
  5. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to ashiepoo72 in Parent Scholar Support   
    One of the hardest things about being a mom is overcoming the guilt when you're apart from your children. I have a 6 year old, and I wish I could say it gets easier. I've come to accept that I deserve time to be a person beyond a mother, and that's the best I can do.

    When you're busy with work and school, finding time for yourself feels like a selfish act. You're already away from your child doing "responsible" things that need to be done, why should you do "selfish" things in the time you could be with your child? At the end of the day, though, we need to teach our children to be whole people, and part of that is living as whole people ourselves.

    I know it's really hard, but all children have some level of separation anxiety and it's good for them to learn that, while their parents will be there to support and love them, they can't always physically be around. That's just life, something kids have to deal with. When they go to school, you can't be there. As they grow older, they need to learn independence, which means parents have to take a step back. It's really, really hard to do, but in the long run benefits your child.

    Don't let anyone tell you having a child in grad school is a bad idea! Honestly, my daughter is the reason I turned my life around and became serious about school. Before her, I was a rebellious and lackluster student, but once I had her I realized I needed to buckle down. I want her to see higher education as the norm, that pursuing her dreams is a worthwhile endeavor. Raising her while I go through the process is the best way to do that, in my opinion.

    Accept help where it's offered. Ask for help when you need it. Don't feel bad if you need a break for mental health or whatever reason and need to leave your child with a sitter. Raising a child, even in a society such as we have, requires a village of people and a lot of understanding. Don't let being a mom consume your entire self. It's a huge part, maybe the biggest part, but it's not all you are and no one should make you feel bad for nurturing all the parts of yourself. And you really do need to nurture all those parts--for your own happiness and fulfillment and to show your child that loving and caring for herself is what she should do as well.
  6. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Eigen in Recommendations for New PhD Students   
    The advice you're looking for is very field and personality specific. 
     
    All of the stuff that worked for me hasn't really worked for any of my colleagues- we all had different approaches that worked for us. 
     
    What you need to know going into grad school is yourself- how you work best, how you learn best, when you work best, etc. Then apply that to what you have to do. And then iterate from your results. 
     
    I've found very few broadly useful books (i.e., Getting What You Came For). Most are quite field specific, as well as specific to institutional culture. Similarly, apps/calendars/to-do lists... I don't use any regularly. TBH, none of my peers do either. I tend to have lists all over my desk and make extensive use of sticky notes. 
     
    But really, for anything, the best use of your time is to pick a couple that look good and try them. 
     
    One general recommendation I have is to read Inside Higher Ed/Chronicle of Higher Education regularly. Knowing the culture, and where your institution fits is a very, very useful thing to have in your abilities. 
     
    As to reading papers.... I think starting out, you'll get more mileage from skimming a bunch of papers/journals in your field than you will from in-depth readings. Sit down early in the week, and go through the table of contents in 4-6 journals, and read abstracts. Flag a handful of interesting looking papers to read. Skim those, then pick a couple that look really well done and read in detail. Then pick references from those papers, and repeat the cycle. 
     
    For professional fluency, nothing will help you like having a firm grasp on what's being published and what's of interest- i.e., skimming every issue of major journals in your field (and Science and Nature, usually). 
     
    But all of this is highly field specific- I'm making recommendations for chemistry/biology, but from talking to my friends in the humanities/social sciences, they would advice completely different reading methods. 
     
    I think you'll find some of the specifics you're looking for here (), and there are other similar topics in that forum if you search back relating to software, etc.
     
    The only sweeping piece(s) of advice I'll give, that I think are broadly applicable:
     
    Set aside time to read every day. Set aside time to write every day. 
    Keep track at the end of the day of what you did. This will help you looking back over your week/month/year. 
    Pick a citation manager. Which doesn't really matter. Start using it to organize all those paper's you're reading. 
    Learn TeX.
  7. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to rising_star in Recommendations for New PhD Students   
    My guess is that a lot of the specifics that you want are very much field-specific, which is why people tend not to list or discuss them. For example, my strategies for reading articles may not apply to you because, if you're into computational work, you likely pay far more attention to methods sections than I do. As for apps, a lot of that depends on whether you're PC/Android or a Mac user so again, it can be hard to say. The main thing is to find whatever works for you and stick with it, regardless of what others might think. If you write best on paper, then continue to do that even in grad school. 
  8. Upvote
    RunnerGrad got a reaction from TJCM2017 in MPH CANADA FALL 2015 APPLICANTS   
    They start in March (Nutrition and Dietetics is usually first, as they want to get their offers out before the Dietetic internship programs release their offers in early March) and continue into April. I heard back on March 6th last year. The website states mid-April to June, but most of the people I've spoken with had heard back by the end of April, at least for the MPH programs.  Of course, that may have changed this year - I'm not involved in admissions, so don't have any inside scoop!
     
    Sorry I don't have any better timeline for you.  I know the Graduate Director was working on admissions stuff this week!  Good luck.
  9. Upvote
    RunnerGrad got a reaction from TJCM2017 in MPH CANADA FALL 2015 APPLICANTS   
    Only some of the MPH streams at UofT do interviews. Nutrition and Dietetics and OEH have interviews, Health Promotion does not, and I'm not sure about the other streams. I'm in Nutrition and Dietetics, if you have questions about UofT.
  10. Downvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Karoku_valentine in Might fail master's, should I drop out?   
    Sorry, I did not know you had multiple sclerosis (as the post just said MS, which is a term I am not familiar with), I just assumed you only had depression. It is 4 weeks, so you are basically done. Talk to your professors and explain the situation, they will be understanding and will probably be lenient regarding the grading, attendance and times. You have already worked so hard for three terms, so doing your best in the exams will be enough.
  11. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to polome in Might fail master's, should I drop out?   
    Thanks, although I think people don't realise clinical depression can be equally hard to deal with. Your brain just shuts down and I am a very academic person and I have been struggling so much lately.
  12. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to rising_star in The Ph.D. Pay Gap   
    bsharpe269, again, you did it, congrats. But, that doesn't mean everyone can do it. I talk to high school students all the time who have zero clue that application fee waivers even exist. I imagine that's also true at the collegiate level. You took advantage of every opportunity you could but, there must be some financial reason why you were able to do so. That is, when I look at the college students who are working 40 hours a week in order to pay their rent on top of taking out loans to pay tuition, I don't ask myself why they aren't taking advantage of all the research opportunities around them because it's obvious that they can't. Having enough scholarships (and let's be honest, merit-based scholarships require writing specific kinds of essays and tend to go to those who get the most help with writing) or other financial aid (not loans mind you) to be able to "seize the opportunities" isn't something that's available to everyone. I've had students who are raising a child. They can't take advantage of every single opportunity because they have to balance that with childcare. And those are just a couple of examples, there are many more. Like I said before, I can go on. But, I also don't think it matters because you've clearly decided that it's up to each person to pull themselves by their bootstraps, even if they don't have boots.
  13. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to rising_star in The Ph.D. Pay Gap   
    I am really irritated with the argument that because some people persevered through rough circumstances, that somehow means that the system doesn't need to be changed. Yes, bsharpe269 and Chesire_Cat's dad persevered through this but, how many other people were unable to so we don't hear from them during this conversation (because they aren't on a forum for people applying to graduate school)? That's just like saying that because some slaves were able to escape from the South via the underground railroad, it's okay to keep the institution of slavery around. After all, if they really wanted it, they could just escape too, right? I mean, if they were dedicated enough and willing to sacrifice and not have a family, they could have their freedom. (Note: I realize that slavery and going to graduate school aren't literally the same thing. But in the sense that having a graduate education opens up new doors and opportunities that otherwise are not available to someone, it does enable them to find freedom in a certain way.)
     
    Like I said, this line of thinking is problematic because it really is "I got mine in spite of obstacles so you just don't want it enough if somehow you can't too", which totally ignores the very different realities in which people live. Just because one's parents went to college doesn't mean they're wealthy (for example, if your parents are public school teachers or social workers they may not make much). Until recently, not going to college didn't necessarily mean you couldn't earn a good wage. Think of the factory jobs with union wages that enabled blue-collar workers to have a middle class lifestyle. Some of those same workers likely put their kids through college, allowing their children to surpass their own educational level.
     
    On average though, academia is skewing toward the middle and upper classes for a variety of reasons. There are some very evident biases in what undergraduate institutions send their alums to graduate school. The threads on here from people concerned that going to "Podunk U" means they'll never get into a top graduate program are somewhat rooted in reality. So, how does one get into a good undergraduate institution? By going to a decent high school and doing well there. If your high school doesn't offer the IB program or AP classes, you're at a disadvantage when applying to the top undergrad colleges and universities. How do you get to go to one of those high schools with an AP or IB curriculum? In general in the US, you do it by paying to go to private school, living in the part of town that sends you to such a school (where rents and home values are generally higher), or by getting into a public magnet school (generally test-based so you have to do well on whatever admissions test they have you take in 7th or 8th grade). Are you really suggesting that none of that favors students who are from the middle or upper classes of society?
     
    Let's go on though, just in case. If you are taking out loans for college, will you also have money for application fees, to take the GRE, and to send your GRE scores and transcripts out to programs? Will you be able to get the credit card you need to pay for travel to interviews until you are reimbursed? If you don't have a credit card, then you're stuck paying those things out of pocket and waiting 2-8 weeks for reimbursement, during which time you've got no money in your account... (Note: I used a credit card to pay for an interview and they took... 3.5 months to reimburse me for my expenses. I used money from my savings to pay that off so that I wouldn't be paying 12.99% interest on the money I only spent because the department asked me to. If I didn't have savings, that missing $600 could've been an issue.)  The entire reimbursement culture favors those with ample savings or the ability to borrow money from their family/friends so that they aren't penniless while waiting on a reimbursement to arrive. I can go on if that would be helpful.
  14. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to TakeruK in The Ph.D. Pay Gap   
    Note: Unionization is much more common in Canada (where my MSc school was). Universities are used to working with unions because there can be as many as 6-10 different union locals/chapters on campus (representing students, postdocs, administrative staff, plant ops/custodial staff, construction, professors, researchers, etc. although sometimes they are combined). Graduate students are also generally considered public service employees because we work for provincially funded public schools and provide services to the public (e.g. teaching). So, grad student unions are the norm, not the exception in Canada.
     
    My work with the union was the Physics representative to the Union. At first, I was the one of two representatives from the STEM fields (almost all of the other disciplines that were doing well didn't even want to participate). A large part of my time was spent simply convincing other physics students that unions are a good thing for graduate students. This was a relatively new union (on the other hand, all other major Canadian schools have been unionized for many many more years). There was a lot of misconception that the students in the social sciences/humanities are trying to lower science students' stipends so that they can get an increase. 
     
    I think a union (or other collective action) can still benefit those who have their needs met. Prior to unionization, the science students have good stipends and working conditions through the grace of the department (and potentially through market forces--if they don't pay well, students can do other things). However, collective bargaining make these good conditions into contractual obligations that are independent of market forces. Once they are signed into the contract, if the University wants to take them back, it will cost them. Also, while perhaps 90% of the STEM grad students had benefits like proper sick leave and vacation time due to having reasonable supervisors, there are still some who did not. Without a contract, a student is subject to the whims of their supervisor and/or their own charisma/ability to stand up to their supervisor. And since the number of marginalized students (by definition) is small, little action is taken to help them.
     
    Overall, yes, the idea behind collective action will not help the few who are both currently well off and have the ability to negotiate for their own benefits and protection. Usually, these are people who generally have more influence in academia. But, if you have this privilege, then why not use your position of power and privilege to help those who have less? In general, I believe that those with more should help those with less. Especially since those without these privileges are going to have to spend more time on other things just to catch up--they might not have the resources to speak up for themselves. For example, if a PhD student is making $16k/year and working a part time job to support themselves, they might not have time to organize students or arrange meetings to discuss raising student stipends, even if the administration is open to such discussions. Or, a student with a less-than-ideal advisor-advisee relationship might be afraid of backlash if they tried to lobby the department for better sick leave policies.
     
    If we want to be responsible members of our community, then, when we have privilege, we should speak up for those who cannot. Otherwise, we risk creating a community where there will only be people like us. In some industries, this might not be a big deal, but in academia, where the diversity of ideas/experiences is supposedly critical (e.g. all the worry about doing all your degrees in one place), I think we're hurting ourselves when we make academia more exclusive/restrictive.
  15. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to dr. t in The Ph.D. Pay Gap   
    As someone who has had experience in both STEM and the Humanities, you're buying wholesale into a pernicious myth. The skill sets are different; there is no "greater learning curve", one discipline is not "less skilled" than another. It was not somehow easier for me to master Latin than it was for me to understand differential equations.
  16. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Threeboysmom in First Year Students Fall 2014 How's It Going   
    My first year is officially over.  Yay!!  Since I am attending part time I still have three years left to go however I survived the first year and I am so proud of myself that I have made it this far.  I have a three week break before my summer session begins.  I'm looking forward to binge watching Netflix and a short getaway just me myself and I.  
  17. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to fuzzylogician in First Poster Presentation - a few questions   
    No one in linguistics uses business cards. Not saying you can't have them, but I have never seen them exchanged. People might write their contact info on their handout, but that's it. It's a small enough field, it's not that hard to find someone who you were talking to.
     
     
    I'll try and look. Stay tuned. 
     
    Putting an introduction in the top left corner is the "traditional" thing and there is nothing wrong with that. But think about it this way: the first box is the first thing people are going to read. If they read just that and have to decide based on that if they are interested, will the background set up an intriguing problem? Or is it technical stuff you need to know to ask the question? Or is it possibly confusing without knowing the rest or what the point is? The goal of putting a take-home message there is that if they read no further and move on, they still know the gist of your poster even if they aren't going to find out why you say the things you do. It maximizes the chances that the people who should read your poster actually will. I find it the most effective. (But yes, it possibly makes for a less traditional structure.)
  18. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Vene in Getting off to a good start   
    Would you prefer this? (Journal link)
     
    Figures 1 and 2 are key:


     
    Sustained overtime lead to enough of a decline that they would have been better off just doing a 40 hour week. For example, that asymptote for figure 1 is below 75%, but even rounding up to 75% yields 0.75*50 hours = 37.5 hours. By week 12, they were doing less work in 50 hours than what would have been done in 40 hours if they never started 50 hour workweeks.
  19. Downvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Igotnothin in Getting off to a good start   
    Highly doubt this is true. Randomize 100 workers to work 60 hours for a week, and another 100 to work 40 hours, and compare any measure of performance. Pretty sure the 60 hours/week group gets more done. Not that I'd want to work that much.
  20. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Vene in Getting off to a good start   
    It's been done. This has been known about for 100 years.
     


  21. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to VirtualMessage in The Graduate School Ponzi Scheme   
    This is what our profession has become: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/05/11/essay-instructor-who-has-taught-adjunct-25-years
     
     
    I know for some people on this thread it's the adjunct's own fault-- how dare they let themselves be exploited! And I know for many others that you believe a degree from Berkeley or Chicago or Princeton or Purdue R/C will deliver you to the coveted precincts of success even if you have to acknowledge you're still playing a game of chance (albeit with weighted die). But there is simply no way around the grim realities of higher education at the present time: it exploits an entire class of workers--the vast majority of its instructional, professional, highly-educated adjunct faculty. This happens at nearly every institution in the country, and it should be openly and frequently condemned by every member of our profession. There is no room for equivocations, qualifications, and excuses if you're interested in challenging what has become the status quo. Remonstrance should be integral to the rhetoric of professionalization graduate faculty preach, but for reasons discussed here, most remain silent and aloof. However, we are all in grave professional danger. In the words of Frederick Douglas, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." Start demanding that those with power use their tenure, their security, and their words to protest the untenable labor practices at our Universities that are destroying professional lives, crippling scholarly inquiry, and cheating students out of the education they pay dearly to receive. 
  22. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to fuzzylogician in Advice needed for ending a rotation that wasn't supposed to end...   
    It has to be about objective reasons and about you, not the PI. The best way to talk about it is to say that you've learned through doing this current rotation that your interests have changed and that they are now more in line with the work you were doing in your previous rotation. Make sure you say (and repeat) how grateful you are to have been given the opportunity to be in your current lab and how much you've learned. Thank the PI for all he's done for you, mention nothing about his personality. If he is great but you want to do research he doesn't support, it's much easier to make a clean break than if you make it about your personal fit. 
  23. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to TakeruK in Don't want to feel like I'm always bragging   
    Again, I think you are interpreting what GeoDUDE! and I are saying in a way that lets you best present our statements as ridiculous statements. Or maybe it's just because we are not saying things very clearly. So I will try again:
     
    1. I don't mean that all scientists should literally memorize and rehearse an exact 30 second elevator pitch.
     
    2. I don't mean that if you do not do exactly this, your chances of getting grants is severely decreased.
     
    3. What I do mean is that we should take the time to think about what parts of our research is important and/or interesting to each specific audience. For some people, it really might mean memorizing an exact 30 second pitch because they are the type of people that do that well. For others, like me, it means preparing myself for every scientific conversation (with scientists, since now we're talking about grants and career stuff rather than small talk at a party) by outlining a few key points that I want to make sure I get out in 30 seconds or so. I like the not-memorizing part because I am bad at memorizing and I also feel that this method gives me more room to customize to each audience.
     
    4. When people evaluate your grants, they are not going to call you up and say "Give me a 30 second pitch, NOW!". The sentiment behind our statements was simply that researchers should take some care to think about how they are communicating, not just what they are communicating. If you don't take time to think about this, it will reflect poorly in other ways when it comes to grant proposals. Off the top of my head, it can hurt your grant proposal because i) your proposal (with strict word/page limits) may not be the tuned well enough to convince the judges, ii) proposals in my field are NOT blind, so the better you communicate your work at conferences or other presentations, the more people already know about your research and your ability prior to judging your proposal, and this helps, and iii) good communication ability will help you supplement your scientific ability by showcasing what you know and can do in the best possible light; this will indirectly help you do things that are good for your career and getting grants (e.g. getting oral presentations instead of posters, being invited to give talks at conferences or seminars, etc.)
     
    Overall, I hate it when I go to a conference and I meet someone at the poster session or coffee break and I ask "what do you work on?" and then they spend 10 minutes boring me (and I'm too polite to just walk away) or they have clearly not thought about what they wanted to say to me, so the narrative is convoluted and I don't remember it as well as they could have. This means I probably will not talk to them again in the future and will know less about their awesomeness. Similarly, some people give incredibly poor oral presentations at conferences and this not only causes me to tune out (and not learn what awesomeness they are doing) but I will also remember this person in a bad light. In a field where there is a lot of interesting work going on, when I have to pick what talk I attend in the future, there's no way I'm going to waste more of my time listening to someone I know is bad at communicating when there are tons of other people that do it so much better.
  24. Downvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to Igotnothin in Don't want to feel like I'm always bragging   
    The idea that you're not going to be taken seriously as a researcher and will be less likely to get grants because you don't have a rehearsed 30-second elevator pitch is crazy. How on earth would this affect your chances of getting grant money?
     
    If you're a normal person, you can briefly tell people what you do when they ask.
  25. Upvote
    RunnerGrad reacted to rising_star in Don't want to feel like I'm always bragging   
    A combination of what eteshoe and TakeruK have said is my approach to dealing with this. (For background, I went to a school whose name wows people, got grad degrees in a field whose name confuses people, and just generally don't care about that at all anymore.) If you can't explain what you do in 1-2 sentences to the average person, you are going to struggle to get national grants and on the job market. Period. I say this because on an academic job interview, you will meet with people outside your department, like the dean, who want to know quite quickly what you do and why it matters. The better you get at explaining this now, the better off you will be. That's the explanation you use at a dinner party or social event. The next thing is to then transition the conversation away from you (especially if you're worried it seems like you're bragging) and toward the other person/people by asking what they do and getting interested in it.
     
    FWIW, if you don't want to talk about sports and celebrities, then it's on you to shift the conversation or to find other people to talk to. 
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