one of my professors used to study under this philosopher who was famous, brilliant, etc. but also got locked out of his house bc the nail holding a brass plate above the keyhole to his door broke, the plate swung down to cover the keyhole, and he was like oh the lock must have stopped existing
The idea of “PhD level intelligence” is very funny to me, personally, because I have worked with scientists for 20 years.
I know someone who has helped find treatments for diseases we didn’t even think were possible and also struggled to understand how the hot tap of a water cooler worked.
he also apparently once rode in the front seat of a car with his knees hitched up to his earlobes bc he absolutely could not figure out how to move the car seat back anyway the coverage you get from PhD-level intelligence is specific and mysterious
i came to add my story, but it’s the exact opposite of yours: brilliant scientist gave me a ride home and he could barely see over the steering wheel his seat was reclined so far. and it was so far back i am not sure he could slam on the brakes. he had valeted a few years back & couldn’t fix it.
he had considered asking a ta to fix it but he only had very short tas and so he decided to go to a restaurant with taller valets but when he found the right sized valet, ate dinner alone, he got his car back and they hadn’t moved it and he figured he could just get used to it and maybe he would…
just get taller if he kept stretching.
he had looked for the old fashioned lever like when he learned to drive in the 20s or whatevs. he never thought there would be a button but he also thought the car knew your exact perfect seat placement for your dimensions thru like lasers or something.
his brain couldn’t conceive that in all the years since the lever was invented that we hadn’t gotten to some magical level tech. he was always just fine not understanding tech so he just … never touched the buttons. he could handle windows 95, but not well. comp sci prof, very influential.
he wore two hats out one night. left the university, got on the subway, and joined the team at a baseball game with a red sox cap on top of his usual cap and he did not notice or get beat down. he was mr magoo!
I knew an engineer with a PhD and the one time we hung out he tried to bully a barista about the vegan cookies for sale. "Aren't all cookies vegan? Nobody puts meat in cookies" and needed to be explained that butter and eggs come from animals and not just the grocery store.
In one of my previous jobs, this dude who was a **literal heart surgeon** called me up because he had no idea how to buy a permanent marker. He didn’t know where markers came from, what an office supplies store was, or how to get to one, & wanted me to drive across the state to deliver him a sharpie
PhDs really do tend to break people's brains and put them into their own little, very specialized world. All the common sense and real-world knowledge gets squeezed out and replaced with niche information 🙃
My father in law rented a house to a particle physicist who worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. That multi-PhD couldn't hang his own diplomas on the wall without them falling down immediately.
