Describe your work like you're a 6 year old

[Bandersnatch]

Inspired by this SMBC comic:

I can read things some people can't read so I read them and then write them again only now those people can read it.

Now's your turn.

 

[DrClaude]

I take lasers and shoot them at atoms or molecules and try to push them or cool them and stuff. Actually, I'm not allowed to play with lasers, so I do it all in a computer, but that's fun enough.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

As six-year-old as I can make it:

Sometimes people have bad bones so doctors give them metal bones But bugs like the metal bones and can make people sick I'm trying to make the metal bones bugproof

 

[Andy Resnick]

I grow cells, like your skin. We feed them cow blood and then they grow a tiny hair that we pull on with a tractor beam and watch to see what happens. It's kind of like how your ear works.

 

[anorlunda]

Pilots can't crash airplanes full of people just to learn how to fly. So I make toys for pilots and other people to use to learn stuff by playing with the toys. Do you learn things playing with toys?

Sometimes other people use my toys to find out how things work.

My favorite toys work on computer screens and people use them like games. I bet you like games. Do you learn things from your games?

 

[Rolen]

I think about the universe and write things about it with numbers in it.

 

[Kevin McHugh]

I put colors and stuff into plastics to make them pretty and make them last longer.

 

[Bandersnatch]

We feed them cow blood

Ewww!

 

[Opuscroakus]

What if God is weally, weally up dewe and not invisible like those mean people on Facebook say, and if we look at what contum...kwanza, car, mechanic-fixer--that science wiffs all the things going round and round the other things and the light that comes in packages? You know the one? All we haves to do is keep looking at dat science with all those other dimens...places we can't see yet, and we'll find out god lives in one of them and is not weally invisible.

And dats what science means to me!

Brittany with an i, age 5 and three-quarters.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Ewww!

Exactly... (cue the Dr. Evil laugh)

 

[Stephen Tashi]

I get up in the morning and after a couple of hours of browsing the web, I try to decide what I important things I should accomplish during the day. While thinking about that, I occupy myself doing random things that come up, including taking some naps. (This is called retirement.)

 

[DaveC426913]

I like to makɘ things. Only not real things like you can hold, but things that live in my compluter. Other pɘople like to look at the things I make. And it helps them do things they like to do.

 

[russ_watters]

I make clean rooms cleaner... which sounds like way too much of a chore...

 

[jtbell]

I get up in the morning and after a couple of hours of browsing the web, I try to decide what I important things I should accomplish during the day. While thinking about that, I occupy myself doing random things that come up, including taking some naps. (This is called retirement.)

More succinctly, I would call retirement "being on summer vacation all the time."

(not quite there yet, give me a few more months...)

 

[Evo]

Well, when I was working, if I was age 6, I'd say I worked with scary people, that called me from planes being chased by bad guys, chasing bad guys, going into hiding, in foreign countries. Now, I'd be too bored to stop coloring with my crayons.

 

[ShayanJ]

Well, when I was working, if I was age 6, I'd say I worked with scary people, that called me from planes being chased by bad guys, chasing bad guys, going into hiding, in foreign countries. Now, I'd be too bored to stop coloring with my crayons.

What job is that?

 

[Evo]

What job is that?

I worked with The Department of Homeland Security.

 

[ShayanJ]

I worked with The Department of Homeland Security.

I didn't know such incidents are so common that they can constitute a job description!

 

[Evo]

I didn't know such incidents are so common that they can constitute a job description!

yeah

 

[nsaspook]

I take dirt and mix it with magic smoke to make it special.

 

[256bits]

Like a 6 year old..

Look, Jane, look.
See Jack work
Work Jack work
Work, work, work.
See Jack work.

 

[berkeman]

I play on my computer to make things. I play with electricity to make things. My company sells lots of my things.

Sometimes I get shocked, though. It hurts...

 

[RonL]

Like Evo I played DHS then when I came home I had weally big toys that dug big holes in the ground, one would dig 33' deep and one would lift 12,000 pounds in one scoop. I loved pushing dirt and digging holes and sometimes other people payed me money to fill their toys with dirt and gravel. I had a weally good time but now I don't do that anymore I'm weally happy

 

[DaveC426913]

This thread would be easier if we could get Randall Munroe to build us a Ten Hundred Words People Use Most Often Generator.

 

[Sophia]

I play on my computer to make things. I play with electricity to make things. My company sells lots of my things. [emoji2]

Sometimes I get shocked, though. It hurts...

Oh, so it's like my favourite game? Hold on, pioneer!

It's a game where you have to withstand small electric shocks :-)

 

[Choppy]

So what I do is... stop poking your brother. No, you're not married to a Guinea Pig if you kiss it. Wow that is a cool dragon. Don't sit on the stool like that. Because you'll tip over. No, I don't know what baby dragons eat. Just leave it! Okay, so at work I ... I told you not to sit on the stool like that. Sure, you can have a Band-aid. I don't know if a dragon can marry a Guinea Pig or not, but sure. When people get really sick... no lot like when you threw up in the car... yes that was really sick, but I work with people that are sick in a different way... yes sometimes they throw up... I have a really big machine that cures them or makes them feel better. It shoots a beam of light at the disease that's making them sick. Sure, I suppose it's kind of like the Death Star... No, it doesn't make them explode.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Ah, Choppy, but you described your work like you're talking to a 6 year old - not like you are that age. ;)

 

[Tsu]

I produce ionizing radiation and aim it at poor unsuspecting individuals. (I'm a 6 y/o with an amazing vocabulary. )

 

[Dembadon]

See all those poles out there with the big wires between them? I use my computer to draw them on big pieces of paper. It tells the loud men in the shop how to build them and where they need to go to do it.

Then a guy in a suit comes and yells at me and says he does not want to spend so much money on my poles and motor operator-thingys.

So then I make new drawings so he can keep his money.

Then the loud guys in the shop yell at me and say it is too hard to build it the way the guy in the suit wants it.

(Talking like a 6-year-old was harder than I thought. Great thread!)

 

[cosmik debris]

I work in a Kindergarten for old people.

 

[Demystifier]

I sit for hours at one place. During that time I read, think and write. Others think I am weird, so they don't want to play with me.

 

[DrClaude]

Others think I am weird, so they don't want to play with me.

Good that there is a nice playground here

 

[quarkle]

Earlier I used to try and make atoms smash into each other to make hot glowing stuff to make electricity. The sun and other stars do that too!
Other people might break atoms apart to make electricity. The leftover stuff isn't good for you if it's lying about open, so I make drums to pack it up neatly and bury it underground where its safe.

 

[PeroK]

People want computers to do things so they write it down and give it to me. I say it don't work like that and they say "how do you know, you got a crystal ball?" When it don't work they say "it doesn't matter how we got here the past is the past we need to think about going forward". I used to get what I wrote and show everyone that things happen like what I said, but then they don't like that so I don't do that anymore.

Everyone stays after home time and gets pizzas and cola and sometimes sleeps at their desks and people ring and get angry that they don't go home. When it still don't work the "PM" looks very tired and not happy and says sorry she has to go home tonight. And I go home too.

 

[dipole]

Sometimes I watch atoms jiggle for a long time and then learn stuff about what a protein does from the jiggling.

 

[Pepper Mint]

Sometimes I watch atoms jiggle for a long time and then learn stuff about what a protein does from the jiggling.

This wouldn't be worded by a 6 yo kid or considered a description made like one.

 

[Pepper Mint]

OP should define a standard level e.g in speech for a 6 yo kid and then enforce his on everyone.

 

[Bandersnatch]

OP should define a standard level e.g in speech for a 6 yo kid and then enforce his on everyone.

Here you go:
Anyone uses scary words I don't understand can't play no more or I tell my dad.

 

[gmax137]

The guys who make 'lectricity ? I help them follow the rules, so the police don't arrest them.

 

[Pepper Mint]

Here you go:
Anyone uses scary words I don't understand can't play no more or I tell my dad.

How cute!

 

[epenguin]

Like Evo I played DHS then when I came home I had weally big toys that dug big holes in the ground, one would dig 33' deep and one would lift 12,000 pounds in one scoop. I'm weally happy

Ooh Daddy Won, did you find your car keys?

 

[RonL]

Ooh Daddy Won, did you find your car keys?

Only happened once in the last 30 years how did you know ?

 

[epenguin]

Only happened once in the last 30 years how did you know ?

Because happened to somebody else, a nice man called Daddy Pig, they had to dig a big big hole to find the keys, it was sooooo big that they took a mountain away, oh yes! I know this because there is a little boy who is not even half of 6 years old and he wants to watch this story on the iPad every day and not just once but 10 times every day, and every day and every time we watch it the story is exactly the same so we are very sure it really happened.

 

[RonL]

Because happened to somebody else, a nice man called Daddy Pig, they had to dig a big big hole to find the keys, it was sooooo big that they took a mountain away, oh yes! I know this because there is a little boy who is not even half of 6 years old and he wants to watch this story on the iPad every day and not just once but 10 times every day, and every day and every time we watch it the story is exactly the same so we are very sure it really happened.

OK, I did the Google thing, then the moment of truth when you think "ignorance is bliss" why do I weally want to buy an I-pad

 

[RabbitWho]

I spend 3 hours a day explaining things to nice people then I go home and read books... Put like that it sounds pretty awesome

 

[wolram]

I used to make machines that put sweeties in wrappers, which was very good when the machine went wrong caus we could eat the broken ones, we did biscuits as well but we got fed up eating biscuits caus it ruined dinner time , but it made us very popular with other kids caus they got free sweeties and biscuits

 

[OmCheeto]

I did a lot of jobs.
I just turned six, so my job is just like Stevie's: I see things on the internet, and then I make things out of Legos, and then I go sit and add up numbers, and then I draw pictures with my crayons, and then I show them to my friends, and then they laugh at me. I do not know why they laugh. My pictures are very pretty.
When I was five, I did the same job as Demby. I did not like that job.
When I was four, I was a mailman. Sometimes, I would steal the toys that I was supposed to give to dead people. They were not upset, so I decided it was ok.
When I was three, I carried things around, and pushed sick people to different places. One day, a sick person spit on me. They made me get shots when I told them that.
When I was two, I did the same job as gmax. They also let me play with knobs that made the picture things on the wall with little arrows do funny things. Another day, I got to fix a toaster. That made me very happy. But sometimes, that job was not fun. One day, they made me sleep in the icebox. And then another day they made the boat go down as fast as it could, and I was afraid we would crash into the bottom of the ocean. But we did not crash, so that was ok.
When I was one, I had to cook chicken, and wash the dishes. That was a very bad job, because it was too hot, and I did not like doing the dishes.
Before I was one, my job was to eat strawberries. That was a very good job.

ps. For those of you old enough, post-proofing your response is much easier when channeling Edith Ann.
And that's the truth.

 

[RabbitWho]

When I was one, I had to cook chicken, and wash the dishes. That was a very bad job, because it was too hot, and I did not like doing the dishes.

I did this too! Only I also had to bring food to the people as well. This was the worst job I ever had because the people were very unfriendly to me and often angry or rude for things that weren't my fault. This is why I am very very very very nice to the people who bring me food now.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Is it even possible to describe the work of a statistician like a 6-year old?

But if I was to try, here is what it would sound like:

I get to play with numbers all day.

 

[Goplergop]

I draw something on the computer and press print button, bang, the stuff we just draw magically come to reality.
Like we see dinosaur on screen and 3D print bang! there is one small cute dinosaur ready for looking