The One with Thing 29

What do you think people misunderstand most about you?

I had to ask Justin for help on this and I think he gave a good answer.  It’s something most people don’t understand about both of us actually and that is- our jobs.  Yes, we are students; no, we don’t take classes; yes, we get paid; and no, we don’t pay tuition (technically we do, the department just pays it for us).  I’ve explained this to so many people and some of them multiple times and it’s hard to separate the typical “college student” idea from what we do.  That’s because we’re science graduate students.  Science and engineering grad students get paid to go to school.  We don’t say that we’re “majoring” in chemistry anymore; we do chemistry research.  We took classes our first year but since then (so for over 3 years now) we have been paid research assistants.  Most other graduate degrees take more courses than what we did but if you think about it, they also typically have a hands-on section at the end of the program.  They just usually call it a “clinical” or “rotation.”  Science/engineering PhD programs are organized to not just train you how to use multiple instruments and follow procedures but to be able to develop those techniques yourself so the hands-on portion is longer and you learn a lot on your own during that time.  My research (plasmonics) is in a fairly new field (it’s really only been recognized as its own field for ~25 years) so there aren’t many textbooks about it.  I read a lot of science articles and see if I can get any ideas about what my own results might be indicating.  That’s what we really do.  Next year you won’t have to worry about it though.  We’ll actually have jobs and I’ll just say “I teach chemistry.”  So much easier to understand!