Anyone ever confused by your profession?

[Piwi]

People understand what statistics is about (more or less), but they don't understand why anyone in their right mind would choose to study it...

Other Person: "So what're you doing next year?"

Me: "I'm applying to graduate programs in statistics!"

Other Person: "... statistics?.... but why?!"

Me: "Well, I enjoy it and think it's useful."

Other Person: "You know you can prove anything using statistics - whether it's right or wrong."

Me: "..."

(This is actually more like conversations my mother has with people in my hometown when they ask about me)

[gildedProgressive]

History's not exactly a mysterious profession, but I do run into situations where people think I should just KNOW EVERYTHING. They have no concept that history is so BIG, and there's no way I can possibly know EVERYTHING they ask. So I'll have people asking me specific questions about history I had years ago and cannot, for the life of me, recall. Also, when I try to explain my research projects, people don't seem to understand why I can't just write what amounts to a compound book review. Probably my favorite, though, was when we took a "field trip" in a class I took about gathering local history. We went to the County Administration Building, and as the lady was helping me find some Incorporation papers for some work I was doing about a local hospital, she turns to my professor (one of my LOR writers, present supervisor) and asks, "So, do you just have them writing about old stuff?" Yeah. We had a good chuckle about that afterwards.

[jacib]

And the moderately more well-informed - "Like the guy who created Klingon?"

+1

This one had me stifling my laughs at work. You cannot fault him (and I am almost certain it was a "him") for inaccuracy. I am just trying to imagine a life where that's the main contact one has with linguistics...

Edited January 20, 2010 by jacib

[jacib]

I have had a few opposite experiences: first of all, when I said at one point that I was considering becoming a Rabbi, my father spent the next 30 minutes explaining why I should be a social worker...

My father is a sociologist, and I refused to even learn what a sociologist does until college. I just told people he was a teacher or a professor. When they asked, I'd say sociologist. And if they asked what that was, I'd just shrug.

Basically I'm warning you all: your children might be as ignorant of what you do as strangers are.

Edited January 20, 2010 by jacib

[Mumbet]

Me: I study theology.

Non-Christian: (raises eyebrows)

Me: ...in the Middle Ages.

Non-Christian: (sighs in relief)

Hahaha, this is exactly how I would react.

Me: I study theology.

Conservative Christian: So you want to teach?

Ouch.

[alfie08]

Person: What are you going to graduate school for?

Me: Theatre and Performance Studies

Person: So you want to be an actor?

Me: No. I want to be a professor.

Person: Of acting?

Me: No...of performance theory/dramatic literature/theatre history.

Person: So you can eventually work on Broadway?

Me: No...so I can be a professor.

Person: Of acting?

(Repeat).

[piccgeek]

No one I know has ever heard of science writing. Ever.

Me: I'm applying to a program in science writing.

Them: Oh, so you write lab reports?

Me: No, I read lots of lab reports and other things, then write about them for a wider audience.

Them:...you have to go to school to learn to read then write? Aren't you already an English major.

Me: *facepalm*

And you would THINK people would get what the English major entails, but seriously, trying to explain academic journals to my family is an exercise in circular logic:

Grandma: So, if you're an English professor, you teach! That's cool.

Me: Yes, but the big thing about be an English prof is doing the research.

Grandma: What do you research?

Me: You know...books, culture, theory.

Grandma: How is that research??? There are no labs! No graphs!

Me: Yeah...it's different.

Grandma: Okay, so what do you do with the research? I mean, it's not like you send it to pharm companies to make medicine or something useful like that.

Me: Well, you publish your papers.

Grandma: Where?

Me: In a journal.

Grandma: Oh, a journal! I get those.

Me: These are different. They don't have recipes or news reports or anything like that. They're JUST scholarly papers.

Grandma: So who reads these boring journals?

Me: Other scholars.

Grandma: So...you read books, write about them, then publish your writing so other people who write about reading can read about your reading?

Me: Something like that, yeah.

Grandma: WHY?

Me: *facepalm*

[Katzenmusik]

When I studied a combination of literature and film, basically everyone either had a passive-aggressive reaction or informed me how I was just wasting my life and would never get a job. For some reason, random people just LOVE to try and deflate you if you are pursuing these fields.

Common responses:

1. "Since you're the film expert, tell us what 'Oceans 11' REALLY MEANS."

(NOTE: THIS QUESTION IS A TRAP!! A meaningful answer--like an opinion on genre convention, why a director might have chosen certain camera angles or points-of-view, etc.--will be seen as elitist and arrogant. But not giving any real answer will lead people to respond that your education "must not be worth much.")

2. "If you know so much about film, who won the Oscar award for best supporting actress in 1953?"

3. "What's the point of going to [Alma Mater of Katzenmusik] if you're just going to read novels and watch movies all day?"

If only I could have referred to my major as "Literature Science" or "Qualitative Mediology" or something--I'm sure they would have been confused but far more impressed.

The person I feel really bad for is my relative who studies intellectual history. It just SOUNDS pretentious and people can't WAIT to let him know how useless it is. Poor guy.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Katzenmusik

[watersnake]

Art History.

- "So what kind of stuff do you paint?" (I don't.)

- "Oh, then you'll appreciate this! *gestures toward the Thomas Kincaid original above their fireplace* (I don't.)

- "Why don't artists make things I can understand anymore?! It's all soups cans and pissing on crucifixes these days! *rant continues indefinitely* (Ummmmm...)

[George]

I feel your pain everyone, and I promise to never make fun of any major! I can't recreate the conversation like some others have, but I can convey in prose some of what has happened to me.

I once had this conversation with a few members of my family who were trying to convince me that mathematics is only useful up to and including basic arithmetic. The older generation honestly couldn't imagine what more there was to mathematics outside summing up the prices of your groceries, or subtracting what you're paying from the amount of money you have and other such life situations where math basically allows you to function. I could see where they're coming from. It would take me a week to explain to them what a function is, let alone calculus or (shudder) modern algebra, and the more I talk about these things, the more they'll think they're useless because they don't apply to their lives in any way.

One of the relatives was a bit more knowledgeable having studies engineering, and he was on my side for calculus, but he thought such things as topology and modern algebra are useless. He told me a story of a mathematician he knew in university who would regale him with stories about the topology of a Luffa. Of course my relative remembered a story where something as mundane as a sponge was involved - "why in the world would you analyze that!"

[workingonit]

Other Person: So what are you doing next year?

Me: I'd like to study neuroscience.

Other Person: Whats neuroscience?

Me: *headdesk*

Other Person: So what are you doing next year?

Me: I'm hoping to start a PhD program in neuroscience.

Other Person: So you want to be a neurosurgeon?

Me: No, I'm not going to medical school--I want to understand how the brain works.

Other Person: Isn't that the same thing?

Me: *headdesk*

[LifeIsGood]

History's not exactly a mysterious profession, but I do run into situations where people think I should just KNOW EVERYTHING. They have no concept that history is so BIG, and there's no way I can possibly know EVERYTHING they ask. So I'll have people asking me specific questions about history I had years ago and cannot, for the life of me, recall.

Me: I'm applying for Ph.D. programs in American history.

Them: Cool! I love the History Channel. What part do you like best?

Me: I study the 19th century. In the South. Specifically, African Americans in the South.

Them: Oh, slavery, then?

Me: Kind of. African Americans who used to be slaves but who were later freed, or people who were always slaves but acted like they were free. Or people who never were slaves in the first place.

Them: And how long will it take to learn about that?

Me: 6 to 10 years.

Them: *Silence*

But, when I have a chance to talk more about the specific topic, they think it's cool. I've pieced together a story of a man who had been a slave but was freed after much drama--a kidnapping, unrequited love, betrayal, a treacherous journey, being reunited with long-lost family, a chase on horseback to save him from being re-enslaved, etc. Then the response is: "Wow! That sounds like a great movie! Will Smith could be in it!" They stop wondering why I'm interested in it, and start wondering how I'm going to find a job doing it. Good question.

[ColorlessGreen]

+1

This one had me stifling my laughs at work. You cannot fault him (and I am almost certain it was a "him") for inaccuracy. I am just trying to imagine a life where that's the main contact one has with linguistics...

Now there's a new one to add, thanks to Avatar: "Like the guy who created Na'vi?"

Apparently we're going to actually do something with Na'vi in one of my linguistics classes this semester, though, so at least I'll be able to indulge these fans by discussing alien phonology. I just know this is going to end by someone becoming convinced I'm a Xenolinguist in the tradition of Lt. Uhura...

[Catch22alex]

Me: I study Psychobiology

Them: So what, you analyze dolphins?

*facepalm*

true story

[Sanssouci]

Now there's a new one to add, thanks to Avatar: "Like the guy who created Na'vi?"

Apparently we're going to actually do something with Na'vi in one of my linguistics classes this semester, though, so at least I'll be able to indulge these fans by discussing alien phonology. I just know this is going to end by someone becoming convinced I'm a Xenolinguist in the tradition of Lt. Uhura...

I just came back from the cinema and noticed "civis" meant "people", so apparently they had some latin influence. I have a friend who does linguistics, he's made similar complaints to the ones listed, I just like winding him up now

-

Mine:

Almost invariable:

"What do you study?"

"Politics"

"What party do you support?/What's your position on..."

I want to talk about Hegel

[angesa01]

Mine: Ethnomusicology

Invariable Responses: Whatawhatogy?

Cool, what do you play?

[melusine]

Ha! I've already said it somewhere before, but the conversation's usually along the lines of either:

Random Person: So.. What would you do in a Comparative Literature program? ... Compare books?

Me: ... Yeah. Pretty much.

RP: Oh. ........ And you need a degree for that?

Random Angry Person: So.. What would you do in a Comparative Literature grad program? Just read books?

Me: I..

RAP: I can't believe they offer a phd in that! What's next? A degree in Ipod listening? Tv-browsing??

Me: Well..

RAP: *disgusted shudder* I can't believe that's where *my* tax money's going.

[UnlikelyGrad]

For me, conversations invariably start the same but take one of two paths:

Person: What are you studying?

Me: Geochemistry

(silence for about 30 seconds)

Response 1: Errrr. Nice. So what is that, anyway?

Response 2: So, ummm. Does that have any real world connection?

I find it pretty hilarious that it takes everyone a while to figure out what to say after I tell them my course of study. Everyone is pretty darn clueless about what geochem is or does. Though I don't blame them...I didn't know anything about it until about 4 years ago.

[liszt85]

A: So what do you study?

Me: Psychology. Cognitive Psychology.

B: Wow.. you get really high paying jobs with that!

C. Read my mind.

A. You should treat my mother in law.

Me: I'm not going to be a psychiatrist.. I'm going to be doing research and on how human beings cognize, i.e, how they perceive and understand the world around them, etc. And no, you don't get paid hundreds of thousands a year to be doing that.

D: So what do you work on?

Me: Human memory.

D: Remember the time when you were..

Me: .......

[BCHistory]

History's not exactly a mysterious profession, but I do run into situations where people think I should just KNOW EVERYTHING. They have no concept that history is so BIG, and there's no way I can possibly know EVERYTHING they ask. So I'll have people asking me specific questions about history I had years ago and cannot, for the life of me, recall. Also, when I try to explain my research projects, people don't seem to understand why I can't just write what amounts to a compound book review. Probably my favorite, though, was when we took a "field trip" in a class I took about gathering local history. We went to the County Administration Building, and as the lady was helping me find some Incorporation papers for some work I was doing about a local hospital, she turns to my professor (one of my LOR writers, present supervisor) and asks, "So, do you just have them writing about old stuff?" Yeah. We had a good chuckle about that afterwards.

For some reason, many people feel the need to constantly belittle and attack me for studying history. So many have told me flat-out that history is useless or researching in the field is a ridiculous pursuit.

I want to study American religious history, NOT theology. But many of my conversations go like this:

Me: I am studying American history.

Them: What specifically?

Me: Religious history.

Them: So is ___ a sin?

Me: .....

Me: I'm studying American religious history.

Them: So are you going to seminary?

Me: .....

[KieBelle]

Them: "So what are you going to study in grad school?"

Me: "the political and social roles of violent non-state actors in the Arab Middle East"

Them: "Oh... wait, actors? What?"

Me: "..."

Or the FAR more common response:

Them: "So what are you going to study in grad school?"

Me: "the political and social roles of violent non-state actors in the Arab Middle East"

Them: "I hope you're ready to wear a veil!" -or- "But you're white. And a girl. Why in the world would you want to study that?"

Me: "..."

I am so sick of those responses.

[modernity]

These are quite funny. I'm even surprised that some of these disciplines, which I always thought were pretty cut and dry also confuse people (although I really never thought anthropology was all that confusing and apparently it is for some!)... The "what are you going to do with that degree?" conversations could almost constitute an entirely new post.

[ma7eb4i]

I currently actually have the rare job where I have the opposite.

Stranger: "So what do you do for a living?"

Me: "I'm a research tech in an exotic animal reproductive physiology lab."

Stranger: .....

Me: "Yes. It's everything you're thinking about and then some."

[jordy]

RAP: I can't believe they offer a phd in that! What's next? A degree in Ipod listening? Tv-browsing??

How is it that people can't figure out that maybe, *just maybe*, there's more to a field than their tiny little ignorant idea of it? Just because your roommate's girlfriend's cousin's frat brother's uncle slept through an intro course 25 years ago and got a D- does NOT mean you know what you're talking about when you trash someone's line of work.

*RANT OVER*

Sorry, I know we're trying to keep it light, but some of these stories are just so rude and disrespectful.

[socnerd]

Haha I get this all the time! I hate when people ask what I'm studying and I say "sociology" and they say "Oh so you want to be a social worker?"...... I'm like "No, I'd rather die than do that, thats not what sociology is.."

Don't worry about it, people don't need to understand, we're probably all making more money than they ever will anyway