this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Science Memes
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That reminds me of a story my bachelor's supervisor in astrophysics told me: One of his best PhDs applied at an insurance company. They got an Excel sheet with data that they had 1 week to analyze. All the other applicants took the whole week. He just put it in Python, solved it in a few hours, and got the job.
This is only tangentially related to your story, but you reminded me of an old maths teacher who had a PhD in maths and once upon a time, had applied to work at an accounting firm. As part of the interview, he was told that he would have to sit a numeracy assessment. He responded "you do know I have a PhD in maths, right?". They sympathised with his point but told him that everyone had to sit the test, as a matter of course.
So my maths teacher goes and sits their silly test, and he scores so well that they accuse him of cheating! I can only assume that this debacle broke him in some way, because it wasn't long after this that he started teaching. It's a particular kind of weirdo who has a PhD in a subject and decides to teach teenagers. He was probably one of the best teachers I ever had (I wonder if I can find contact information for him to tell him that)
Also related, I had a psychology teacher with a PhD in psychology. But because in German schools, you need to teach two subjects (with the exception of the arts), he also taught physics. He was a terrible physics teacher, but a pretty good psychology one.