what do people do all day?*

Like it or lump it, what you profess to do says a lot about you; it's widely accepted, for example, that accountancy is synonymous with dull.

When I was studying physics, admitting to it was social suicide. It didn't take me long to realise that in normal (i.e. non-physics) company, saying that I was a physicist** was guaranteed to stop the conversation.

Perhaps surprisingly, being an applied mathematician in Bath didn't have quite the same effect, though I suspect that this was because everyone else in Bath also studies maths and I was therefore lulled in to a false sense of security. The response I generally got was "oh, another one then" followed by a roll of the eyes. At least the conversation continued normally***.

But now, it's all come good. When someone asks me what I do, I sometimes even enjoy responding with "Aircraft Simulation", As lines go it's not a bad one**** and if that doesn't clinch me the crown of most eligible bachelor in the village, I don't know what will.


-----
*My favourite book as a child, by Richard Scarry, had this title.

**which I was, apparently.

***Unless I was talking to someone who was socially inept.

****Surely it's up there with "is your dad a baker? Because you have nice baps" and "sit on my lap and we'll see what comes up".

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've got to agree, never mention you do maths because people have to many preconceptions and bad experiences. Now I'm doing meteorology it's lot easier to continue from, 'So what do you do?' Even though there's not much difference in the material im dealing with. I think most people thing I'm a weatherman!

Ste
Mon Dec 03, 11:39:00 PM GMT
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the purpose of religion

One of the things which featured in the recent debate on this post is the idea that “religion should be about improving oneself”. This has got me thinking; ‘religion’ of course takes many forms, but in the vast majority of cases I disagree with this. To paraphrase MarkC, religion is certainly something which as a by-product might help with “improving oneself”, but however you measure self-improvement it is not the sole point, certainly not in the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, if your sole aim is to “improve yourself”, why waste your time playing around with the trappings of religion? Most religions are based around the idea of faith in God, and that, surely, is the point. Considering Christianity specifically, Jesus said “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself ” and so ‘religion’ should not be in danger of becoming all about wo
Read more

atheism is a matter of faith, not science: the debate continues

Following the letters page in last Wednesday's Metro and the follow-up comment on this post I’m pleased to see that the beginnings of a debate are brewing, and I intend to use this post to pick up the baton again. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start by responding to the aforementioned comment. I apologise if my tone was deemed to be a bit sharp, but I have no hesitation in defending the point I was trying to make. According to dictionary.com , faith can be defined as “belief that is not based on proof.” As there is no proof that God does not exist, belief that God does not exist (i.e. atheism) must be faith. Now, I take your point that “as human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable.” To digress slightly, that is why switching on the Large Hadron Collider is going to be something of a milestone, as it could either serve to prove a theory or
Read more

och, I'm back

Well, I've been back from Bonnie Scotland for a week now, actually, but I've been a bit busy since then. As my mother discovered when she visited a while back, Scotland is not as wild or backward as one might think ("they have a Marks and Spencer's in Inverness!") and Sam and I had a wonderful few days. We spent the first two days in Edinburgh staying with our great aunt, which was fantastic. I think I've paid tribute to her before in this corner of the blogosphere, and her legendary status was confirmed when it transpired that the random Edinburgh couple who sat next to us on the journey North actually knew her (I kid you not). On arrival she took one look at my Grade 2 'style' and exclaimed "what's with the hair?!", and it was nice to see that all was well. Edinburgh, I have decided, has JP's seal of approval and I did enjoy seeing the sights. We packed quite a lot in, including an exhibition on tartan which turned out to be re
Read more