# What’s an innocent or common misconception about your profession or your hobby that just drives you up the wall? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 14, 2023, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496 "2023-06-14T14:06:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![knavette57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knavette57/32/3871_2.png) [@knavette57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/knavette57)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2023, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/221 "2023-06-18T23:23:37Z")
Same here. I am caregiver to my husband (we are a May December romance; he is December). He, therefore, is becoming frail, has had cancer (twice), and mild heart issues. I also am childcare provider for 2 grandchildren. I like helping everyone, and it is done without any pay (I do not need the money), but it is busy. No bon bon eating for me! In my past life, I worked in a library. People thought I read on the job, but, hell no, I was inputting info into the database, sorting materials, typing, etc. I wasn’t even assisting library users because I was very much behind the scenes. I did sometimes get first crack at the latest best sellers though, since I processed them for the front desk. Only sometimes, not always. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/222 "2023-06-19T00:07:26Z")
> [@MrPete67](#): > > Off-shore powerboat racing, road racing, performance driving instructor. All of this ‘seems’ like fun. Uh, yea, it is, but the driver’s life is in your hands when you are a crew member. Completely. It’s very tough on the crew. People don’t understand that. The competitor needs to stay focused while all the behind the scenes stuff goes on. And on and on. A lot of the work of the crew is psychological. And taking care of the tiniest detail. My Wife was an Iron Man racer. I was her sherpa. I only had to take her to the hospital twice. Well, that’s wrong, one time I had to call an ambulance. I’m glad that’s over. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/223 "2023-06-19T00:16:52Z")
> [@knavette57](#): > > Same here. I am caregiver to my husband (we are a May December romance; he is December). He, therefore, is becoming frail, has had cancer (twice), and mild heart issues. I also am childcare provider for 2 grandchildren. I won’t pretend to say I understand, and am not religious, but bless you. I did take care of my mother until her last days though. My cousin is now taking care of her older sister. It should only be days now. I’m 100 miles from home to be close and support them both. When the cousin dies, my other cousin is going to be a mess. I think I have the correct words for this. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/224 "2023-06-19T00:52:07Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I wish I could have travelled back in time to the late 1970s and planted the seed to make my earlier self more interested in calculus and differential equations. Oddly enough, though I sucked at calculus for three semesters and barely squeaked by, I aced the differential equations class. At the time I wondered why they didn’t just skip calculus and go straight to diffy-q, as it seemed so much easier to comprehend and use. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/225 "2023-06-19T00:55:02Z")
As an elementary student coming from a lousy school, I was far behind on arithmetic skills but whizzed on ahead with my grasp of exponents. I loved algebra, but not enough to go to a college with a math requirement. ---
**Author:** ![MrPete67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@MrPete67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrPete67)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/226 "2023-06-19T02:19:45Z")
Yea,…you understand… All that sort of crew-racing I have done. I was called one more time earlier this month. ( Ocean Cup - Palm Beach to Bahamas)… Experience-seriousness-fun, all wrapped into 4 days. But often, my relatives didn’t take it serious, as my “job”. Sorry,… stuck in an office is not for me. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/227 "2023-06-19T04:00:35Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > People have this really interesting characteristic where they think that everyone else is affected by things, but they are uniquely immune. Everyone else has confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, gets overly emotionally invested in their own POV, overestimates their abilities, is manipulated by advertising, but not _me._ I know, it bugs the hell out of me that everyone else thinks like that. ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/228 "2023-06-19T09:08:45Z")
I work for a political party, a party which has the governing majority in my city and province. The common misconception that drives me up the wall is that this gives me any kind of influence in the government. For example, my parents were having a bureaucratic hassle getting building plans passed. _Multiple_ people said things to me like, “surely you can get it sorted for them.” I mean, I _could_ phone the mayor on his private number - he might even answer my call - but it would be super super unethical if not actually illegal, and it wouldn’t have any effect anyway. Or people say stuff to me like, “tell [prominent politician] that their policy on [topic] is wrong and it should be doing [x, y, z] instead”. What makes you think they would listen to me, an ordinary staffer, about policies set at a high level? [Also the work I do is in IT, so I share all the complaints others have mentioned about people assuming you know how to fix their computer/printer/etc.] ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/229 "2023-06-19T10:22:12Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Oddly enough, though I sucked at calculus for three semesters and barely squeaked by, I aced the differential equations class. At the time I wondered why they didn’t just skip calculus and go straight to diffy-q, as it seemed so much easier to comprehend and use. How could you learn differential equations without knowing calculus first? To learn integration, you must know differentiation, and to learn differential equations you need to know both. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/230 "2023-06-19T11:01:51Z")
> [@MrPete67](#): > > Experience-seriousness-fun, all wrapped into 4 days. But often, my relatives didn’t take it serious, as my “job”. I did at least have some people that understood. My SIL was an IronMan as well. So myBIL really did understand. The racer must just focus and concentrate. There is a hellish amount of training and preparation that goes into this. And then it comes down to one day. As the sherpa, your job ends up as a volunteer at the race to try to keep yourself from worrying. Once, a woman racing in Boulder Colorado ran into a freaking bear and tacoed her front wheel. She got another wheel and finished the race. A new award was made for her - “Bearly made it” Ya just never know what might pop up. Admittedly, that was a weird one. Funny, one time I was taking my wifes bike into the hotel room to prep it. My Wife is 5’1". I’m 6’2. So the bike is clearly way to small for me. People looked at the bike, and then at me and back again. I said, don’t worry, “I have one for the other foot” ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/231 "2023-06-19T11:47:45Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > How could you learn differential equations without knowing calculus first? To learn integration, you must know differentiation, and to learn differential equations you need to know both. Beats me. Maybe enough of it stuck in my brain or something. All I know is that the logic seemed much easier and less abstract to me, if that makes sense. Of course, it was all 50 years ago, so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/232 "2023-06-19T13:21:26Z")
I’m an engineer, and I work with lots of people who have engineering degrees. About half have PhDs. There is a misconception that, if a person has a degree in engineering, then they must be _really_ smart. Yes, some are. But for a lot of them - perhaps over 50% - I scratch my head, wondering how they could have possibly gotten through engineering school. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/233 "2023-06-19T13:53:31Z")
> [@ctnguy](#): > > What makes you think they would listen to me, an ordinary staffer, about policies set at a high level? This reminds me of a relative who move to Los Angeles and ended working as part of the construction crew building movie sets. He came home to New England to visit us and he got into an argument with my cousin because my cousin kept asking him if he get her a job **acting** in a movie. She did NOT seem to understand he was just a minor cog in the movie industry and NOT having weekly dinners with Steven Spielberg. Some people are just clueless. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/234 "2023-06-19T17:30:28Z")
I think this probably happens to a lot of people who work at well known organizations. When I was working at Michaels, I had quite a few people tell me that the company needed to do XYZ. ---
**Author:** ![peccavi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peccavi/32/388_2.png) [@peccavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peccavi)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2023, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/235 "2023-06-19T19:19:42Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Lots of info on lots of puzzles Thanks a bunch for these links! I occasionally get recruited to man internal booths on innovation and R&D at internal employee events. We’re always looking for ways to attract people to the booth and I discovered many years ago that a few manual puzzles to solve is a great way to get engineers to stop and stay for a while. But, unfortunately, my supply of such puzzles, accumulated here and there, has been depleted over the years. And Game shops in the mall don’t really have many of these anymore. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/236 "2023-06-20T23:04:18Z")
Here are a couple more: Discord server > **[Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities](https://discord.com/channels/604645755671805962/622873451387944961/1009236182426718290?fingerprint=694558389874851904&attemptId=dad6309c-b1b2-4511-b54c-81c9173ff943)** > > Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities. An intersection between mechanical puzzles and word puzzles [http://www.pavelspuzzles.com/site/](http://www.pavelspuzzles.com/site/) There’s one more site I wanted to share, but can’t find it right now. If I do, I’ll update this post and DM you, so as not to overly clutter this thread. auction site > **[Puzzle Paradise](https://puzzleparadise.net/)** Beautiful (and expensive) little puzzle boxes from Japan > **[KARAKURI BOX](https://karakuri.gr.jp/en/)** > > Can you open Karakuri Box？ ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/237 "2023-06-21T00:26:17Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > I was in advanced math classes in high school up until Calculus. At that point my brain shut down. I did very nicely in math until calculus. Some students had trouble with algebra; I’ve forgotten almost all of it, but at the time it was a breeze, and it made perfect sense. But when we got into calculus – I was still getting all the answers right, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And when I tried to tell the teacher that, she said that of course I knew what I was doing, I was getting all the answers right. I didn’t come up with the analogy until years later, and didn’t know how to explain it to her – but I felt like I was translating from German to Chinese by having memorized what the written word looked like that you substituted for each given other written word: but without having any idea what any of the words meant, in either language. Maybe if I’d stuck with it, it might eventually have started making sense. Maybe a better teacher could have gotten it through to me. What actually happened was that I dropped the class, and never took any more math courses. – the common misconception about farming, I think, is that one doesn’t need to know very much to do it. The most annoying manifestation of this is probably the person who has no idea how to farm at all, or who has a vague idea, possibly remembered from childhood, of how to do one specific type of farming, who nevertheless thinks they’re entitled to tell someone who’s actually running a given farm how to do so. > [@Kropotkin](#): > > University professor, historian. As with teachers, the “so you have the summer off” observation is inaccurate. And very few farmers have the winter off, though it may be somewhat less frantic (or may not, depending on the type of farm.) ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/238 "2023-06-21T01:21:41Z")
I hated differential equations. Up until then, every math class had built up from the beginning to the end. You used the things you learned in the beginning to do more complicated things later, and it reinforced them in my memory. Diffy Q was a series of disconnected tricks that you could use to force equations that couldn’t be integrated directly, using calculus, to be integrated. Maybe two sections of the textbook would use the same dirty trick in different ways. It just didn’t hang together. There was no way that I’d be able to remember any of the tricks even a month after testing out on them. Heck, even Numerical Methods hung together better and it admitted upfront that it was a series of loosely related methods. After Diffy Q came Linear Algebra, which was back to being fine. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/239 "2023-06-21T01:36:29Z")
> [@](#): > > But when we got into calculus – I was still getting all the answers right, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And when I tried to tell the teacher that, she said that of course I knew what I was doing, I was getting all the answers right. > > I didn’t come up with the analogy until years later, and didn’t know how to explain it to her – but I felt like I was translating from German to Chinese by having memorized what the written word looked like that you substituted for each given other written word: but without having any idea what any of the words meant, in either language. That was how I got through the Calculus class as well. I’ve always had a good memory. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496/240 "2023-06-21T02:03:59Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I did very nicely in math until calculus. Some students had trouble with algebra; I’ve forgotten almost all of it, but at the time it was a breeze, and it made perfect sense. But when we got into calculus – I was still getting all the answers right, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. > > […] > > Maybe if I’d stuck with it, it might eventually have started making sense. I took calculus in high school, and didn’t drop it. But I didn’t really understand what I was doing. I memorized the derivative formulas. Then I used them. I memorized rules, but never understood what I was doing. I did get the highest on the AP test, but it was still an abysmal 3, being the only person who actually passed. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I stumbled upon the YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown (by Grant Sanderson) who teaches the concept of calculus that I could make sense of it. From there, I wound up listening to an actual calculus teacher on YouTube named blackpenredpen. Sanderson thinks that the foundations of calculus should be taught a lot earlier in school. And the way he explains things, I think it could be done. The actual hard work of integrating would probably need to wait, but the concepts could be taught. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-an-innocent-or-common-misconception-about-your-profession-or-your-hobby-that-just-drives-you-up-the-wall/985496.md?page=13)