(no subject)

[tahnan]

There's a question that linguists get all the time after they tell someone they're a linguist, which is, "How many languages do you speak?" It's an intensely frustrating question, because it misses much of the point of the work a linguist does.

Similarly, I know that friends who have masters' degrees in children's literature dread questions about whether that means that they're writing a children's book. (Also, nearly any question that mentions Harry Potter.)

So I ask my readers, out of curiosity. When you tell people something fundamental about who you are or what you do ("I'm a linguist"; "I have a Masters' in Children's Literature"; "I'm from Serbia"; "I have a wooden leg"; "I brew beer"; or what have you), what question is it that you dread getting in return, but which seems to be fairly inevitable?

Comments

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

"What do you do?"
"I'm a librarian."

"So, you must really like the Dewey Decimal System!"
OR
"Where's your bun?"
OR
"You don't look like the librarians *I* remember," hubba hubba.
OR my personal favorite,
"Hey, we're not going to need you guys much anymore - we have Google!"..or some variation on the theme.

Once I actually had a guy I met at a friend's wedding - who seemed to be trying to chat me up, believe it or not - say, "Oh, how cute!" Yeah, that's gonna work. *smack*

[nplloquacious.livejournal.com]

Ditto to all the above plus "Shhhhhhhh."

But if I say I have a Masters in Information Science (which I do in that I have a Masters of Library and Information Science), they say "Wow."