If someone says they study medicine, law, physics or economics

>>17943457
Are you interested in accounting? Then talk about it with energy. If you like it, then you know the interesting parts.

If you don't like it....well have fun with your accounting degree.

I'd find it very difficult to make an accounting degree sound interesting, but then I'd not do an accounting degree because I'm not interested in it. Surely by virtue of your desire to do an accounting degree you have some passion or interest in the topic which is unique to yourself and as such your passion and drive is relatable and interesting to others?

For a long time I was a cooker salesperson. It is REALLY difficult to make selling cookers sound interesting, but because I was interested in it I could talk extensively about the amusing customers, unique situations and projects, strange staff members and scenarios etc, certainly enough to pass off an otherwise boring job when socially required to amuse and make jobbie small talk.

Now I've got on the surface what seems to be a much more creative and interesting job (brewer for a small microbrewery and other beer based wholesale/pub/bar stuff) and it is literally the most boring thing to talk about ever because while everybody loves to drink beer, but nobody wants to dig into production efficiencies and improvements, process management, quality control, cell culture and viability, getting covered in filthy liquids and sludge, the sheer monotony of filling hundreds of casks and preparing them for transport, arranging logistics and all the other shit that is 95% of the job.

>>17943490
I have the same issue (mathematician).

I'm very passionate about my work, but I don't know how to talk about it with people without boring them to tears. No one wants to hear a bunch or crap they won't understand without hours of background, even other mathematicians don't haha.

So I typically don't talk about my work. If anyone has a way to make my work sound interesting I'm all ears. Right now I'm pretty sure my family things I just add and multiply really big numbers in my head all day...

I'd ask you what you actually do as a mathematician? If you work in academia talk about the frustrations of the faculty, students, issues regarding the building and the area, the history of the establishment.

If you are employed in the private sector, then wow, surely you must do something kind of interesting to have that as a job title?

If you are self employed ditto huh?

So what do you do?

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Did you not account for your field being boring in conversations?

>>17943659
Grad school at the moment, but I do work part time for the government.

I do teach part time as part of my graduate contract, but I imagine it gets tiring to hear me complain about dipshit students over and over lol. As for the gov. job, after explaining what I have been working on there isn't much else to talk about.

I guess I'm thinking more for talking to friends and family too. With someone new that I meet this is fine, but I can't really talk about my work for more than 15min without running out of things to talk about.

>>17943672
Hell, even explaining my research field is hard to some. A surprisingly large amount of people don't know what an algorithm is.

>>17943457
Specialize. That's the flavor of graduate and post-graduate academic work. Find a field of accounting that you find interesting, learn about it and dip your toes in a few pools to find out which one you want to dedicate some years of your career to.

You can always change in the future and come back to it after you put some time into it, and you can't tell me there isn't atleast one or two industries that need specialized accountants.

Off he top of my head, wacky or interesting jobs graduate< educated accountants could do

> Forensic Accountant
You could work for a law enforcement agency at many different levels of government from local (police accountant detective or county/state level auditor) to national (DEA forensic accountant, CIA Forensic accountant, NSA... ) put any alphabet soup government agency there and you could potentially work towards that, that ALONE gives you an infinite number of cool lives to live.

Fuck you would be telling interesting stories all the time if you worked in one of the fraud departments of the IRS/FBI/CIA/WMO

>Research Accountant
Lots of industries need specialized accountants to help start and/or run their businesses to plan their futures. Accounting firms exist for everything from architect/contractor firms to Oil Companies to agencies that specialize in catering to the finances of celebrities. Always loved something? Become an expert of the accounting in that thing, you learn business skills and you'll likely observe much of what you'll need to know to start a similar business. Again, infinite choices going this route.

>Academics
Being a professor that researches on school/state grants is hardly boring. You could be anything from a historian on a subject related to finance of something interesting to a researcher on corporate grants looking for new ways to cheat the tax code.


Just dream and work towards one of them, no matter how ridiculous it may fucking be. That's how people become great.

>>17943681
Stop trying to wave your math peen around. A large amount of your success will be determined by your ability to explain things to laypeople in a way which gets them excited about letting you do your thing rather than excited about getting you out of the room.

>>17943691
This. People skills are needed for successat anything.

A first great step is to read:
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

It does an amazing job at describing the perfect attitudes to approaching the world and people in it.

>>17943690
That's a god tier response

>>17943710
I try

I really like giving advice

>>17943705
Own it.

>>17943691
I don't try to do this, I typically just avoid talking about my work period.

I just wanted to get my friends and family interested in what I do (beyond thinking I'm a human calculator), and it's really hard to explain what I do to someone who doesn't know what is taught in calculus.

>a large amount of your success will be determined by your ability to explain....

No shit, that's why I asked how to make it interesting. Honestly, the moment you mention math or science, a lot of people just say "I hate math" "I suck at math" etc, then don't bother trying to listen to anything further on the subject.

>>17943743
I'd avoid saying "I'm a mathematician" and leaving it hanging, waiting for some kind of response. I'd say "I'm a mathematician, I work with the insurance industry to calculate risk" or "I'm a mathematician, I work with social scientists and civic planners to work out cost effective methods of providing per capita public services". Shit like that is relatable, if you do shit like that. What you do is teach while working for the government, the mathematics part of it is a detail.

Nobody says "I'm a scientist". They describe the field and industry. I met a scientist the other day, he worked on scaling up a process of using modified cultures taken from plants to produce essential oils and extracts using waste products from industry and an additional revenue stream offered as a business to businesses investment which also reduces their carbon footprint. He was REALLY interesting because he talked about the different industries and chemicals and the uses for them and the values and difficulties in harvesting them from nature.

>>17943767
Thanks, that a good point. I never thought of how awkward that sounds until now.