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When our kids were littler, we once spent a weekend with one of my friends, her electrical engineer husband, and their kids. After the first day, I had this conversation with my then-four-year-old son:
Son: "I thought you said Alan was an engineer."
Me: "That's right."
Son: "But . . . then . . . where's his train?"
I am still trying to figure out how to tell people what I do. When I was in college my major was molecular biology. I learned quickly not to say that at parties, otherwise people would look at me like I was from the moon.
I told a woman from St. Louis who was dancing with me at a club that I am a "lab rat" and she seemed to enjoy that. I have no idea what she believed that meant, exactly. Most of the time I just say I work in a lab, and then people ask what kind of lab and I can go from there.
People assume that I am doing some freaky weird mad science growing chickens with six legs or something, or defiling God's creation, depending on the crowd. Sometimes I roll with that. The UPS guy asked if I was playing with colorful chemicals and I actually was, but it's a lot less glamorous than it sounds (artificially colored standards, just so you can tell them apart). The worst misunderstanding is that because I work in a lab I must be some genius or at least think I am and therefore will lord over everyone with my brains. "wait wait, you are a molecular biologist? Don't say anything more because I probably won't understand."
I read a book about marketing once and it gives the advice that, instead of stating a job title when asked about your profession, that you should say what you do in terms of how it relates to the person you are speaking with. The book suggested that it would require thought and practice to be able to succinctly and accurately characterize what you do, but it seems like a worthwhile exercise. Unless a person is already intimately familiar with your job title or field, it is likely you will be misunderstood otherwise.
Accounting. When the subject of "well paid white collar jobs" comes up people group us with Doctors and Lawyers. We most assuredly are not well paid. Nurses make more than us, especially when our unpaid OT is factored in. Many of us are forced to work 70+ hours a week, equating to about 8 bucks an hour...
Well, I didn't say they are not in IT. I said IT professionals. I've had long conversations with IT professionals about this. They've told me that while helpdesk people are IT, they're not considered IT professionals.
It comes down to what you would consider professionals are. Are technicians professionals? Are cashiers cashier professionals?
Anyway, since I'm not in IT, I'll leave it at that.
Perhaps your comment from the other thread still stuck:
Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroZombie
FYI help desk people are not IT. I know a couple IT professionals who will strangle you if you think that's what they do.
So now you're trying to differentiate whether one is a "professional" within their field of work? That to me would be subjective, wouldn't it?
My husband is a Meteorologist, and he gets it a lot worse than I do. A lot of people assume that means he is a weather person on TV, and that it isn't a real science, just coin flipping.
All of the weather persons on tv in my town ARE Meteorologists. It might be a science but it's one of the only ones where it's not only accepted but expected that the results will be largely inaccurate on a regular basis.
Being in a clinical laboratory means people assume the machines do everything, that we're stupid, that anyone can do our job (requires a B.S., an exam and licensure in the state), etc.
Reality: Lots of manual/individual work, especially depending on the area---blood bank (terrifying at times), micro, hematology/urinalysis have a lot of hands-on stuff; coursework is HEAVILY saturated not only in the usual sciences (pre-med curriculum, essentially) the but clinical sciences as well. We constantly have to pay attention to every minor thing and know when either the machines are wrong or if the person who drew the blood didn't do such a great job. QC can be insanely complicated but is SO important.
Teaching is a big one - because we've all been students, a lot of people think that means they know what teaching is all about - especially our legislators.....
"BOGSATs" (bunch of guys sitting around the table).
We have a similar acronym in TV news: BOPSA (bunch of people standing/sitting around).
I don't have a problem explaining my job. I just watch the expressions change from interest to disappointment when I tell people I work at a television station, but I'm not on television.
When people hear I am a college professor, they ask me what it is like to have the "summer off". They don't understand that research is a major part of the job and no one I work with takes a summer off. (At research universities, teaching classes actually takes up a very small portion of a professor's time.)
I'm a mechanical engineer, so initially people think I'm a grease monkey. I had couple of friends in college that went in the field just because they loved cars. I work with buildings, HVAC design, energy use simulation, sustainability. There are several ways of building or putting together the systems for buildings. I have to understand about payback of the choices everyone involved in the process makes.
Several people with the same degree that I have work on jobs doing things that are completely different, from calculating stress on a machine part all day in computers to spending lots of time in the field.
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