Cultural Changes

Here is a blog topic I've had up my sleeve for a while now but hadn't gotten around to before now.

A few years ago, I was talking to my graduate adviser from SCU, and I told her that I really enjoyed most of my engineering colleagues. We had so many similar values, that had nothing to do with engineering. And wasn't it a remarkable coincidence? She pointed out, not quite! Actually, I fit a certain profile of people who go into engineering, and it's not just a profile of academic leanings or of personal enjoyment. Sure, most of us are tinkerers, and liked our math and science classes best in high school and college. But there is also a certain sociological profile that a lot of us fit, that sets us apart from other well-respected professions. It's that most of us are from lower to middle income families. A lot of us are from immigrant families. A lot of us are from single-parent households. A lot of us are the first generation of our families to attend college. Thinking it over, I find that this makes perfect sense to me. After all, what drew me into engineering? I loved physics, but didn't want to major in something that would require an advanced degree to make a good income. Of course, that exact same train of thought must have occurred to so many other engineers. A college student with family money probably wouldn't think twice before choosing to major in physics.

The physics community is somewhat different. Quite a few physics PhDs have one or both parents who also have physics PhDs. In fact, I've met more physics people following a family legacy than any other university major. They also tend to come from more financially comfortable families (although not all do!), and tend to innocently assume that their fellow physicists all come from similar circumstances.

I remember once I was chatting with a physics professor (who looks negative in this story but who is actually a very nice man whose company I enjoy immensely), and he said to me, "You are such a bright young lady. I bet your parents are so proud. Are they physicists too?" I was taken aback. For one thing, I feel that at my age, I should no longer be defined by my parents. But the relevant point is that I suddenly felt like I was in a different world! There were so many incorrect assumptions implicit in those three sentences--that my parents were still together, that they were highly educated, that they were proud of ME being highly educated. And he just said it so casually, he didn't mean at all to be insensitive or prying. He simply didn't realize how loaded a topic that could be. I think I stammered out pretty much the truth, while smiling and trying to maintain the levity of the conversation--my father was estranged, my mother actually wasn't proud of me. To say it aloud was shocking in the conversation, and I wished I had had the diplomatic skill to give a more tactful, but equally honest, answer.

No engineer had ever assumed that my parents were proud of me. None of them asked about my parents, knowing that there was equal possibility for my parents to be doctors or drug dealers, or anything in between. It wasn't considered a safe social topic to ask about one's family.

After this conversation, I considered my physics peers for the first time in this new light. Sure enough, they were different on the whole from my engineering peers. It made me pleased to realize that I'd spent nearly a whole year as a "fish out of water," and hadn't noticed until that conversation. It's nice to be able to blend in so genuinely that you don't even feel different yourself! You get to meet more wonderful people that way.

But as much as I like my physics peers, moving into the engineering building did have a feel of homecoming. :)