Central Park East - 6:55am
Good morning! I had an interesting conversation with a guy in the Park today. I was standing around chatting with him while Sofie played with his dog. All was going ok until he asked me about what I do. I told him that I am doing my PhD and study, broadly, immunology and microbes. He then replied by asking me what I was planning to do after I finished. I replied that I would likely stay in academia somewhere - teaching/researching or, less likely but still possible, go into private biotech, or even less likely but still possible, work for some agency on infectious disease (like the TB alliance or WHO-related thing). His reply: "You know, the only problem I've always had with academia is the fact that they're all liberals who are more interested in pushing their leftist ideology than teaching what they should be teaching."
.......
What?
I wanted to call him a prick and walk away, but I instead made a fatal mistake. I attempted to reason with him. WHY?
I wasn't nasty about it and neither was he but I'll spare you the rest of the conversation. Needless to say, neither of us changed our minds.
My conclusions from the morning:
1. No matter how hard I try and get away from conservatives, I keep running into them. For the love of God I'll have to move to Brooklyn or Hells Kitchen if I truly want to escape them forever.
2. Nobody ever changes their mind about these things - regardless of reason or logic.
3. Right-wingers have stupid-looking dogs.
...(ok that was a mean-spirited joke)
4. Conservatives bring these types of zingers up in the middle of perfectly good/normal conversations. For all the money likely spent on your finishing school, you don't seem to know how to maintain polite conversation.
Now I'm off to study liberal things ... like how Tuberculosis resists acid in Macrophages.
Have a wonderful day everyone!!
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