Dr. Shellie

Yesterday one of the machine technicians was training me on a piece of equipment. He explained that we were required to buy various supplies of our own, and then commented that as a "lady," it might be hard for me to carry my supplies in a toolbox, thought that was recommended, because it looked kind of nerdy and might mess up my hair.

Which was sort of funny, on a number of levels, one of which was that carrying a toolbox in no way messes up your hair, and another of which is that whenever anyone used the term "lady," it is usually a bad sign. And thirdly, (ironically enough) the possibility of my hair getting messed up was (uncharacteristically) on my mind yesterday, because I just got a trendy new haircut and my hair now flops uncontrollably over one eye.

Anyway, I thought this remark deserved some sort of response, and the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment was, "Oh, I used to be a big nerd when I was doing my PhD, but now those days are over." This had sort of the desired effect, as he fell all over himself apologizing that he didn’t KNOW I had a PHD in Subject X from School Y and why didn’t I SAY that before as he would have gone much faster during the training and not thought he had to explain what a damped sine wave was. The other guy doing the training also turned out to be a postdoc and got a similar apology. You never know when that PhD is going to help you, do you?