What's an innocent misconception about your hobby/profession that drives you up the wall?

Recreational scuba instructor since 2008. People think it's extreme as fuck, and badass and all. It's honestly really Zen. You take long, slow, deep breaths; often wearing a wetsuit or drysuit which reduces the sensory input on the body; you can't talk to anyone else (unless you have a full face mask and comms system/are fluent in sign language); mechanics of sound through water mean that everything is muffled and sounds like it's above you; you're (ideally) neutrally buoyant, so you're drifting through your surroundings.

It made a hell of a lot of sense why this was my career choice when I got an autism diagnosis in 2019.

That's really fascinating especially because I was in the former group and didn't really think about those aspects of diving. Would love to hear more of your stories/experiences diving - that sounds amazing to me.

I'm a machine operator in mining. Usually seen as the drop kicks/ dumb dumbs on site by the "educated" geologists/management.

They pull extra hours unpaid, constantly in meetings, stressing over deadlines. I push dirt around.

They racked up large student debt, I got paid to learn on the job.

I love my job, I'm alone in an aircon cab playing in a "sandpit", I live my inner childs dream. But somehow I failed at life?

Real question, is your personal job dangerous? I know mining in general is dangerous, but curious which parts are and which parts are not.
- There are 2 types of mines: open pit and underground (tunnels, etc). Open pit: they dynamite certain areas, then get big trucks to haul the rubble. They keep going until all of the minerals have been extracted. Example: nickel mines in Cuba. IMO, not very dangerous as long as safety precautions are followed. There is some risk that the walls of the open pit mine might collapse.
  
  Underground: this is the type of mining with real danger. Anytime you hear of a mining incident, it's likely to be underground. They do take a LOT of precautions which is why modern mining is a lot safer compared to 80 years ago. The ever present danger is collapse of the tunnel or formation.

I’m a lawyer. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard “oh you’re a lawyer? You must have been good at arguing when you were a kid”…or that I must be “good at public speaking”.

It’s funny cause I do commercial real estate contracts and business law…I don’t ever go to court. Most of my day is spent staring at a computer and trying to figure out the best way to change three or four words in an obscure contract provision to best protect my client’s monetary interests. I don’t really ever argue in a professional setting, but I have learned how to think differently, how to see things from various perspectives and anticipate all sides of a negotiation and how I’d best respond.

I also can’t stand all the constant “hey can I ask you a legal question” from friends and family. Or friends and family sending me random contracts and asking me to “look it over for them”. It’s like they assume that just because they know me, I can do that for free, when I spend 10-12 hours a day billing large commercial clients for that same type of work.

That leads me to my next pet peeve: people in my life assuming that my “office job” is a simple nine to five. No. I represent clients all over the world so sometimes I am up at 4:30am to get on an international call at 5:00an. Sometimes I’m working late into the night to finalize a big land purchase contract or commercial office lease; sometimes doing that after putting in a full 9 hours at the office. I don’t get paid time off; I can work at my own pace, sure, and take “days off” here and there, but the work and business and the need for legal advice is constant and I have to catch up somehow, sometime whenever I take “time off”.

I know I’m in a privileged position so I feel kind of shitty about complaining about this, but it gets pretty old. I also recognize that I definitely need to figure out a better way to improve my work/life balance…because this won’t be super sustainable for much longer.

About the privileged position thing... I'm a blue collar worker with a massive chip on my shoulder, but the only people I complain about being privileged is people with do-nothing jobs, and people who work from home. When I think lawyer or doctor, I think ridiculous hours and lots of work.
Dude, lawyer is literally one of the,"My kid is a big success" jobs. It's privileged because it requires a ton of work and study before you're even allowed to do it. Not to mention the insane amount of work the job itself is.

You earned that money and those days off.

There are tons of misconceptions about mathematics, but the biggest and most baffling one is: that no new mathematics is being created, that the field is "done".

The opposite is true: there are more open problems than ever, and research is frantic in mathematics with hundreds of thousands of serious new theorems being proven every year by professional mathematicians, and entirely new mathematical vistas being discovered every few years.

In fact, the pace of research is so fast that we are now creating the foundations for databases of mathematical theories and their proofs in order to better classify and preserve them.

Yeah but 5th grade math is "done" and that's all most people ever care to even know exists

I'm a linguistics enthusiast, which means people expect me to either know a lot of languages (which is, honestly, partly true) or be a grammar nazi (which is emphatically untrue).

I just dislike people typing to when they mean too. And enjoy reading some etymology from time to time.
Does that make me a linguistics enthusiast to?
- I usually don't care about typos as long as the message gets across, but for some reason the too/to mix up really gets me riled up. I instinctively get cross and have to tell myself to chill tf out

As a software developer, it's assumed that I'm up to date on all the newest tech trends, and I can accurately inform people on where these trends will be going.

No, AI won't replace you today.
AI is the worst it will ever be today.

It might replace you in the future, but I can't tell you how far from now that future is.

No I don't know when we'll be doing commercial space travel.

No I can't fix your printer.

I'm just here to make sure some numbers appear on a screen when someone asks for them.

Conversely, I work in IT Support and I get asked programming questions far too often... even to the point where I'm asked to fix applications despite not being a dev.

Then again, I basically have to deal with anything that's got a plug on the end. I guess code falls into that category in some peoples' heads.

I'm a Controls Engineer, from the day I started university in 2015, I've pretty constantly heard the phrase "You're an engineer, figure it out!" Even when it comes to something that is completely unrelated to my field, which is mostly everything.

i like linux

people think i'm a hacker because i use the terminal sometimes

i don't know shit bruh

I am a school psychologist with a master's in clinical psychology. The main misconception for my work is that (at least in my state) school psychologists rarely focus on counseling. Instead, we are writing reports and determining whether a student is eligible or maintains eligibility for special education. I give IQ, academic, and social-emotional tests and write a report. I work with a student for about 3 hours maximum and then I'm alone writing and scheduling meetings. Then, I'm onto the next one.

Most people, even staff in the school, think I am a counselor. I can technically do it, but there already is someone who was hired for that position... so, they should probably do that, and I'll make sure our special education documents are compliant.

Idk about drives me up the wall but I find it funny when people think the entire USPS shuts down on Sunday. There's ALWAYS mail that needs processing.

I know things are beginning to change a bit on this topic, but one of mine is that you can't just casually enjoy anime. Some people seem to think the moment you accidentally see a dragon ball episode that you suddenly turn into davido kun, or regularly glaze one of your 100 half naked figurines of characters that are obviously not meant to look like adults. There can definitely be weird stuff in some of them, but if you can accept the cultural differences in humor, some of the stories are genuinely great. I don't even watch it much anymore, but it's sad to me that so many people miss out on such great content just because they're a little closed minded.

I've known so many people who are so into anime, and every now and then I give anime a shot bc they keep harping on about show x or y. 9/10 are just so full of cringy sexually repressed representations of women/girls and interactions with them that no quality of other storyline could make up for it. Other times, the 'fan service' is more manageable. This real, personal experience definitely taints how I initially perceive anyone who brings up anime.

I'm trained as a lawyer, which means a lot of people sharing detailed, sometimes deeply personal problems related to a field of law I last thought about seriously twenty years ago, and then at an introductory level and for one semester. The main things I learned in law school are (1) how to look things up, (2) some foundational things about how to interpret and contextualize what I find, and (3) how much tools, templates, boilerplate, and personal relationships are the bread and butter of the actual profession.

Hobbywise, no I cannot build you a credenza or desk for free; I still haven't got around to building my own damn desk.

Yes, you are probably related to royalty, but it is neither verifiable nor special (genealogy).

No, I don't know why I need 30 fountain pens instead of three.