Argh! I'm in the midst of searching for a new roommate and posted a listing on the website that is hosted by UCLA. I had to write a little blurb about myself and the people managing/editing the website content KEPT ON slipping in the phrase "mature and studious" in place of "graduate student"! I edited their edits TWICE and that phrase still popped up in their version of my listing! Maybe they think that would make me seem so much more attractive as a potential roommate. But for crying out loud, I'm the girl who my college roommate and best friend of 20 years describes as being wild and unpredictable! That's an Aquarian Dragon for you!
Why am I reacting so strongly to those innocuous words you may ask... It's probably due to the chip that I carry on my shoulder (no, not my evil twin that was surgically removed last year, for those of you who remember that little episode). Over the years, I have grown a lot more mature I have to say but it's got less to do with the fact that I'm a PhD student than that youth is generally wasted on the young! "Studious" is still synonymous with "straitlaced", "staid" and "insipid" in my dictionary I guess. And NO, not all graduate students fall under just those categories! For those of you who do, STOP giving us all a bad name! At the end of the day, I'll admit that I'm defensive about the reputation that graduate students in fields with bombastic, multi-syllabic names have. I underplay the nerdiness of what I do when talking to other 'normal' people. One has to be relevant to the world, right? Every now and then, Ping will ask me to tell her what I do and being the marketing exec that she is, forgets it the very next minute so she refers to me as the brainiac. (It's alright babes, I know you really do love and care about me.)
I'm hoping someone slightly deviant with a healthy dose of irreverence will not check my listing off their list. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy and am good at what I do, I'm just uncomfortable with stereotypes, especially ones that nameless, faceless people have decided that I fit. You can call me out the next time I try to box you in. We all have our little quirks and insecurities... How comfortable are you in your own skin?
~ s
4 comments:
Embrace your inner (and outer) geek! That's how I deal with it.
I find that fighting preconceptions is a pretty useless activity; people end up marginalizing you and say stuff along the lines of "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Going "Yeah, I'm a geek, and so?" and then going about your own business works much better in my experience. Then again, I tend to be too thick-skinned/self-absorbed to worry too much about other people's preconceptions of me.
Regards,
-joseph
"I'm hoping someone slightly deviant with a healthy dose of irreverence will not check my listing off their list."
I hope you didn't use the word "deviant" in your blurb. It might not help you get the kind of people you want!
I find that, where fighting preconceptions are concerned, only time works. If I have no time, then perceptions don't change.
Perhaps some McLuhanism might help the cause ;) "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."
I'm not quite sure how I stumbled upon your collective blog, but I'd say it's Good Stuff you're putting up here Shwern ;)
Keep going sista'. See you along the Equator soon =)
How's living near UCLA? The traffic in the city is crazy!
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