#451: Impostor

My Hobby: Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I’m not actually an expert in their field.

Engineering:

Students: Our big problem is heat dissipation

Me: Have you tried logarithms?

48 seconds

Linguistics:

Me: Ah, so does this Finno-ugric family include, say, Klingon?

63 Seconds

Sociology:

Me: Yeah, my latest work is on ranking people from best to worst.

4 Minutes

Literary Criticism:

Me: You see, the deconstruction is inextricable from not only the text, but also the self.

Eight papers and two books and they haven’t caught on.

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title text: If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction.}}