Finding a Math Job: Preparing Before Graduation

[eigenperson]

I like teaching, but when I have to talk to people about the challenges, I say something like this:

Teaching well is a bit like doing stand-up comedy, except you have to do a completely new routine every time, you have to do this 3-5 times per week for 13 weeks (10 if you're on the quarter system) in a row, and to make matters worse, only half the audience actually wants to be there.

If that rings true for you, tell the interviewer something like that, and emphasize that you would have been fine with being on stage every once in a while -- maybe even once a week, or with repeating the same performance a few times in a row -- but you were ground down by having to turn in a completely new, fully polished stage performance 3 times a week for 13 weeks in a row.

 

[AlephZero]

With teaching, you have to do that several times a week. That's a key point. If you have to do it once a month, that's a whole different ballgame.

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

Assuming you can stop the class from rioting, they don't have much influence on your career prospects. The brightest kids will probably get A grades whether you actually teach them anything or not.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

The same goes for reports that have to be signed off (which is likely to pretty much all of them, when you start). If you end up as the guy holding up the rest of the project, the team leader isn't going to lose much sleep over just giving your task(s) to other people to redo. And don't imagine that everybody on the team (and on other teams around the company) won't get to know about it.

Do that a few times, and you have a reputation to live with...

And on top of that, if you are working for a "high tech" company, sooner or later you get to be the guy with your neck on the line when you said a test costing say $100,000 was going to work, and it doesn't. Sure, they don't take the $100,000 out of your salary, but there are other not-too-subtle ways of reminding you who wasted the money (plus the extra time it takes to redo it right).

 

[micromass]

I don't like the direction this thread is going to. People are starting to act like teaching is some easy job, while engineering is the toughest job of the world (obviously this is a hyperbole, but some people sure act this way here!)

I don't think this thread is the best place to decide which job is the toughest or hardest job. So let's stop these kind of silly comparisons of jobs please.

 

[Physics_UG]

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

Assuming you can stop the class from rioting, they don't have much influence on your career prospects. The brightest kids will probably get A grades whether you actually teach them anything or not.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

The same goes for reports that have to be signed off (which is likely to pretty much all of them, when you start). If you end up as the guy holding up the rest of the project, the team leader isn't going to lose much sleep over just giving your task(s) to other people to redo. And don't imagine that everybody on the team (and on other teams around the company) won't get to know about it.

Do that a few times, and you have a reputation to live with...

And on top of that, if you are working for a "high tech" company, sooner or later you get to be the guy with your neck on the line when you said a test costing say $100,000 was going to work, and it doesn't. Sure, they don't take the $100,000 out of your salary, but there are other not-too-subtle ways of reminding you who wasted the money (plus the extra time it takes to redo it right).

I'm guessing you've never taught a university class before.

 

[micromass]

I'm guessing you've never taught a university class before.

I said it before, but please stop comparing the toughness of various careers. New posts on this subject will be deleted.

 

[MarneMath]

I'm not trying to say that if you dislike teaching that you'll dislike being an engineer. I was merely letting you know what impressions you answers gave me. Therefore, I think you should rethink your answers and try to be positive. It's very off putting to hear anything negative from someone you are interviewing. We're all human, and if you ever make it to an interview room, it would behoove to to spin your bad experiences in a positive light or withhold yourself from saying negative comments. Heck, it's perfectly ok to tell a white lie.

If someone asked me why I didn't want to teach, I would simply reply with, "While I found the work of teaching young minds rewarding, I learned over time that I would prefer to use the analytic skills I learned at graduate school to help solve tough problems in field xyz and bring forth results."

Remember, every question someone ask you is a chance to sell yourself. If you focus too much on just answering the question and not selling yourself, you're doing it wrong.

Anyway, I'm still surprised you haven't gotten any interviews at all. I think your strategy of job hunting is clearly flawed. You don't have to meet every requirement for a job listing, and applying for only jobs online is generally a bad idea. I remember seeing a job listing online asking for a programmer for 5 years experience with android os in 2010. At the time, the OS hasn't even been out for 5 years. To further illustrate the point, a few months after I left my old job, I looked at usajobs at the posting they had for it, and turns out I don't qualify for it :D!

 

[homeomorphic]

Okay, I hope Micromass can hold back because I not comparing toughness of different careers.

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

That's got to be a bit of an exaggeration. If the industry can't take advantage of a good mind with less than stellar sales ability, they must be doing something wrong.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

Ah, peer group. Totally different scenario. Students are not peers. You have a grad student approaching the frontiers of knowledge talking to math-phobic trigonometry students. That's not even close to a peer-to-peer situation. It's taken me years of tutoring to even BEGIN to understand the bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds. I was hardly ever badly prepared for teaching, as far as just being able to present the raw information (well, maybe the delivery could have been better, but the contents were there). That wasn't why the students were upset with me. They were upset with me because I had such a poor understanding of THEM. Talking to peers doesn't scare me.

 

[homeomorphic]

We're all human, and if you ever make it to an interview room, it would behoove to to spin your bad experiences in a positive light or withhold yourself from saying negative comments. Heck, it's perfectly ok to tell a white lie.

See, that's where I have a lot of trouble. I'm a pretty honest person. The idea that I have to hide things and not just be myself is disheartening to me. I can put a spin on it, but I don't want to lie. If I just say, "academia is awesome, but industry is even better," I don't think that's going to make sense to anyone, anyway.

The fact that I left, by itself, is a bit of a give-away, in terms of indicating that I wasn't happy with it. I don't know why anyone would leave it after putting so much work into it if they didn't think it kind of sucked. I can't hide that, anyway.

Anyway, I'm still surprised you haven't gotten any interviews at all. I think your strategy of job hunting is clearly flawed. You don't have to meet every requirement for a job listing, and applying for only jobs online is generally a bad idea.

As far as only applying for jobs online, it's not so much an idea as it is the default of wanting to do SOMETHING. I'm not very good at other ways of doing it, and the job market in the particular town I live is not good for the kind of jobs I'm looking for, to put it mildly. I've had some opportunities come up from networking, but they didn't lead to anything. I'm not very good at it. I can try to apply for jobs where I don't meet the requirements, but it has to be only a minor violation or else I think I'm wasting my time. I went to a couple job fairs, but those tend not to be that productive. They usually just tell me to go to their website and apply.

It's only been a few months since I finished my dissertation, and I started working on things right away, like reading about different jobs, but I didn't start applying to stuff until December. Hasn't been that long.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If the industry can't take advantage of a good mind with less than stellar sales ability, they must be doing something wrong.

There is a very famous saying: "Nothing happens until something gets sold." In business, everything is about sales, and marketing is first and foremost about selling ideas, not products. Deciding you want to be in the business world and not being interested in sales is like wanting to play baseball but not being interested in the little white ball.

The very first idea you have to sell is that it's better for Company XYZ to have you in a nice, air-conditioned office than in a hot warehouse moving boxes from one part to another - or working for another company entirely.

It's taken me years of tutoring to even BEGIN to understand the bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds

I'll give you your first lesson in sales now. In all probability, the person that decides whether to hire you or not probably has a "non-mathematical mind". If you dial back the contempt a few notches, you will go farther.

 

[eigenperson]

What is happening now is a special case of a more general phenomenon that you will encounter when you do get an interview. That phenomenon is as follows. At some point the interviewer will ask you something like "What are you looking for in a job?" If your answer contains phrases like "I'm looking for a job that doesn't involve doing X," then regardless of what X is, the interviewer will say "Well, actually, in this job, we do have to do X."

This isn't because they enjoy watching the interviewee get flustered. It's because if you say "I don't want to lift heavy objects" they immediately think, "Well, we obviously don't do that much, but there was that one time a year ago when I had to put the widgets on top of the thingimabob... if this guy had been in my position, would he have had a panic attack? He clearly cares a lot about not lifting heavy objects if he brought it up in the job interview."

So, don't say "I don't want to do this" in the job interview, or on the cover letter, or elsewhere.

The fact is, at many companies, you will not be asked to do any sales work. But you still might have to! What if the client is invited to come visit the office and just happens to pop into your cube? What if you are out to lunch with the boss and his friend at Company X sees you and your boss invites her to join you? If you make the interviewer think you aren't suited for sales, he or she will instantly think about that kind of scenario.

 

[homeomorphic]

There is a very famous saying: "Nothing happens until something gets sold." In business, everything is about sales, and marketing is first and foremost about selling ideas, not products. Deciding you want to be in the business world and not being interested in sales is like wanting to play baseball but not being interested in the little white ball.

The very first idea you have to sell is that it's better for Company XYZ to have you in a nice, air-conditioned office than in a hot warehouse moving boxes from one part to another - or working for another company entirely.

I didn't say NO sales ability, I said less than stellar.

I'll give you your first lesson in sales now. In all probability, the person that decides whether to hire you or not probably has a "non-mathematical mind". If you dial back the contempt a few notches, you will go farther.

There's really not any contempt, you just put it there. I was merely stating it's hard for me to fathom, which is just a cold, hard fact. Plus, I'm not sure I'll be talking to the person who hires me about math. I mean, I think non-mathematical minds are not that different when the subject is not math, which is obviously the context in which I have trouble understanding them.

 

[homeomorphic]

What is happening now is a special case of a more general phenomenon that you will encounter when you do get an interview. That phenomenon is as follows. At some point the interviewer will ask you something like "What are you looking for in a job?" If your answer contains phrases like "I'm looking for a job that doesn't involve doing X," then regardless of what X is, the interviewer will say "Well, actually, in this job, we do have to do X."

This assumes I am willing to take a job involving X. It's more a question of not too much of X, for most things. If it involves too much of X, it may very well be the case that it wouldn't even be a good idea for me to take the job. Of course, it is better to be a position where I get to decide, rather than them. However, I might not find out that it involves too much X until it is too late. So, it's probably better to not mention it, but I don't think that's completely one-sided, either. As I said, I'm willing to put a spin on my answers, but not to lie, even if it's a white lie. Maybe half-lie at most.

 

[eigenperson]

Plus, I'm not sure I'll be talking to the person who hires me about math.

Actually, I would suggest that you come up with brief descriptions of what kind of research you did that are suitable for job interviews, because people will ask. When they do, that gives you the opportunity to impress them with the fact that you can distill 4 years or more of advanced mathematical research into a 30-second-or-less sound bite that they can understand.

Of course, this is easy for me to say as a combinatorialist -- I could describe whatever problem I'm working on at the moment to the person in the next seat on the plane if I had to. You will have to work a bit harder, so prepare your blurb in advance. Remember, they're not really asking you to tell them what your thesis, specifically, was about, but rather to give them a flavor of what a topologist does all day, so if you have to tell them someone else's problem, or even a problem that was solved 100 years ago, that's fine. Heck, if you want, tell them about the Euler characteristic, or donuts and coffee cups. Just be sure to preface it with "Here's an example of the kind of thing I worked on" so you aren't lying.

 

[TMFKAN64]

In my long career in engineering, I think there are two important lessons that it took me a very long time to learn:
1) Sales and marketing rule the world. Those guys make the money, but as an engineer, you just spend it. You are necessary, but so are the janitors.
2) The best person for the job is a much different thing than the best person technically. "Good enough, and easy to work with" will get the job over "Brilliant, but difficult" every single time.

 

[homeomorphic]

The best person for the job is a much different thing than the best person technically. "Good enough, and easy to work with" will get the job over "Brilliant, but difficult" every single time.

Difficult isn't really the right word for me. Anyone who knows me would seriously probably be on the floor laughing about me being considered difficult. There are certain ways in which I can be difficult, but on the whole, no. Maybe not outgoing, not personable, and a little stubborn on the odd occasion, but not difficult.

 

[TMFKAN64]

Maybe not outgoing, not personable, and a little stubborn on the odd occasion, but not difficult.

Don't underestimate the importance of outgoing and personable though. These also win over "brilliant".

You have to fit into the group. No one wants to hire a square peg, brilliant or otherwise, if you need to fill a round hole.

 

[homeomorphic]

Don't underestimate the importance of outgoing and personable though. These also win over "brilliant".

You have to fit into the group. No one wants to hire a square peg, brilliant or otherwise, if you need to fill a round hole.

Absolutely. That's one of the challenges I face. I'm working on it, but at the end of the day, if I can only improve so much because it's just not my strong suit, I just have to make the best of what I have. I got close to being suicidal about it as a teenager because I foresaw all the difficulties that were ahead, which actually did come true to a large extent, but what I learned back then is that I just have to do what I can, but if I can only do so much, I just can't let it get to me. I have to say look at all the bad stuff that happens and say, "so what?"

Not be complacent, but never the less try to be happy with whatever happens because some challenges might just be too hard for me, even if I try my best. My thesis was so traumatic it made me lose my grip on that, but I think I'm getting it back.

 

[StatGuy2000]

In my long career in engineering, I think there are two important lessons that it took me a very long time to learn:
1) Sales and marketing rule the world. Those guys make the money, but as an engineer, you just spend it. You are necessary, but so are the janitors.
2) The best person for the job is a much different thing than the best person technically. "Good enough, and easy to work with" will get the job over "Brilliant, but difficult" every single time.

As far as point (1) is concerned, this may be true in engineering but in the pharma/biotech industry where I've worked in, professional sales/marketing people were the very first people to end up being laid off whenever there was any form of corporate restructuring.

Agree completely with point (2) in virtually any industry.

 

[Lavabug]

In my long career in engineering, I think there are two important lessons that it took me a very long time to learn:
1) Sales and marketing rule the world. Those guys make the money, but as an engineer, you just spend it. You are necessary, but so are the janitors.
2) The best person for the job is a much different thing than the best person technically. "Good enough, and easy to work with" will get the job over "Brilliant, but difficult" every single time.

My brother is an engineer at a big teleco company. He hires people and agrees with this statement, but he also says that the 'easiest' person to hire (ie the people who pass the silly behavioral questions with flying colors) is not necessarily the best one for the company, especially when they lack technical expertise. He says there are at least a dozen people in his dept. costing the company a ton of money while being less productive than the lowest of the entry levels.

So the value system for hiring based mostly on 'people skills' and 'politics' at his job is inherently flawed and not something good for business in the long run. I presume this problem plagues most of the private sector and is the main reason PhD's have such a hard time transitioning into industry.

 

[Vanadium 50]

There's really not any contempt, you just put it there.

OK, but why did I put it there? And why do you think the person who makes the hiring decision won't put it there either? You were the one who said their minds worked bizarrely, not me. Right?

 

[homeomorphic]

OK, but why did I put it there?

I admit it's not a far-fetched interpretation, but neither is it a correct one. I guess you have to anticipate people making assumptions.

And why do you think the person who makes the hiring decision won't put it there either?

Why would I be saying that to the person who makes the hiring decision? Some issue like this could come up. But I can't predict every little assumption everyone is going to make. Sometimes, I'm going to have to live with being misjudged.

You were the one who said their minds worked bizarrely, not me. Right?

So what? I was just trying to convey the idea that it's hard for me to understand how they work. I am not judging them for that. That's what you put there. I'm normally very patient and understanding with my students, although sometimes I come across someone who takes me out of my comfort zone that I have built up in their lack of math skills, and I can't help but be a little shocked. Even then, I keep my shock to myself, and it's not like I don't like them because of it.

 

[tyjae]

My brother is an engineer at a big teleco company. He hires people and agrees with this statement, but he also says that the 'easiest' person to hire (ie the people who pass the silly behavioral questions with flying colors) is not necessarily the best one for the company, especially when they lack technical expertise. He says there are at least a dozen people in his dept. costing the company a ton of money while being less productive than the lowest of the entry levels.

So the value system for hiring based mostly on 'people skills' and 'politics' at his job is inherently flawed and not something good for business in the long run. I presume this problem plagues most of the private sector and is the main reason PhD's have such a hard time transitioning into industry.

TMFKAN64 is right on for the most part but i disagree with your assessment that "behavioral" interviews produce less effective employees . As an engineer you have to step back and have faith that "Marketing" guys know more about making money than you. The behavioral interviews are VERY necessary IMO as they access your approach to solving problems and not your technical abilities. What makes you think a PHD proves you will be productive? if any thing it proves you would be less. Private sector views academia as slow and ineffective. The private sector wants results not PHDs. As far as "People Skills" and "Politics" its very simple it makes MONEY period point blank end of discussion.

I'm in Manufacturing field if i can form bonds with cable splicers,linemen, or engineers at the utilities companies we sell MORE products to them and if they are national rather than regional we gain more customers

 

[Lavabug]

TMFKAN64 is right on for the most part but i disagree with your assessment that "behavioral" interviews produce less effective employees .

Did I say that? I said ONLY people who are good at the behavioral aspect and have no technical expertise. And it's not my really my own assessment, rather that of someone who actually works in the field at a high level. Hiring mistakes like these are hurting his business, not making it better.

What makes you think a PHD proves you will be productive? if any thing it proves you would be less. Private sector views academia as slow and ineffective. The private sector wants results not PHDs.

And what makes you think a highly trained PhD cannot produce results? Perhaps faster ones and ones that are more quantitatively sound? This is a fallacy that seems all too common, unfortunately.

There are numerous examples here (kinkmode is the most immediate one that comes to mind) of people with PhD's who are exceptionally more qualified for many jobs than many of the senior personnel at companies, yet they were turned down, most likely because in some environments being more educated is seen as a hamperment instead of an asset, erroneously. (ie: read some of kinkmode's posts about his time at a nuclear power plant, where he was barred from advancing. There, many senior personnel were incapable of doing macro's in excel or engaged in dangerous practices on the job when they should really know better. I am hoping they were not engineers.).

As far as "People Skills" and "Politics" its very simple it makes MONEY period point blank end of discussion.

Nice interpersonal skills and conversational flexibility there.

I don't want to go into the details of a meeting my brother had to partake in recently for privacy reasons, but it exposed one person who made it through the ranks that they had literally no idea what they were talking about (technicality wise) and their assessments were completely demolished by the more technically savvy. Had the person's suggestions gone through, it would've cost the company a lot of money since it had a negligible chance of return on investment. Sounds a lot like a thesis evaluation panel to me, where world experts are flown into pick apart your arguments in vivo.

At the end of the day, it's my engineering bro with 2 decades in the field's assessment and not mine. FWIW, he said he would hire me if it weren't for the risk of nepotism accusations, because he claims I -a milk on his lips Physics graduate- am better qualified than many of the people he has to hire from the pool that made it through the HR filters, and it wasn't an attempt to flatter me. I can only imagine how much more productive I would be if I had the programming and experimental experience of a Physics PhD under my belt.

 

[tyjae]

And what makes you think a highly trained PhD cannot produce results? Perhaps faster ones and ones that are more quantitatively sound? This is a fallacy that seems all too common, unfortunately.

It's based on perception not fact. I don't know why it's there but it is. The engineers in private sector view academic professors or PHDed folks as not up being great at solving problems. I'm not saying i agree. There are technical fellowships that require PHDs but they aren't given to people who don't have real world experience. From my point of view, i love that there are MBAs and marketing guys who play a role in what we produce. They keep customer expectations in check a lot of times. As engineers, we sometimes get into the "Laputans" mind set of looking at things.

 

[Lavabug]

It's based on perception not fact I don't know why it's there but it is. The engineers in private sector view academic professors or PHDed folks as not up being great at solving problems. I'm not saying i agree.

I hope you don't. I know it's the perception, and it is unfortunate both for PhD's who want a job in industry and for industries that are missing out on very productive hires because of their narrow-sighted judgement.

Maybe we'll see a population inversion in the future and this will cease to be a problem for PhD's in 10 years time. Today, it looks like the MS/MA is becoming the new high school diploma for technical industries...

 

[TMFKAN64]

Did I say that? I said ONLY people who are good at the behavioral aspect and have no technical expertise. And it's not my really my own assessment, rather that of someone who actually works in the field at a high level. Hiring mistakes like these are hurting his business, not making it better.

Going back to my post, I will point out that I said "Good enough, and easy to work with" (with new emphasis). No one argues that if you are hiring technical people, technical expertise is important. A successful hire is going to have both technical proficiency *and* an ability to work as part of a team.

The point that I was trying to make is that I think that a lot of engineers and scientists suffer from the "build a better mousetrap" syndrome... that the technical side of things is the end-all and be-all of existence. This isn't surprising... it's why we are engineers and scientists in the first place. But it's only part of the equation... and not necessarily even the most important part.

 

[Locrian]

I liked math as an undergraduate and to some extent in graduate school, too, but I found that I wasn't that interested in research-level math. I also realized that I wanted to do something more practical.

That's a great answer. Make sure you can say it clearly and smoothly and with a smile. I like this because it doesn't talk down about what you've done, but it does talk up what you'd like to do. It's also good because you're turning the question back to what actually matters - the job. Your past is just a bump to get past.

If they keep probing you about what you did, have some things you're proud of ready. Obviously math didn't work out in the end, but surely you did some things you'd enjoy telling them about. Don't go into gory details - if you said something like "One week I made a connection between these two differing areas that really helped me with something I was working on that made me proud", it goes a long way. Again, you want to move the discussion forward, but if they ask you about the past, be positive.

I find teaching stressful, especially when it comes to lower-level math classes. It can be challenging to teach a subject to an audience that doesn't want to be there. Also, I find it draining to prepare for class several times a week with the whole class counting on you. It's also the kind of work that follows you home, and it never really feels like you are really done preparing for a class. You could always spend more time thinking about how to make things better. I'd rather have a job where I'm mostly free to do what I want when I get home.

This is a disaster and you should take responses such as analogdesign's seriously. You should try creating a response to this question again, but make the following changes:

• Remove all negative statements, such as it being too stressful
• Shorten it to two or three sentences
• Use the last sentence to turn attention back to the job

Here's how I would honestly answer this question: "I actually love engaging directly with people and teaching them something new. As strange as this sounds, that is not the majority of the work a teacher does. If I had the chance someday to help someone new at this company learn the ropes, I'd enjoy that, and I wouldn't have to grade any papers!"

That's just an example - rule #1 is to not say anything that's untrue. Maybe it will help you build a response.

I am more interested in putting things into practice in the real world than I am in academic research. I would like to accomplish something more concrete than publishing in math journals.

This is pretty good. Understand that people may make snarky comments about the work - it doesn't always feel like the work you're doing is concrete, even in jobs where it should be. Still, anything is concrete compared to publishing topology related papers in journals, so I guess it works.

Any interest I have in math and physics is best left as a hobby for me because I need to have complete freedom to pursue my curiosity wherever it leads, regardless of whether it yields any new ideas or publications. It's unlikely that I would have much to publish because I'm more interested in understanding things that we already know in a more intuitive way than I am in coming up with new results. It's very hard and not very fulfilling to do publishable research if you do not have a burning desire to answer the open questions in the field. Another issue is that to work in the field I studied, I would be required to also work in a different field which I have not studied, namely teaching.

Blah. Too long. Too wandering. Look, there are topics where some exposition is warranted. This isn't one of them. The reality is that your reasons for not working in that field don't actually matter. They don't even matter to the interviewer.

What really matters are questions like "Does this person really want to work at this company?" Or, "Is this person going to leave as soon as a job in academia opens up?"

Try this again but make the following changes:

• Reduce it to two to three sentences
• Try to bring the focus back to the job
• Make it clear that you are not working in academia, period (without even saying why)

Sorry it took me so long to respond. I encourage you to see the interview as a test, with right and wrong answers. Any answer that is misleading or a lie is automatically wrong. However, most answers that are true are also wrong, too. You want the answer that is both true and right.

 

[Mark44]

It's taken me years of tutoring to even BEGIN to understand the bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds

I'll give you your first lesson in sales now. In all probability, the person that decides whether to hire you or not probably has a "non-mathematical mind". If you dial back the contempt a few notches, you will go farther.

There's really not any contempt, you just put it there. I was merely stating it's hard for me to fathom, which is just a cold, hard fact. Plus, I'm not sure I'll be talking to the person who hires me about math. I mean, I think non-mathematical minds are not that different when the subject is not math, which is obviously the context in which I have trouble understanding them.

I have to agree with Vanadium - "bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds" is at the very least extremely patronizing if not actually dripping with contempt.

 

[AlephZero]

Any interest I have in math and physics is best left as a hobby for me because I need to have complete freedom to pursue my curiosity wherever it leads, regardless of whether it yields any new ideas or publications. It's unlikely that I would have much to publish because I'm more interested in understanding things that we already know in a more intuitive way than I am in coming up with new results.

I would say that's not just "Too long, Too wandering" but sending out completely the wrong message.

You are not going to be employed to "understand things in a more intuitive way", or "pursue your curiosity wherever it leads". In an entry level job you are employed to do what you are told to do - preferably done on time, and done right.

We once hired a guy who pretty much fitted the description of your quote - he must have been smart enough that we didn't pick it up in the interview. Most days, he came up with good ideas for two or three new PhD-level research projects. The only problems were

(1) He never actually accomplished anything, except coming up with lots of good research ideas.
(2) Most days, he took several hours of working time away from people who did accomplish things, explaining and asking questions about his latest idea.

Thankfully, he got bored and left before we fired him.

 

[homeomorphic]

Here's how I would honestly answer this question: "I actually love engaging directly with people and teaching them something new. As strange as this sounds, that is not the majority of the work a teacher does. If I had the chance someday to help someone new at this company learn the ropes, I'd enjoy that, and I wouldn't have to grade any papers!"

That's just an example - rule #1 is to not say anything that's untrue. Maybe it will help you build a response.

Well, I guess I'm kind of stumped on how to answer the teaching one, since the real answer is just that I don't like it. I like tutoring. Teaching, I just plain don't like and don't think I'm good at. It doesn't make sense for me to be doing something I'm not good at for a living.

I have to agree with Vanadium - "bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds" is at the very least extremely patronizing if not actually dripping with contempt.

You can think that all you want, but the fact remains that there was no actual feeling of contempt behind it. Puzzlement. Not contempt. You have to realize this seems innocuous to an insane degree to me. It's really hard for me to predict that people's reactions to me. It's just walking on eggshells all the time. No, I can't see all these coming. I'm sorry. People are going to have to just think I'm a jerk sometimes, if they are so over-sensitive because I guess I'm just not that discerning when it comes to this stuff. I mean, from my point of view, this seems extreme to take every comment I make so seriously. It's not even that I think that they are stupid. It's just that there current skill level is like puzzle to me. That's all it is. They might even be secretly good at math, for all I know. Doesn't mean it's not hard to understand their difficulties.

Indeed, in practice, it is only rather rarely that I make a remark that people take the wrong way. Doesn't everyone do that sometimes?

Most of my students that I tutor think highly of me and only on one occasion can I recall that one of them felt put down when I, out of concern for her, informed her that she seemed to be missing some of the prerequisite knowledge for the class (perhaps, there were a few who kept silent about it, but I highly doubt it was much more than that one). I tried to reassure her that I was not judging her, just trying to let her know what was normally expected, coming into the class, and maybe it worked, I don't know.

The only real contempt I have for the students (the ones I had to teach, not tutor) is for their readiness to complain to the department and make my life difficult, even though I was trying my best. They were just plain mean to me. Not without reason, but really a bit on the cruel side. If you want to see what REAL contempt looks like, look at my first teaching evaluations. That's contempt.