Many years ago, I was a doctoral student in science education… (Pro-tip: Always call yourself a “doctoral student” rather than a “graduate student” because the University staff will treat you way better) Anyway, I was taking mostly Biology classes, but also some classes in the Geology Department.

Geology tends to be a much more blue-collar science than Biology. At least, this department was. And a number of the more blue-collar students pegged me as some egghead intellectual that was slumming in Geology and gave me the cold shoulder. One was a non-traditional student — my age or older — who had worked for years as a well-drilling operator and was going back to school to finish a bachelors degree.

One night, we were running a pump test out in the field. For this test, you run a pump for like 24 hours or longer to create a cone of depression in the water table and then, when you turn off the pump, you monitor how quickly the water table returns to baseline. This can yield useful information about the nature of the permeability of the soil, etc. Anyway, I was one of 6 or 7 students out in the middle of a field at night with a huge generator truck monitoring a pump from like 2-4am.

The guy was chain smoking and holding forth with the rest of the students. They were all traditional late teen or early 20’s undergrads and they looked up to him. He was joking with them and telling stories. Then he looked around at them and said, “If you don’t get a job before sundown… Anybody? Anybody?” There was silence. Into the silence, I said, “You get a goddamned job before sundown or we’re shippin’ ya off to military school with that GODDAMN FINKELSTEIN SHIT KID! SONOVABITCH!” It’s a quote from Cheech & Chong’s movie Up in Smoke.

The guy was stunned. He’d had me pegged for some goody two-shoes academic and had no idea that I was a former stoner and had come of age in a blue-collar environment. He was ecstatic to discover me as a fellow-thinker. “Right? Right?” he crowed. After that, I was officially OK and was welcomed into the bosom of the Geology student community.