Question of the Day -- Explaining Your Job to A Kid

Finished the paper. I just sent it to Steve and asked him if he could proof it, please. Yeah, that would be great. [Channeling the voice of the boss from Office Space.]

This afternoon with my head still on the paper, I took a break to feed Jonah. I explained why I've been ignoring him all week and giving him carte blanche on the Game Cube. I told him I am writing a paper for a conference in Chicago next week. I'm going to meet with all the other professors. We're going to get all dressesd up. I'm going to get on a stage and read my paper with a microphone and then they are going to raise their hands and tell me how their dissertations relate to my paper.

Jonah is not sure what he thinks about this conference except that he hopes they happen more often so that he can have more time on the Game Cube.

Steve just tells the kids he's a banker, because his job is rather confusing. I don't have a firm grip on what he does, and when he starts using words like "flex deals" and "the repo documentation," I'm completely befuddled.

I actually had the hardest time explaining to the kids, and well everyone else, what my job was when I was a stay at home parent without the professor bit, too.

Question of the Day: How do you describe your job to kids?

Comments

[Dr. Manhattan]

Just leave it at "lawyer;" they don't really want to know more.
The classic bit on this is from Bonfire of the Vanities, where Sherman McCoy attempts to explain selling bonds to a bunch of kids.

[Dan Drezner]

For the past week, as the chair of your APSA panel, my job has been to make you feel guilty about neglecting your kids.

Just point the kids over to my website and have them say "BAD MAN!!" very loudly. It'll be very cathartic.

[DR]

I tell my four-year-old that I'm a teacher -- of "college students" (who are sometimes explained as "really big kids"). And while I've explained what some of my friends/colleagues teach ("about animals" for an ecologist; "about rocks and fossils" for a geologist), I haven't yet had to try to explain that I teach writing -- or what that means at the college level. It's hard enough to explain to everyone else!

[laura]

Yeah, Drezner. Your face is in the bull's eye of the dartboard right now.

Actually, I needed the kick in the ass to get the thing finished off. I only respond to guilt. Thank my mother for that.

[landismom]

Well, my kids have come to a bunch of rallies and press conferences that I've organized. I think they think my job is to get people to yell at other (bad) people.

[Wesley]

You must be doing something right. My APSA panel never has a microphone, or a room big enough to use one.

[Ben Brumfield]

I haven't tried explaining my own job, but have managed to convey to my two-year-old an approximation of her grandfathers' jobs. One is a power electrical engineer, so whenever we pass substations, she'll proudly state "Papa N builds substations." The other owns a used bus and heavy equipment shop, so "Papa J fixes trucks" works.

[Shandra]

My son is two so I tell him "mommy makes words."

[jen]

I actually use the same line with the kids that I use with just about everybody: "I work with computers." Because let's face it, very few people want the full answer. At least the kids don't ask me to fix their home computer, like most people do.

[Kai Jones]

Heh. I spent a lot of time on this when my younger one was in 5th grade and I went in during career week. Kids that old (11 or 12) can take a more detailed explanation, so they got one. I brought in a banker's box full of office tools they wouldn't have seen, like a 2-hole punch, a Dictaphone with foot pedal and some tapes, a legal file folder with prongs and our colored number codes on it, a sample pleading. And I spent considerable time emphasizing what you need to focus on in school to do my job: what used to be called grammar, spelling and punctuation but was then (is now?) called "conventions."

I'm a legal secretary.

[LisaS]

I'm an architect, which is really pretty easy to explain to the kids because they see the accouterments everywhere around the house: computers with CAD programs, drafting pencils and triangles, large rolls of drawings, books full of pictures of buildings. For a while they thought that I actually built the buildings too (I was spending a lot of time on the job site, sometimes taking the older one, then 4, along--don't have a cow, I only do interior jobs, and he wore a real hard hat and boots.) Now they understand that I just draw them, and talk on the phone a lot.

But the college professor thing was hard to explain, since I spent twice as much time in front of the computer as teaching (which was considerable, since my load of design classes was 18 contacts per week) ... you folks in academia ... I feel for you ... my life on the outside is so much healthier ...