<p>MIT has no astrophysics department per se, but both physics (8) and planetary science (12)departments offer some astro courses so I’m planning a course 8 major (focused option) with a minor in astronomy(courses from 8 and 12) and a possible concentration in a humanities subject (if I can fit it in) when I start next fall. I would double major but I don’t think astronomy is available as a major, only as a minor. If you read any of Lulu’s blogs (she graduated this year), I think this is what she did as well.</p>
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<p>The problem is when people start asking you for help in fixing their computer or configuring their HDTV…especially when you don’t know how!. That gets awfully uncomfortable real fast, as people start chortling: “Wait, you went to MIT?” </p>
<p>Sometimes I (jokingly) think that MIT should run a required class of “Fixing Every-Day Technology” in order to avoid those embarrassing scrapes.</p>
<p>sakky: I would love the “Fixing Every-Day Technology to Prove That You Actually Went to MIT” class.</p>
<p>I’ve rarely encountered the person who had no idea what MIT was, but it did happen just a few hours ago. </p>
<p>Me: “I just graduated from MIT.”
Her: “Oh, interesting! So are you going into fashion?” (Apparently she was thinking of FIT- the Fashion Institute of Technology.)
Me: “Um, no, mechanical engineering…”</p>
<p>That was an interesting twist on the conversation, and an even more interesting look on her face when she realized just how far off she had been…it’s a long way from designing clothes to designing cars. =)</p>
<p>Heh, I was getting a haircut the day after I finally decided on MIT. My barber knew that I would be going to college in the fall, so she asked me if I had decided yet. I was so excited from the day before that I blurted out “Yes, I’m going to MIT!”, and then realized that it sounded like I was bragging about it and braced myself for an awkward moment. Her response? “Oh, where’s that?”. :-)</p>
<p>(She then said that I shouldn’t go to school so far from home, because I wouldn’t have any friends as a freshman and I would want to come home all the time).</p>
<p>I thought MIT was among a handful of schools with the best national recognition. I’m surprised!</p>
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<p>Well, shocking as it might seem to seem of us here on CC, MIT is a school that is well-known only amongst the ‘educational cognoscenti’. Most regular people don’t know about MIT and don’t care. For example, I know one girl who went to work for Harley Davidson, which is headquartered in Milwaukee, and found that many of her coworkers had never heard of MIT and thought it stood for some low-end trade school dubbed the “Milwaukee Institute of Technology”, akin to Devry or ITT Tech.</p>
<p>Wow, this is something I never thought of. One of the nice things about college is that people almost never say things like “Wow you must be a genius” and leave it awkward…if one hangs out with the right people, of which there are enough. LauraN – entertaining story!! Though, wouldn’t you think some of the people you’d want to meet would be happy to know about your place of study, and maybe chat it up about Mech-E? </p>
<p>Sakky’s little account has unfortunate parallels. Erhm, try being asked to compute a class average on an assignment in some humanities discipline because you’re a math major. (This, luckily, didn’t happen to me, but to a friend…).</p>
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<p>Ha. While that certainly has a comedic (albeit stereotypical) side to it, I’d argue that nobody seems terribly interested in a “nice engineer” of any ethnicity. I went to an engineering magnet high school, which basically meant that everyone there was interested in a profession (but not necessarily engineering). My friends who wanted to head on to medical school <em>loved</em> to make fun of my less prestigious choice, calling the engineer “the doctor’s sidekick.”</p>
<p>I’ve always been pretty smart and good at school- for years my parents used to say “she’s going to be a doctor or a lawyer!” The word engineer was never uttered. Whether or not you’re Jewish, there’s some social status associated with dating a doctor or a lawyer. An engineer, not so much. (And of course, only if you’re a female dating a male doctor. I’m a female engineer, no wonder I have so many relationship problems. =P)</p>
<p>Ah, but among a large part of the Asian community, “lawyer” is less favorably looked upon, and the name of the game is doctor or engineer. So the “nice Asian engineer” can be a good position to be in, I think. “Asian” being relatively encompassing. </p>
<p>I warn, at this point, that I will be using phrases like “classic <em>insert some encompassing group of people</em> mentality” a little liberally, and this is for a purpose other than stereotyping – rather, perhaps, a byproduct of how others pride themselves on stereotypes traditionally placed on them. </p>
<p>I had a conversation with a friend of Asian background, and in fact his parents explicitly frowned on the idea of becoming either a lawyer or doing some sort of economics and then going for one of the high-paying jobs there. Normally, many Asian parents would like their sons and daughters to do generally anything high-paying, but with my friend’s case, there was an implicit suggestion that the mentality needed to work in some professions “aren’t in his blood.” Or, they’d rather that that mentality weren’t there! The parents favored engineering on the grounds that many high-paying careers weren’t based on a fundamentally “noble” goal, while engineering is supposed to be producing something to better some situation (oh, and no doubt, they would have preferences on what kind of engineering as well, given some forms are more noble than others!). </p>
<p>I imagine that there are some similarities among the standard Asian mentality and the Jewish one – there is an emphasis on pursuing certain careers, with a combination of going for well-paying and prestigious positions. One can see from what I wrote before, though, that there’s one certain way an engineer could occupy a high status within certain societies. </p>
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<p>When it comes to the mentality in part of my family (I will say, much less so in my immediate family), someone who studies physics, mathematics or engineering would dismiss those going on to medical school by saying “Ah, they probably work hard but aren’t that smart, so they went to medical school.” I obviously don’t think this way myself, but it’s hardly uncommon among my people a few generations above me. </p>
<p>Oh, and (sorry Mollie!!!) I just recently spoke with an elderly man, pretty old-timer, who asked whether this long time friend of mine was graduating, and what his plans were; I said he just got his degree in some form of biology, and might head on to medical school. The man quite literally shook his head and shuddered, saying he was completely unimpressed by the biology major. While I was more than a little vexed in my first response, the reason for this is almost certainly that most people who did biology in his time went nowhere, and weren’t even very happy with their choices. The same man would rejoice if someone claimed to be into a good engineering school (though he wasn’t an engineer himself). </p>
<p>In the U.S., though, I still think many engineers at some schools are arrogant about their choice of major, and live by the “My major is for the no-BS, smart people…” and not a few parents seem to feed this attitude.</p>
<p>In other news LauraN, I think you’d have few problems among certain groups of people! Except that you may hate the reasons they give for appreciating your engineering major.</p>
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<p>There are always extremely intelligent doctors; of course this isn’t true. But then again, the stereotype wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t some basis to it, namely people who aren’t that smart who have an excellent work ethic.</p>