My lab is located on the side of the building where one can find a rarely-used elevator. There are only a handful of labs on each floor that are close to this elevator, so I suppose the people using that elevator are used to being the only person in it. Me, I'm not used to riding that elevator in the first place. This *probably* explains the weird things that have been happening...
- I step out of the elevator and turn left and take three steps towards the wall before I realize my lab is the other way.
- I get on the elevator with some guy (Korean, probably) who presses the button for the third floor; I then reach in front of him and press the button for the second floor. My floor arrives and the other chap gets off the elevator with me! I smile and tell him that this is the second floor and he gets back in with a sheepish grin.
- Above scenario repeats itself exactly, except with a different person: a chinese woman!
- This time I get in on the third floor with a totally different person; I'm going to the second floor, so he presses the button for the first floor (that's what these crazy Americans call the ground floor). And, you guessed it, he started walking when the elevator reached the second floor until I gently reminded him that he'd wanted to get out on the first floor.
This is simply too much of a coincidence to happen so many times in a span of three days. That leads me to believe that my cousins were right all along: people like me ("me" enclosing God-only-knows what kind of stereotype they had in mind) are the type who do PhDs and become professors and so on. And people like me have no space on our minds for mundane things like noticing which floor the elevator is on, or which direction you're supposed to turn from this elevator; we're absorbed in our own (apparently complicated) thoughts. That is why there is a phrase "absent-minded professor", and no other vocation has this distinction of being associated with absent mindedness - unless you count mad scientists, who are not particularly different.
It is comforting, however, to find so many people having the same quirks as I do. Time was, when I thought I was the only person who behaved in such a weird fashion. Guess I've finally found a place where I fit in - with the people who are either doing PhDs or have have already done PhDs! Three cheers for non-medical doctors. To top it all, Jorge Cham of PHD Comics gave a talk in our university today. I laughed so hard for an hour that my jaw hurt! Unfortunately, grad school humour is extremely hard to share with regular mortals :P so I'm not going to elucidate.
Cheers,
Prashanth.
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18 comments:
A 2nd floor lab, and you elevator it...take the stairs, boy!! ;)
oh no no, please go ahead, please elucidate,
then perhaps we might raise ourselves to your exalted level of humor
- Newman
Alraqs,
Er... I do, sometimes... but I hate underutilization of mechanical resources ;)
Newman,
Don't be so touchy, dude. I even put a smiley there to make it clear that I was jesting! And its not my "exalted level of humour", I'm talking about Jorge Cham.
Do u know what sets apart the regular mortals from the err.. irregular ones?
Its the fact that such mishaps happen quite often.. and ppl dont give a second thought abt it. While, you sat here and made a whole post about it. (now. thts PHD brain talkin!)
Similarly, perhaps if i start narrating my elevator incidents in such elaborate manners.. then perhaps i could be sworn into the PHDs Abnormal World..and maybe even get qualified for that Grad-Humor u were talking about.
BLEH! Then my Regular brain woke up and said.."why would u put urself in sucha suicidal position???" I mean.. the treat(more like...) i get for entering into this world.. is prashanth's joke session??? I mean.. I never get ur jokes. But so does the rest of the population in this world! :P
Man.. It FEELS GOOD to be a REGULAR!
pacha,
maybe u r just realizing it just now. peps used to say that you are always in your own world... and we used to comment that iit's and phd's are always that way.
Well done div!! Gimme five babes! Talk about these j**less blokes they'll start researching on the traversal patterns of honey pot ants!!
SP,
See no one here gets ur jokes!!
Div,
Don't worry, most of the time I'm not trying to be funny :)
Sankar,
Yeah, I know... and I think I was always half-hearted in refuting those "allegations"!
Anon (Kk, that you?)
J**less? Hmm I wonder what letters could make that R-rated!
Intern,
Aha.... thats one of Vc's favourite sayings!
Wow.. two dragons breathe down ur neck.. and all u can muster up is a smile... like this>>>> :)
jeez.. seems like the next step wud be to call these dragons cute!
oh, no.. thats the deadly word..worse than dragon fire!
Well, U double-sided PHD!!!... U call us dragons on one side.. and call our very own ANON sweet on the other side!
Make up ur mind...err.. and also ur face..pass me the mascara someone...
uhahaaaaaaaaahaa.. Sp Sp Sp .. psst where is the humour ?
Hahaha...it is supposed to be the ineffable word as bad as an R-rated one: and that was supposed to be cryptic yet people of all IQs can figure it out!! Now wait a minute isn't that supposed to hurt ur intelligence..ooh pardon me!!
Vc,
Good question. Ask anyone who laughed, I know I didn't!
Kk,
But, jobless is like this word we use in practically every sentence...
"Hey, are you busy?"
"Nah, I'm jobless till tomorrow morning."
"Stop bugging me. Don't you have work to do?"
"Nope, I'm absolutely jobless right now."
"You're reading a novel? You jobless bugger!"
"Are you so jobless that you're reading blogs in the middle of the day in your office?"
Errr.... ok fine, back to work :(
as alraqs says..take the stairs!!
There are usually half a dozen people who will be as quirky as you. Just a matter of getting to know them better! :)
Hmm well, nowadays even profanities are mouthed more frequently so "j-less" seems like a peccadillo!
On a more pedantic response to ur post I have a perfect scenario to test the condition.
In my office building 3, we have two lifts; one frequently used (say L1) and one used seldom because it is away from the main entrance (say L2).
Both lifts are identical in almost all respects.
I have observed people getting off on the right floor when they use L1 and getting off on the wrong floor while using L2. The reason being in case of L1, they know that invariably it is going to stop almost on every floor before it reaches theirs and therefore they are on the lookout. But in case of L2 it is pretty unlikely that it will stop at any floor before theirs and so they get off at the floor it first stops at.
So there you go: perfectly logical explanation for a seemingly "absent-minded" trait. And you don't need a PhD for it.
Since I joblessly wrote a thesis on my observation do I get a PhD in Lift Psychology? Whatever that means!!
--kk
Smugbug,
Ah, but if they hardly talk and I hardly talk, how am I going to find them or know them?
Kirthi,
I already said all that in the first paragraph. I'm just saying, I think such things are more likely to happen to people like me. You could've saved yourself the trouble of all that typing :)
Talking of weird..there was this guy I used to bump into EVERYWHERE..
when going out to dinner..
in any desi event..
on the road..
and he wasn't even studying in the university..
most weird..
in gradschool apart from like 5 people you hardly speak to anyone..
there have been people i have been bumping into on and off for 2 years now..and we barely go beyond the polite nod or whatever.
I agree with ramani, gradschool really nullifies your face-to-face social interactions (and a PhD is only worse than a Masters)...apart from, of course, the everyday faces in the elevator, or stairs, as the case may be :)
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