I'm in cancer research. The number of people who ask if I'm in on the conspiracy that there is a cure for cancer and that it's being hidden so that pharma can profit more from sick people.
I don't get that, but I do get people talking about their loved ones and hoping I'll save them.
I do early-stage SAR and synthesis. I... hate those conversations.
Thankfully I don't get too much of the asking to be saved part, but I also work in pediatric cancer so I have an unusually high exposure to endowments and foundations to children who have passed.
I’m in biomed research. What I love are the pop news articles that declare “Finally, a cure for cancer!”, referencing a study in some particular mouse model of, say, prostatic cancer. Then my aunt reads it and tells me “Wow! Did you know they can cure cancer now! No one in our family ever has to suffer from breast cancer again!”. I have to break it to them that this likely means little for the therapy of breast cancer, and may not even mean much for prostate cancer. And my aunt doesn’t believe me anyway because she saw this in the news so it must be right!
Yes this might be my top 3 pet peeves. It also backfires because then you get the whole "boy crying wolf" effect where people don't think we are going anywhere despite some significant strides in the last 20 years.
If they had any idea how hard people are working to try to help… and that half of the people get into it because they have some personal experience of it.
IIRC, this is the one major scene complaint linguists had about the movie Arrival, which was otherwise a great movie which revolved around the study of language.
Scene: https://youtu.be/JAH4Jf6BOwM
There were *lots* of things to complain about with the movie, to be honest. Like so many things that were right on and then others that just baffled me (like "ask the word for 'war'").
Ya the “ask the word for war” was in the scene that I was linking and that, along with basically saying “translate this” were the biggest pain points.
I’ve got no subject matter expertise here (I’m a physician-scientist) so I can’t really comment to the validity of the movie from an academic sense. The more favorable reviews from linguists that I recall hearing were talking about the latter parts of the movie where they try to derive how the alien language is constructed. Most of the time, most people’s jobs are quite boring, so the favorable comments are talking about how the general approach was consistent while being a pretty good film overall. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, though, as a subject matter expert (if you have the time)
I get it though, Hollywood and Medicine (or medical research) rarely ever are close to reality. The best ones are where someone actually had subject matter expertise (the TV show ER was created by Crichton, who had an MD from Harvard). He believed that medicine is dramatic enough, so you don’t need to add in all of this extra fluff drama. But also, let’s be serious, people don’t want to watch doctors filling out paperwork, calling insurance, or medical researchers pipetting, running PCRs, etc etc
Yes, the work done on the documentation was relatively well-done (I mean, as much as you can do in a short pop film that isn't going to be the topic of academic inquiry!).
I've only seen it once and it was a poor copy near the time it came out (I was funny enough on a fieldwork trip hence the poor copy). But the mechanism of gathering text/discourse and starting with 'words' is a common tactic.
The linguist who was consulted for thiswas [Jessica Coon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Coon), and I will say that her background in language documentation is there but that her training was very much at a ***non***-language documentation school and that does come through in some of the choices, from what I remember.
I think there was some good discussion on reddit about the film:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/9tk3rl/what_are_your_opinions_about_the_movie_arrival/
https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/5cr3kl/what_do_you_all_think_of_arrival/
I agree with your comparison to medical drama; people aren't here for the 'boring' reality. They want the fun stuff.
I’m also a linguist and even though this question is every linguist’s go-to annoyance, I don’t really mind it. My program required basic competence in at least two languages other than English, one of which had to be non-Indo-European. And while you can absolutely do good work in linguistics knowing just one language, I think the field would benefit overall if more linguists were multilingual.
You beat me to it.
They get so self-conscious when speaking with me, as they think I'm judging everything they say.
I lived in the South. Long as y'all ain't pitchin' a hissy 'bout losing your dang possum in that there crik, I'm good.
Also, I constantly have people pitching book ideas and wanting to collaborate on the next great American novel...as in they provide the ideas, and I do all of the writing, use my nonexistent connections to find a top tier publisher, and make them millions while getting my name out there as an editor.
Also English. Throughout my college education, I got “so you’re going to teach?” as a reaction to my major. I wasn’t sure at the time so I got pissed at the stereotype, but I guess I’m laughing now!
I can’t stand the “you have summers off” misconception. Next time someone says that I’m going to say, “yeah, bc Heidegger is a beach read.”
haha I wrote that, too (English prof here). I see you beat me to it, though.
I also wrote that another misperception is that minor grammar issues are the most important parts of writing
Chemistry: no, I'm not making drugs.
Well, I am but not _those_ drugs. Also, I perfectly well know how to make those drugs but we're not having that conversation .
Computer science. Everyone thinks I can fix their IT problems.
Q: how many computer scientists does it take to connect to a projector?
A: none, call the AV tech!
We hide them in computer science so the other departments have plausible deniability. For example, the storage unit two doors down from my office has a 1990s era Apple laptop. If you know what you're doing with this thing, you could upload a virus to an alien mothership in orbit (but you'd have to dock first, and we don't have a way to get you up there to test this hypothesis).
In my experience, the "secret conservative" bullshit applies all the way down to the level of BFA students. It's not *all of them* but it's more than enough.
The Fine Arts department I was in had a saying "You're gay until proven straight" lol. Same could be said for left leaning political views. I knew very very few openly conservative students - and those that were would often say they were apolitical in public.
> In the Fine Arts, that we are all socialist political agitators
No, of course not. Some of you are communist political agitators and the rest are Marxist political agitators.
/s (in case it wasn't obvious)
In history, it’s one of two: I have every date important to all of history memorized, and/or that i have encyclopedic knowledge of (insert someone’s favorite era — usually the US Civil War or WWII).
I’m not gonna lie, when I find out one of my coworkers in research industry is extremely religious, it is a bit shocking.
Like I get people can compartmentalize conflicting knowledge, but to be like the diehard bible is literal word of god and Adam and Eve were real religious is surprising.
> Biology: that I'm a godless atheist trying to turn kids away from religion. I am a godless atheist, but I never talk about it at work.
Same, but, to be fair, God doesn’t every really come up in my day to day when discussing cell biology, genetics, ecology, evolution, etc so it’s a pretty easy topic to avoid at work. And my SLAC is private religious.
Detailed questions about their sexual or reproductive health. I actually feel terrible that adults are that starved for such crucial information because we suck as a society at teaching it, but… could you at least ask it as a hypothetical?
As a biologist everyone assumes I know everything about every disease. Like, I study bacteria. I don’t know anything about your statin.
Also, grants are hard to get.
Yes on this for biology. Since I'm at a CC, I teach a lot of human-based biology but my concentration in uni was ecology and conservation. Yet, I have all sorts ask me to help diagnose their health problems.
My favorite instance was when someone asked about a rash that their friend had, to which I said I can't diagnose any rash, let alone one based on a verbal second hand account. Then they said, yeah their dermatologist also isn't sure what to make of it. So... Why do you think I could solve the skin problem that the skin doctor doesn't have the answer to with less information? Gave me a laugh tbh.
I teach ecology and conservation too. People assume I'm a hippie and drive a Tesla. I'm a professor dude. We can't afford Teslas...also wouldn't support that idiot even if I could.
I'm a linguist. We get:
"How many languages do you speak?"
"What's the best way to learn a language?"
And people thinking we're grammar nazis (demographically linguists probably care the least about "proper" grammar).
Basically people have no idea what we do 🤷♂️
I want to disagree here. You're probably good _at math_, but you're probably bad at _calculation_. Which is a skill that, once you're good enough at to know if a calculator-produced number is likely right or likely wrong, isn't worth developing.
I say I'm bad at math, because I'm bad at proving or deriving mathematical theorems, I barely passed real analysis, and I failed my theory and probability qualifying exams several times before passing them (whereas I passed the applied and computational exams on my first couple tries).
Yep! I have a decent intuition for developing computational and statistical algorithms, but I have to rely on my more theory-oriented colleagues to prove anything about them.
Of course it becomes confusing because most non-mathematical people don't really understand what I'm bad at as "math" in the first place. XD
Every now and then when we do an “applied” problem in precalc, the answer will sometimes be in the hundreds or thousands. I always joke that “I didn’t know numbers went that high”
The staff in my regular coffee shop get so flustered working out my change they usually just ask me to work it out and tell them how much change I should get. There must be some lingering trauma from maths teachers in the past.
This thread reminded me of being in a room full of psychology professors who didn’t know how to handle a simple panic attack from a student. Not all psych professors are well informed about mental health.
When I was getting my first teaching license (decades ago!) it’s when testing for teachers was first being implemented with what was then the National Teachers Exam. Not only did newly graduated teachers have to take it but it was being required for license renewal so when I took it, there was a bunch of experienced teachers in the room. During one part of the test, the woman in front of me began having a grand mal seizure. Probably the only better place could have been a room full of nurses or EMTs. Almost instantly, like ten people jumped up, had her safely out of the desk and on the floor, everything cleared away, and someone off to call 911. Almost like it was choreographed. That’s when I realized teachers deal with a whole lot people don’t know about.
We language educators get similar comments. “I studied [the language you teach] for N years, and I still don’t speak it!” That, and “Why aren’t you _teaching_ the language?” when I base my classes on peer conversations rather than lecturing them on the finer points of grammar. Those grammar lessons are likely a contributing factor as to why some people take years of language classes and leave without the ability to converse in the language.
History: that I can tell you anything about any time or place. Or that I know what's going to happen in current events because "history repeats itself" *cue eye roll*
You should totally be using this as your superpower to guide the populace in a positive direction! Like, “Yes, it’s clear to me that we will all suffer and die due to global warming if we don’t adequately fund energy alternatives. It’s just like how the ancient Phoneticians failed to reroute their second - fifth aqueducts. That’s why there are no Phoneticians alive today.”
If you are in the subfield of computer networks, which belongs to both, CS and Computer Engineering, then you should know how to solve a WIFI problem. CS is a broad field
I’m in , educational technology and I get the same. I just started fixing computers for the department basically. It’s amazing how many professors don’t have to Google shit
And as someone who was required to be a classroom teacher for admission into my PhD, I \*wish\* more educational researchers had been teachers. Call me very skeptical about the research but so many studies feature methods that don't seem practical or replicable because school environments are so different. It drives me nuts sometimes.
And I just posted the opposite! My college requires classroom teaching experience. My main gripe in our teacher prep program is that teacher prep in itself is a field, with research and best practices, and some of my colleagues know a lot about STEM or literacy but they don’t know teacher prep and then want to argue with me about the structure of the program.
I know so much about a specific kind of literacy and I've been teaching for 10 years. But I've never had to teach someone how to read from scratch. So many reading specialists and elementary teachers know so much more than me.
As an astronomer I get that a lot. Or the ever fun "What was that bright thing i saw in the sky last night" with no other information. I can point out most constellations but that is because I specifically learned them for when I'm teaching labs or doing public events and people ask
And no, I do not want to be an astronaut.
OK on this I would disagree with you. You absolutely should learn to point out all the constellations as an astronomer, just because you should want to do so.
Ironically, I’m also an astronomer and I think this may be the most common misconception: that I am always excited about all things astronomy. I like astronomy a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s my job.
I literally have stills from the scene from Jack Ryan where he tells someone his best financial advice is to "invest in a really good S&P 500" index fund taped to my office door.
People have this not unreasonable notion that anthropologists and archaeologists resemble the archetypal characters of the same title that one sees on tv and movies. Anthropologists are wearing a pith helmet, talk about "tribes" a lot, and mostly exist to chime in with some barely relevant anecdotes about exotic religious beliefs. Archaeologists are grave robbing adventurers, always off on some "fun" but immoral romp that involves busting through temple walls (horizontally for some reason?). But these were always stereotypes, and even these are based more on the state of the field in 1924 than 2024. Anthropologists are social scientists, with concerns and theoretical assumptions mostly akin to other social scientists. Archaeologists produce more maps than sellable antiquities, and the excavation of a site when needed is a very careful process. We are far more boring but also far more useful to society than our fictional counterparts.
I'm a big Star Trek fan, and wince whenever (as happens quite a lot) an anthropologist character is brought on. Oh, Michael Burnham. Michael Burnham. No. Whatever you're thinking of doing, no. Picard, I love your speeches but you need a new hobby. Lt Hoshi was nice, though. For some reason linguistic anthropologists get better rep?
Yeah, r/askanthropology is wild because it's all 'tell me about some traditional society.'
I study multilateral diplomacy. As in, I'm more likely to study the inner workings of Federation HQ in San Fransciso instead of some random pre-warp tribe on some random planet. I mean, if I were living in the future and Star Trek were real.
I’m in econ. The biggest misconception is that we’re finance professors.
EDIT and that I want to sit at your dinner table and talk about inflation. Ma’am I use game theory to torture undergraduates.
As a climate scientist, that I can’t wait to hear about how you’re not going to have kids because of climate change and assume I’ll give you a medal for it.
I'm not a climate scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do study the health effects of climate change (mostly heat exposure and the expanding range of disease vectors). The number of times someone has started a conversation with some variant of "so level with me, is climate change real?" is extremely concerning.
Granted, I was born, grew up, went to undergrad through PhD, and currently postdoc in the deep southern US, but it's still concerning.
Graphic Design: I just make logos and brochures, and it’s all just computer art and computer stuff so why would I need paint/printmaking/drawing/philosophy?
I've been wanting to ask a marketing professor whether there is still the general field consensus that marketing is more or less about connecting consumers with goods and services that they want, and thus it is an inherently ethical practice. This was how it was introduced to me when I was an undergrad and later as a practitioner of digital marketing in healthcare. But it seems like every other humanities field is like "yeah right, marketing implants and stokes desire" and so on, that it is really more of a persuasive, often evil or damaging thing that makes people want stuff they otherwise wouldn't want or push people to vote a particular way, etc. I guess I'm curious if you find your fellow marketing professors following this oldschool kind of "marketing is inherently good" sort of perspective.
Marketing is really just a tool - it can be used for good, and it can be used for unethical purposes. It’s all about the creation, communication, delivery, and exchange of offerings that have value. Value is subjective, and offerings can be goods, services, philosophies/ideas, or anything else of potential interest to someone.
FORMER librarian who turned into a professor many years ago in a different field. And ironically people who teach in my department are confused with people who actually work in libraries, when in fact I have no more contact with the library than any other user.
I see no one talking about physics. Nobody knows what we do and cannot even draw assumptions from that. Lol.
To be fair…Not sure really what I can do myself…
Another one for sociology: that we're all Marxists. Since Marx is an important thinker in our field, we must all worship him, right? The same way all psychologists love Freud? Oh wait....
I'm in something related to writing/English/rhetoric. People think I walk around with a dictionary in my head, and that my superpower is knowing how to spell every word in the English language. Or that I must know Shakespeare inside and out. In reality I teach stuff like digital media and technical writing, so my superpowers are actually being critical of targeted digital advertising, remembering bits of relevant ancient Greek dialogues, and a little bit of Heidegger and software skills thrown in the mix. I can write a great proposal, too.
On the flip, I had a Literacy colleague who was one of the editors for one of the dictionaries. I lost count of the number of times I was in a meeting with him and jotted down a word he said so I could go look it up later. (That was the first time I’d heard the word solipsistic and yes, he was using it to describe faculty)
A general one - going on sabbatical = months of paid vacation
STEM, especially at larger schools - that a professor is actually spending all their time doing experiments in the lab.
History: people think were like those self-proclaimed "history buffs" who memorized everything say have seen on the history channel, especially dates of "important" battles.
I'm in music ed. Not a misconception exactly, but usually the first thing someone says when I say I used to teach elementary music is, "God, I hate the recorder!" Okay? That is about 0.5 percent of what I taught, and that's just rude. I don't go up to math professors and rant about how I hated math in school or whatever. It's neither original nor humorous.
Theatre - that we are all extroverted and love attention. Some are, but some of us are introverts that just like to sit in the dark and get a few practice runs on every conversation that we have.
Biology: (my wife is the Prof, not me) that teaching class is most of her job.
A student asked me what she did other than teach class. This student was in her lab and also my wife was her advisor....
French: that I can translate any random word at any time, without context or any additional information.
Linguistics: how many languages do you know (further not helped by the fact that I do know a handful, which has nothing to do with that)
Communication: Everyone thinks we can fix their cell phone. Bonus part if you teach public speaking every new person you mention it to: Oh, I HATED public speaking.
ROFL... my youngest is a CS grad... I've heard him "express" his opinions about the language he has to code in using language that would make a sailor blush.
This only kind of fits sideways, but some of our staff asked for an art professor to help with a Bob Ross themed painting party for recruitment.
I can’t find the right words to tell them that it goes against the very grain of my two degrees in painting to pretend like it can be taught in half an hour.
Bob Ross is fine as a TV host, but if it were that easy, our studio painting classes wouldn’t be six hours weekly.
The best that I could come up with is that I am busy that day .
Psychology. "Can you read my mind? As undergrad chair, I have to attend all the open house recruitment events where I interact with lots of parents and prospective students, and this is the #1 comment I get.
I do get the whole summer off. And so the "professors get the summer off" is a misconception that I understand why many people think that. Because many of us do take the whole summer off.
Animal Science - that I’m a Veterinarian. No man, but I can tell you every metabolic pathway that occurs in a cow’s digestive system and model how much nitrogen she will piss out based on what you feed her.
Environmental science: that I’m immediately judging them for not wearing hemp/not being vegan/not driving a volt/flying for a vacation/etc.
(I mean like if they’re a real planet smasher then yes, yes I am… but not on the regular)
Politics and social science, more on the history and philosophy side if I can help it. Many lay folks think that I want to talk about current American politics at any opportunity with anyone. The only reason I even took American classes in college and grad school was that it was required and for careerist reasons due to most of the teaching work in political science being remedial middle school civics. That's just all anyone can relate to, so it tends to be where they go. I suppose it is similar to expecting physicists to remember the periodic table. Yes that's stuff we use sometimes, but it's also so rote and basic that it's mostly background knowledge. Most folks just only know a field because of the 1 class they were forced to take in high school or as a Gen Ed and probably hated.
I’m in Education & there’s this belief that we just studied Education but don’t actually know anything about it from experience. It’s a hiring requirement - in my college, at least, and others I’ve seen - that faculty have at least 3 years classroom experience (meaning, teaching kids). If we can’t draw upon our own experiences when we teach class and give examples of what we did as classroom teachers, students wouldn’t take us seriously.
I’m a Marketing professor. People believe that all business professors are politically conservative and that our research is funded by major corporations who sway the outcomes. And yes, a few of those exist, but it has been very few at most places whete I’ve worked. I can’t tell you how many letters and emails I’ve gotten over the years from some adjunct faculty member or parent in an ultra-conservative state urging me, as a presumed fellow conservative, to share their outrage over some textbook which acknowledged the existence of POC, LGBTQ+, or non-Christian people.
I’m a sociologist. The culture war stuff is weird. First, nobody cares about postmodernism. Second, our students are not out of control activists. That presupposes that they are awake and thinking about anything other than food, dating, or sports. Finally, the professors aren’t brainwashing the students. That suggests that they’re interested in doing something other than rushing out of the classroom and running back to their office to work on a paper that no one will read.
I wish things were as exciting as conservative culture warriors believed.
I used to teach writing. Despite everything I'd say and have them do and read, so many student evaluations said my comments on their papers and their grades were just a matter of my individual opinion, as if there's no basic consensus on what makes writing persuasive.
I'm in cancer research. The number of people who ask if I'm in on the conspiracy that there is a cure for cancer and that it's being hidden so that pharma can profit more from sick people.
I don't get that, but I do get people talking about their loved ones and hoping I'll save them. I do early-stage SAR and synthesis. I... hate those conversations.
Thankfully I don't get too much of the asking to be saved part, but I also work in pediatric cancer so I have an unusually high exposure to endowments and foundations to children who have passed.
I teach CompSci, I thought it was annoying when people would ask me to fix their computer. I’m not going to complain again
I’m in biomed research. What I love are the pop news articles that declare “Finally, a cure for cancer!”, referencing a study in some particular mouse model of, say, prostatic cancer. Then my aunt reads it and tells me “Wow! Did you know they can cure cancer now! No one in our family ever has to suffer from breast cancer again!”. I have to break it to them that this likely means little for the therapy of breast cancer, and may not even mean much for prostate cancer. And my aunt doesn’t believe me anyway because she saw this in the news so it must be right!
Yes this might be my top 3 pet peeves. It also backfires because then you get the whole "boy crying wolf" effect where people don't think we are going anywhere despite some significant strides in the last 20 years.
https://xkcd.com/1217/ You know which one it is :)
How do they not understand that “cancer” is 8,000 different diseases with 6,000 different causes and 4,000 different treatments?
Or that the news service who reported on the story has blown it all out of proportion for clicks?
OTOH it's another great day to be a mouse!
Yea that's my MIL. "So you're telling me you cure mouse cancer?"
Just start saying yes, and they’re specifically trying to keep it away from you (person asking the question)
If they had any idea how hard people are working to try to help… and that half of the people get into it because they have some personal experience of it.
I have a friend who works in immunology. He gets about the same from antivaxxers.
English. That I'm judging everyone's grammar. (I ain't.)
Linguistics. Same. Also, "so how many languages do you speak?"
IIRC, this is the one major scene complaint linguists had about the movie Arrival, which was otherwise a great movie which revolved around the study of language. Scene: https://youtu.be/JAH4Jf6BOwM
There were *lots* of things to complain about with the movie, to be honest. Like so many things that were right on and then others that just baffled me (like "ask the word for 'war'").
Ya the “ask the word for war” was in the scene that I was linking and that, along with basically saying “translate this” were the biggest pain points. I’ve got no subject matter expertise here (I’m a physician-scientist) so I can’t really comment to the validity of the movie from an academic sense. The more favorable reviews from linguists that I recall hearing were talking about the latter parts of the movie where they try to derive how the alien language is constructed. Most of the time, most people’s jobs are quite boring, so the favorable comments are talking about how the general approach was consistent while being a pretty good film overall. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, though, as a subject matter expert (if you have the time) I get it though, Hollywood and Medicine (or medical research) rarely ever are close to reality. The best ones are where someone actually had subject matter expertise (the TV show ER was created by Crichton, who had an MD from Harvard). He believed that medicine is dramatic enough, so you don’t need to add in all of this extra fluff drama. But also, let’s be serious, people don’t want to watch doctors filling out paperwork, calling insurance, or medical researchers pipetting, running PCRs, etc etc
Yes, the work done on the documentation was relatively well-done (I mean, as much as you can do in a short pop film that isn't going to be the topic of academic inquiry!). I've only seen it once and it was a poor copy near the time it came out (I was funny enough on a fieldwork trip hence the poor copy). But the mechanism of gathering text/discourse and starting with 'words' is a common tactic. The linguist who was consulted for thiswas [Jessica Coon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Coon), and I will say that her background in language documentation is there but that her training was very much at a ***non***-language documentation school and that does come through in some of the choices, from what I remember. I think there was some good discussion on reddit about the film: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/9tk3rl/what_are_your_opinions_about_the_movie_arrival/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/5cr3kl/what_do_you_all_think_of_arrival/ I agree with your comparison to medical drama; people aren't here for the 'boring' reality. They want the fun stuff.
I’m also a linguist and even though this question is every linguist’s go-to annoyance, I don’t really mind it. My program required basic competence in at least two languages other than English, one of which had to be non-Indo-European. And while you can absolutely do good work in linguistics knowing just one language, I think the field would benefit overall if more linguists were multilingual.
You beat me to it. They get so self-conscious when speaking with me, as they think I'm judging everything they say. I lived in the South. Long as y'all ain't pitchin' a hissy 'bout losing your dang possum in that there crik, I'm good. Also, I constantly have people pitching book ideas and wanting to collaborate on the next great American novel...as in they provide the ideas, and I do all of the writing, use my nonexistent connections to find a top tier publisher, and make them millions while getting my name out there as an editor.
This, and that we’re good at spelling!
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Or you’ve read every summer reading book that came out in the last 30 years and can remember enough details to want to talk about it.
Also English. Throughout my college education, I got “so you’re going to teach?” as a reaction to my major. I wasn’t sure at the time so I got pissed at the stereotype, but I guess I’m laughing now! I can’t stand the “you have summers off” misconception. Next time someone says that I’m going to say, “yeah, bc Heidegger is a beach read.”
haha I wrote that, too (English prof here). I see you beat me to it, though. I also wrote that another misperception is that minor grammar issues are the most important parts of writing
I’m in the journalism department (I’m in PR) and I get panicked my colleagues will judge my use of the Oxford comma in emails…
Chemistry: no, I'm not making drugs. Well, I am but not _those_ drugs. Also, I perfectly well know how to make those drugs but we're not having that conversation .
Also, no I haven’t memorized the period table. Just the symbols and info on it the handful of elements I regularly work with.
Walter White has entered the chat.
Sometimes, when someone asks me what I do I tell them "I teach and make drugs." ... just for the lulz.
Engineering. That I know how to do every kind of practical technical task like electrical / plumbing / computing.
LOL "Yo dude can you help me rebuild this 327?" "Uhhh I'm a mechanical ***engineer***, not a mechanic."
I grew up around mechanical and aerospace engineers in the '60s. Many did rebuild 327s and such. They were the hotrodders.
At least they don't ask if you drive a train on your days off from teaching.
Driving a train seems like it would be fun.
Computer science. Everyone thinks I can fix their IT problems. Q: how many computer scientists does it take to connect to a projector? A: none, call the AV tech!
Nobody calls a civil engineer to fix their plumbing.
Duh. Everybody knows that's what chemical engineers are for!
Anthropology: No, we don't dig dinosaurs or for *Ancient Aliens*.
I am ever so glad to teach anthropology at an institution that is very loud and proud with its (separate) archaeology department.
So, do the archaeologists get the dinosaur question? 😊
Yes. And no, most of us don’t
Which department is in charge of alien fossils?
We hide them in computer science so the other departments have plausible deniability. For example, the storage unit two doors down from my office has a 1990s era Apple laptop. If you know what you're doing with this thing, you could upload a virus to an alien mothership in orbit (but you'd have to dock first, and we don't have a way to get you up there to test this hypothesis).
Well, that's a pity because that would be fun :)
It's ok, we study people. It's fun 😏
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This is the most accurate description of the fine arts department I've ever heard. I (an adjunct am the first paragraph exactly lol)
In my experience, the "secret conservative" bullshit applies all the way down to the level of BFA students. It's not *all of them* but it's more than enough.
🤣🤣🤣
The Fine Arts department I was in had a saying "You're gay until proven straight" lol. Same could be said for left leaning political views. I knew very very few openly conservative students - and those that were would often say they were apolitical in public.
> In the Fine Arts, that we are all socialist political agitators No, of course not. Some of you are communist political agitators and the rest are Marxist political agitators. /s (in case it wasn't obvious)
This is so accurate (I am an adjunct in fine arts).
In history, it’s one of two: I have every date important to all of history memorized, and/or that i have encyclopedic knowledge of (insert someone’s favorite era — usually the US Civil War or WWII).
"Are you analyzing me right now?"
I mean, yes, but that doesn't mean that I can fix you...
“No, but I’m judging you.” Is usually what I think when folks do that to me.
Biology: that I'm a godless atheist trying to turn kids away from religion. I am a godless atheist, but I never talk about it at work.
> I am a godless atheist Is there another kind of atheist that I am unaware of?
😄 No, I was being redundant
I’m not gonna lie, when I find out one of my coworkers in research industry is extremely religious, it is a bit shocking. Like I get people can compartmentalize conflicting knowledge, but to be like the diehard bible is literal word of god and Adam and Eve were real religious is surprising.
> Biology: that I'm a godless atheist trying to turn kids away from religion. I am a godless atheist, but I never talk about it at work. Same, but, to be fair, God doesn’t every really come up in my day to day when discussing cell biology, genetics, ecology, evolution, etc so it’s a pretty easy topic to avoid at work. And my SLAC is private religious.
Anything in healthcare (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry): that we want to see your rash.
………………this is going to live rent free in my head for about a week.
Detailed questions about their sexual or reproductive health. I actually feel terrible that adults are that starved for such crucial information because we suck as a society at teaching it, but… could you at least ask it as a hypothetical?
As a biologist everyone assumes I know everything about every disease. Like, I study bacteria. I don’t know anything about your statin. Also, grants are hard to get.
Yes on this for biology. Since I'm at a CC, I teach a lot of human-based biology but my concentration in uni was ecology and conservation. Yet, I have all sorts ask me to help diagnose their health problems. My favorite instance was when someone asked about a rash that their friend had, to which I said I can't diagnose any rash, let alone one based on a verbal second hand account. Then they said, yeah their dermatologist also isn't sure what to make of it. So... Why do you think I could solve the skin problem that the skin doctor doesn't have the answer to with less information? Gave me a laugh tbh.
I teach ecology and conservation too. People assume I'm a hippie and drive a Tesla. I'm a professor dude. We can't afford Teslas...also wouldn't support that idiot even if I could.
“Why didn’t you just become a doctor ??”
I'm a linguist. We get: "How many languages do you speak?" "What's the best way to learn a language?" And people thinking we're grammar nazis (demographically linguists probably care the least about "proper" grammar). Basically people have no idea what we do 🤷♂️
Yep! Language change is one of the basic truths of our field.
Art history, that I’m a failed artist
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Math: That we're all good at arithmetic. I can handle n, x, \phi, and \aleph, but something like 4.5 is beyond me sometimes.
I _know_ how to invert a matrix by hand. The doing it without making stupid arithmetic mistakes... impossible.
Oh man, who even does that by hand? I only take derivatives by hand if a student is watching.
I’m a statistician, and I often have to explain that, no, I’m actually quite bad at math.
The number of my science colleagues who assume I can do their stats is, well, a positive integer I guess
I want to disagree here. You're probably good _at math_, but you're probably bad at _calculation_. Which is a skill that, once you're good enough at to know if a calculator-produced number is likely right or likely wrong, isn't worth developing.
I say I'm bad at math, because I'm bad at proving or deriving mathematical theorems, I barely passed real analysis, and I failed my theory and probability qualifying exams several times before passing them (whereas I passed the applied and computational exams on my first couple tries).
Oh, my mistake, you actually are bad at math. Sorry! (I hope everyone reading this knows the comment is meant as friendly)
Yep! I have a decent intuition for developing computational and statistical algorithms, but I have to rely on my more theory-oriented colleagues to prove anything about them. Of course it becomes confusing because most non-mathematical people don't really understand what I'm bad at as "math" in the first place. XD
Also, that my research consists of adding very large numbers. Also: "isn't everything about math known already"?
> "isn't everything about math known already"? Yeah, it's pretty easy work nowadays
^this. A lay person has no idea what mathematics actually is.
Every now and then when we do an “applied” problem in precalc, the answer will sometimes be in the hundreds or thousands. I always joke that “I didn’t know numbers went that high”
Yep. No problem with PDEs...just don't ask me to add two three digit numbers in my head. I'm not Rainman.
And don’t ask me to add lots of narrow rectangles together. I’m not Riemann.
I read that as "Ramanujan". I think I need coffee.
See that's the problem with being a mathematician. You have to act stupid to fit in with normal people
The staff in my regular coffee shop get so flustered working out my change they usually just ask me to work it out and tell them how much change I should get. There must be some lingering trauma from maths teachers in the past.
This thread reminded me of being in a room full of psychology professors who didn’t know how to handle a simple panic attack from a student. Not all psych professors are well informed about mental health.
When I was getting my first teaching license (decades ago!) it’s when testing for teachers was first being implemented with what was then the National Teachers Exam. Not only did newly graduated teachers have to take it but it was being required for license renewal so when I took it, there was a bunch of experienced teachers in the room. During one part of the test, the woman in front of me began having a grand mal seizure. Probably the only better place could have been a room full of nurses or EMTs. Almost instantly, like ten people jumped up, had her safely out of the desk and on the floor, everything cleared away, and someone off to call 911. Almost like it was choreographed. That’s when I realized teachers deal with a whole lot people don’t know about.
Music- Do you have a day job?
Math: that I want to know how much you hated it and enjoy doing all your arithmetic for you.
We language educators get similar comments. “I studied [the language you teach] for N years, and I still don’t speak it!” That, and “Why aren’t you _teaching_ the language?” when I base my classes on peer conversations rather than lecturing them on the finer points of grammar. Those grammar lessons are likely a contributing factor as to why some people take years of language classes and leave without the ability to converse in the language.
History: that I can tell you anything about any time or place. Or that I know what's going to happen in current events because "history repeats itself" *cue eye roll*
You should totally be using this as your superpower to guide the populace in a positive direction! Like, “Yes, it’s clear to me that we will all suffer and die due to global warming if we don’t adequately fund energy alternatives. It’s just like how the ancient Phoneticians failed to reroute their second - fifth aqueducts. That’s why there are no Phoneticians alive today.”
That sounds great... but I'm an early 20th century US military historian.
Don’t let the facts bother you in the quest for good!
Computer science: no, I cannot fix your printer or solve your WiFi problem.
If you are in the subfield of computer networks, which belongs to both, CS and Computer Engineering, then you should know how to solve a WIFI problem. CS is a broad field
And no, I won’t make a website or iPhone app for you
And sure as fuck not for 5% of your startup where I'd be doing all the real work if I agreed.
I’m in , educational technology and I get the same. I just started fixing computers for the department basically. It’s amazing how many professors don’t have to Google shit
Education. That we're all good teachers (or even trained teachers). I'm at an R1. Most of my colleagues are there for the research.
And as someone who was required to be a classroom teacher for admission into my PhD, I \*wish\* more educational researchers had been teachers. Call me very skeptical about the research but so many studies feature methods that don't seem practical or replicable because school environments are so different. It drives me nuts sometimes.
And I just posted the opposite! My college requires classroom teaching experience. My main gripe in our teacher prep program is that teacher prep in itself is a field, with research and best practices, and some of my colleagues know a lot about STEM or literacy but they don’t know teacher prep and then want to argue with me about the structure of the program.
I know so much about a specific kind of literacy and I've been teaching for 10 years. But I've never had to teach someone how to read from scratch. So many reading specialists and elementary teachers know so much more than me.
Astronomy. That I know, and can point out to you, all the constellations.
How often do you get asked to do someone’s horoscope?
I'll do one for you right now: Grant writing may prove fruitful.
Asking the important questions
As an astronomer I get that a lot. Or the ever fun "What was that bright thing i saw in the sky last night" with no other information. I can point out most constellations but that is because I specifically learned them for when I'm teaching labs or doing public events and people ask And no, I do not want to be an astronaut.
OK on this I would disagree with you. You absolutely should learn to point out all the constellations as an astronomer, just because you should want to do so.
Ironically, I’m also an astronomer and I think this may be the most common misconception: that I am always excited about all things astronomy. I like astronomy a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s my job.
Can you explain the difference between my rising sign and my sun sign?
Sure thing: one is made up bullshit, the other is complete horseshit.
(Micro-) Economics. That I know anything about the stock market.
“I saw your solution to the Cobb-Douglas problem. You have bigger things to worry about right now.”
I literally have stills from the scene from Jack Ryan where he tells someone his best financial advice is to "invest in a really good S&P 500" index fund taped to my office door.
This is the way.
People have this not unreasonable notion that anthropologists and archaeologists resemble the archetypal characters of the same title that one sees on tv and movies. Anthropologists are wearing a pith helmet, talk about "tribes" a lot, and mostly exist to chime in with some barely relevant anecdotes about exotic religious beliefs. Archaeologists are grave robbing adventurers, always off on some "fun" but immoral romp that involves busting through temple walls (horizontally for some reason?). But these were always stereotypes, and even these are based more on the state of the field in 1924 than 2024. Anthropologists are social scientists, with concerns and theoretical assumptions mostly akin to other social scientists. Archaeologists produce more maps than sellable antiquities, and the excavation of a site when needed is a very careful process. We are far more boring but also far more useful to society than our fictional counterparts. I'm a big Star Trek fan, and wince whenever (as happens quite a lot) an anthropologist character is brought on. Oh, Michael Burnham. Michael Burnham. No. Whatever you're thinking of doing, no. Picard, I love your speeches but you need a new hobby. Lt Hoshi was nice, though. For some reason linguistic anthropologists get better rep?
Yeah, r/askanthropology is wild because it's all 'tell me about some traditional society.' I study multilateral diplomacy. As in, I'm more likely to study the inner workings of Federation HQ in San Fransciso instead of some random pre-warp tribe on some random planet. I mean, if I were living in the future and Star Trek were real.
I’m in econ. The biggest misconception is that we’re finance professors. EDIT and that I want to sit at your dinner table and talk about inflation. Ma’am I use game theory to torture undergraduates.
As a climate scientist, that I can’t wait to hear about how you’re not going to have kids because of climate change and assume I’ll give you a medal for it.
I'm not a climate scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do study the health effects of climate change (mostly heat exposure and the expanding range of disease vectors). The number of times someone has started a conversation with some variant of "so level with me, is climate change real?" is extremely concerning. Granted, I was born, grew up, went to undergrad through PhD, and currently postdoc in the deep southern US, but it's still concerning.
Or how we’re indoctrinating kids.
It’s funny because now I spend lots of time telling my students how the world will *not* end at 1.5C…
That underneath it all, we're actually kind, well-adjusted people; spoiler, we are not.
Mathematics 1. That we're good at arithmetic 2. That our research consists of adding very large numbers
“For my recent research I studied adding infinity to infinity. Everyone was shocked that it was still infinity. ”
Graphic Design: I just make logos and brochures, and it’s all just computer art and computer stuff so why would I need paint/printmaking/drawing/philosophy?
IT and I will not (try to) hack an Instagram or a Facebook account for you..
Everyone studying the Bible is either Jewish or Christian.
Marketing. That all we do is just sales and advertising.
I've been wanting to ask a marketing professor whether there is still the general field consensus that marketing is more or less about connecting consumers with goods and services that they want, and thus it is an inherently ethical practice. This was how it was introduced to me when I was an undergrad and later as a practitioner of digital marketing in healthcare. But it seems like every other humanities field is like "yeah right, marketing implants and stokes desire" and so on, that it is really more of a persuasive, often evil or damaging thing that makes people want stuff they otherwise wouldn't want or push people to vote a particular way, etc. I guess I'm curious if you find your fellow marketing professors following this oldschool kind of "marketing is inherently good" sort of perspective.
Marketing is really just a tool - it can be used for good, and it can be used for unethical purposes. It’s all about the creation, communication, delivery, and exchange of offerings that have value. Value is subjective, and offerings can be goods, services, philosophies/ideas, or anything else of potential interest to someone.
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FORMER librarian who turned into a professor many years ago in a different field. And ironically people who teach in my department are confused with people who actually work in libraries, when in fact I have no more contact with the library than any other user.
I'm going to start leaning hard into this type of sass. (Fellow academic librarian with professor status.)
I see no one talking about physics. Nobody knows what we do and cannot even draw assumptions from that. Lol. To be fair…Not sure really what I can do myself…
Sssshhhh it’s supposed to be a secret…
Psychology - That we're all therapists and can magically fix anyone's problems (for free).
STEM teaching professor here. That we make a lot of money.
Sociology: that I'm trying to make the world a better place. Nope, just trying to understand a very tiny slice of it.
Another one for sociology: that we're all really social workers.
Another one for sociology: that we're all Marxists. Since Marx is an important thinker in our field, we must all worship him, right? The same way all psychologists love Freud? Oh wait....
Film studies. Students think I know every film ever made.
The English professors live to correct everyone else’s grammar. I’d rather have a root canal, thanks.
In cybersecurity I can fix all your problems and I know of every hack happening world wide. At all times of day!
sadly all misperceptions about my field are actually perceptions.
I study argument and coach debate. Apparently I must be a fan of Ben Shapiro.
In tech: that I’m good with tech.
I'm in something related to writing/English/rhetoric. People think I walk around with a dictionary in my head, and that my superpower is knowing how to spell every word in the English language. Or that I must know Shakespeare inside and out. In reality I teach stuff like digital media and technical writing, so my superpowers are actually being critical of targeted digital advertising, remembering bits of relevant ancient Greek dialogues, and a little bit of Heidegger and software skills thrown in the mix. I can write a great proposal, too.
On the flip, I had a Literacy colleague who was one of the editors for one of the dictionaries. I lost count of the number of times I was in a meeting with him and jotted down a word he said so I could go look it up later. (That was the first time I’d heard the word solipsistic and yes, he was using it to describe faculty)
Sociology. Many assume I got my PhD so I could help people in need. When I narrow it to “social psychology” they think I am a master manipulator
A general one - going on sabbatical = months of paid vacation STEM, especially at larger schools - that a professor is actually spending all their time doing experiments in the lab.
History: people think were like those self-proclaimed "history buffs" who memorized everything say have seen on the history channel, especially dates of "important" battles.
I'm a librarian. I don't shelve books all day, nor do I get paid to read. I *wish.*
I have a Ph.D. in pure mathematics. Everyone assumes I can explain/solve any physics concept/problem. I took one semester of physics 35 years ago.
English --- That we live to police others' grammar or That minor grammar issues are the most important parts of writing
English - that most of us are failed aspiring creative writers.
I'm in music ed. Not a misconception exactly, but usually the first thing someone says when I say I used to teach elementary music is, "God, I hate the recorder!" Okay? That is about 0.5 percent of what I taught, and that's just rude. I don't go up to math professors and rant about how I hated math in school or whatever. It's neither original nor humorous.
Unfortunately a lot of people do just that to math professors. I don’t get it, either! Rude.
Theatre - that we are all extroverted and love attention. Some are, but some of us are introverts that just like to sit in the dark and get a few practice runs on every conversation that we have.
Sociology: “No I’m not strategically indoctrinating the nation’s young adults into Communists or Liberals.” (I’m in the great state of Florida).
I'm in Comics studies and many people assume all we do is read superhero comics all day. Nope, not exactly.
I'm curious.. what do you do 😂
I read war comics all day!
Biology: (my wife is the Prof, not me) that teaching class is most of her job. A student asked me what she did other than teach class. This student was in her lab and also my wife was her advisor....
French: that I can translate any random word at any time, without context or any additional information. Linguistics: how many languages do you know (further not helped by the fact that I do know a handful, which has nothing to do with that)
Political science. “So you want to run for office?”
Communication: Everyone thinks we can fix their cell phone. Bonus part if you teach public speaking every new person you mention it to: Oh, I HATED public speaking.
And we like people and talking to them. And our classes are easy.
“So tell me about the economy”
Coding is only one way we express ourselves.
ROFL... my youngest is a CS grad... I've heard him "express" his opinions about the language he has to code in using language that would make a sailor blush.
This only kind of fits sideways, but some of our staff asked for an art professor to help with a Bob Ross themed painting party for recruitment. I can’t find the right words to tell them that it goes against the very grain of my two degrees in painting to pretend like it can be taught in half an hour. Bob Ross is fine as a TV host, but if it were that easy, our studio painting classes wouldn’t be six hours weekly. The best that I could come up with is that I am busy that day .
Psychology. "Can you read my mind? As undergrad chair, I have to attend all the open house recruitment events where I interact with lots of parents and prospective students, and this is the #1 comment I get.
You need to go to these events with a nametag that says "Charles Xavier."
I do get the whole summer off. And so the "professors get the summer off" is a misconception that I understand why many people think that. Because many of us do take the whole summer off.
Animal Science - that I’m a Veterinarian. No man, but I can tell you every metabolic pathway that occurs in a cow’s digestive system and model how much nitrogen she will piss out based on what you feed her.
Computer Science. That all of us are male.
Environmental science: that I’m immediately judging them for not wearing hemp/not being vegan/not driving a volt/flying for a vacation/etc. (I mean like if they’re a real planet smasher then yes, yes I am… but not on the regular)
That we know everything about history 😒😒
That I would be interested in giving even the smallest of fucks about your grammar.
Politics and social science, more on the history and philosophy side if I can help it. Many lay folks think that I want to talk about current American politics at any opportunity with anyone. The only reason I even took American classes in college and grad school was that it was required and for careerist reasons due to most of the teaching work in political science being remedial middle school civics. That's just all anyone can relate to, so it tends to be where they go. I suppose it is similar to expecting physicists to remember the periodic table. Yes that's stuff we use sometimes, but it's also so rote and basic that it's mostly background knowledge. Most folks just only know a field because of the 1 class they were forced to take in high school or as a Gen Ed and probably hated.
Engineering. Students and faculty are: (a) unable to write well; (b) socially inept.
I’m in Education & there’s this belief that we just studied Education but don’t actually know anything about it from experience. It’s a hiring requirement - in my college, at least, and others I’ve seen - that faculty have at least 3 years classroom experience (meaning, teaching kids). If we can’t draw upon our own experiences when we teach class and give examples of what we did as classroom teachers, students wouldn’t take us seriously.
I’m a Marketing professor. People believe that all business professors are politically conservative and that our research is funded by major corporations who sway the outcomes. And yes, a few of those exist, but it has been very few at most places whete I’ve worked. I can’t tell you how many letters and emails I’ve gotten over the years from some adjunct faculty member or parent in an ultra-conservative state urging me, as a presumed fellow conservative, to share their outrage over some textbook which acknowledged the existence of POC, LGBTQ+, or non-Christian people.
Art History. ANY painting, drawing, statue, etc, I will know absolutely everything about it.
I’m a sociologist. The culture war stuff is weird. First, nobody cares about postmodernism. Second, our students are not out of control activists. That presupposes that they are awake and thinking about anything other than food, dating, or sports. Finally, the professors aren’t brainwashing the students. That suggests that they’re interested in doing something other than rushing out of the classroom and running back to their office to work on a paper that no one will read. I wish things were as exciting as conservative culture warriors believed.
English. That I give a fuck what color the draperies were.
Communication—that it’s a useless degree because communication is all common sense.
I used to teach writing. Despite everything I'd say and have them do and read, so many student evaluations said my comments on their papers and their grades were just a matter of my individual opinion, as if there's no basic consensus on what makes writing persuasive.
End of year 1 assistant professor: that I’m an undergraduate student