David R. MacIver's Blog
What did you study?
Most of the time when I tell people I did mathematics at university they reply with something along the lines of “Oh, I really hated that at school”.
My brother (who did philosophy) apparently often hears “So can you read my mind?”. I don’t quite get it.
Apparently musicians often hear “Oh, I played the X a while ago but stopped when I left school”. Sometimes suffixed with “Apparently I was good enough to do it professionally, but I didn’t want to”.
Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m sure most subjects have a wealth of stereotypical answers, but I’ve no idea what they are!
So... lets find out. I’ve created a site to gather all those answers which annoy you so much when you get them. It’s pretty limited so far: You just get to add answers and see other peoples’. If it goes well there are all sorts of cool things I can do with the data, but right now we’re at just the basics.
Comments
Tim Hardy on 2010-07-09 14:52:17:
Great idea David!
My favourite so far is the response to someone who studied German: “Why? They all speak English now anyway”
Michael Chermside on 2010-07-20 21:51:56:
My favorite is the person who studied “Ancient History & Archaeology / Computer Science”, to which the response is “...er... what?”
Erin on 2010-07-24 01:19:02:
Linguists get “so how many languages do you speak?” (I love this quote -- “Asking a linguist how many languages they speak is like asking a doctor how many diseases they have.”)
John on 2010-08-08 01:34:57:
Great idea!
Did this get submitted to reddit or something? There seem to be a lot of responses!
Alan on 2011-03-28 21:54:29:
I’m a Computer Scientist and a very typical response is, “oh man, I don’t know how to use a computer at all!”