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MIT's Charm School For Geeks Turns 20
Hugh Pickens writes writes "It's been said that social graces may be just as important as intelligence and engineering prowess to success as an astrophysicist or computer engineer. But how do you take someone who's grown up in the world of pocket protectors and get them thinking about suits, bow ties and the proper way to hold a wine glass. Now Jennifer Lawinski reports that MIT's Charm School just celebrated its 20th birthday with classes in alcohol and gym etiquette, how to dress for work and how to visit a contemporary art museum. 'We're giving our students the tools to be productive members of society, to be the whole package,' says Alana Hamlett. 'It gets them thinking about who they are and what their impact and effect is, whether they're working on a team in an engineering company, or in a small group on a project, or interviewing for a job.' At this year's Charm School students were free to drop in and participate in any of the 20-minute mini-courses being offered that day and students who participated in 10 of the mini-courses were awarded doctorates of charm. Computational biology graduate student Asa Adadey said the free meal was a draw and said he learned in one mini-course not to cut up all his meat at once before eating it. 'Who knows? Down the line I may find myself at a formal dinner.'"
They pay money for this. A lot of it.
What always fascinated me about MIT is the seeming lack of a "university neighborhood." It was like MIT people never left campus and had no social lives to speak of. I think it went out of business, but one of the few bars close to campus was themed like a laboratory, where you drank beer out of beakers. During the day, people would scurry out of the buildings to the food trucks, awkwardly scarf down their lunches, and then scurry back. I used to love watching them try to play Frisbie when the sun came out, which I can can only describe with a direct quote from Dodgeball: "It's like watching a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob out there." I had always thought the jokes about just how nerdy MIT was were exaggerations, but that has to be the highest concentration of nerd-stereotypes that I have ever seen; super-smart, interesting people, but I can certainly see how the Charm School has lasted 20 years.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
The typical nature of nerds is such that we generally behave oddly in public perception in cases where expected behavior does not match optimal behavior. The example of cutting up a whole piece of meat therefore makes no sense, because it is not optimal behavior.
If you were to cut the meat into little pieces prior to eating, the meat would be cold by the time you were eating the final pieces, which is clearly an unacceptable outcome. On top of this the piece of meat makes logical sense to nerds as some sort of stack or queue. Cutting up the meat is akin to converting the stack into an array before operating on the data. Since you are intending to not sort but eat the pieces, an operation which can be run on either a stack or an array, this clearly makes no sense.
Also I have never heard of this so called "American Style" of eating, whereby the fork is tossed from hand to hand. We do not do that here in Ohio, so I don't know just how "American" it can be. Sounds more like something they would do in Texas.
From the last link, about dining etiquette:
10. Licking Your Fingers/Using Fingers to Push Food Onto Your Fork.
Always use a napkin to remove food from your fingers, and a knife to push food onto your fork. If the situation were reversed, would you want to shake hands with, or take a dinner roll from, someone after their fingers have been in their mouth or on their plate?
I agree on the point but not their rationalization. Considering the number of men who don't wash their hands after using the urinal, shaking hands with someone who might have had food on their fingers before they wiped clean is the least of my concerns.
Look, yes, it's important to be respectful and polite and blah, blah, blah... but, at some point, you have to admit it that a lot of it smells like bullshit snobbery. And, at some point, all those invented "manners" are superseded by what's simply reasonable. Others, like not chewing with your mouth open, are so obvious that they're not even worth mentioning.
But, I mean, the correct way to cut a piece of meat or the correct order in which to slice it? Who the hell cares?
Small wonder business people take so damn long to do anything, they're so caught up in all the piddly, useless bullshit that they have no brain space left to concentrate on getting shit done.
If you are smart enough for MIT then perhaps that can be your charm. Whether or not you can wear a suit and tie is irrelevant in 2013.
We've managed to get to the point where it's no longer mandatory for women to wear dresses and high heels everywhere. Can we please move on and also stop requiring men to wear suits and ties? If you're looking for an engineer, look for an engineering degree. If you want to hire a model, look for someone who looks good in a suit. Confusing the two is just unprofessional.
Computational biology graduate student Asa Adadey said the free meal was a draw and said he learned in one mini-course not to cut up all his meat at once before eating it.
Anyone with a brain capable of dealing with science, engineering and math would know that cutting all food before eating it increases the surface area while keeping the total mass and volume unchanged, thus causing the food to cool and dry faster, relative to its original, supposedly optimal for consumption, state. Anyone who is surprised by this, is probably not good at recognizing reasons behind other decisions and rules. He may be is a "trade school" kind of student that collects assorted morsels of prescriptive knowledge and expects it to provide him an easy, comfortable job. Real geeks hate those people, because they pass themselves as competent, cause enormous messes, and a real engineer has to clean up after them instead of doing actual work.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I suspect the reason most nerds are bad at social etiquette simply because they don't see the point and don't care. It's a waste of time and/or something beneath their intellectual pursuits.
You'd be incorrect. Most people want to fit in, and be normal - these things actually require a type of thinking that nerds are not particularly good at. It's a rationalisation to just sulk and say "I don't care anyway".
If they started caring, picking up proper social etiquette is really not that hard.
I should hope so; most normal children manage to do it by the time they're ten. What I'm wondering is, why didn't they?
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The problem here is that optimality is not an absolute condition, and a good engineer should know that.
If you're trying to optimize how much time you spend cutting up your meat so you can spend more time doing other things, then cutting it up all at once is the optimal choice. But to talk about any option being an optimal one, you have to also factor in all the conditions and constraints.
Maybe in a European or American setting, it's optimal for avoiding the derision of your peers to cut your meat one bite at a time. But if you're in Japan, you should generally serve your guests food that is already cut up and able to be eaten with chopsticks (or soft enough to cut with chopsticks).
The conditions and constraints matter and there is very rarely a single optimal solution that applies in all conditions and satisfies all constraints. People who don't recognize this, while passing themselves off as competent, cause enormous messes, and a real engineer has to clean up after them instead of doing actual work.
Cutting the meat all at once allows the fork to be inserted once and several slices of meat cut in succession.
In the typical use case, the efficiency gain is illusory because the fork must still be inserted into each slice afterwards in order to transfer it to the mouth (where the fork will be efficiently removed). Nevertheless, the Stationary Fork algorithm is of importance when the meat slices must are to subsequently be processed in a distributed fashion by multiple forks and/or mouths.
Oh for christ sake implement some parallel processing - come to the UK and learn how to use a knife and fork!
Anyone with a brain capable of dealing with science, engineering and math would know that cutting all food before eating it increases the surface area while keeping the total mass and volume unchanged, thus causing the food to cool and dry faster, relative to its original, supposedly optimal for consumption, state.
A True Geek would, however, not assume that food is served at an optimal state that demands instant consumption, on the basis that food takes a certain time to eat, which would be factored into the serving temperature.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Maybe in a European or American setting, it's optimal for avoiding the derision of your peers to cut your meat one bite at a time. But if you're in Japan, you should generally serve your guests food that is already cut up and able to be eaten with chopsticks (or soft enough to cut with chopsticks).
Yes, but presumably if you're teaching etiquette at MIT, you're teaching the etiquette that applies to the Eastern US. I don't think anyone would disagree that there are cultural differences between human beings in the US, Japan and Afghanistan.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Perhaps he is just unconcerned with the minutia involved in fields in which he is not an expert, kind of like the loose syntax displayed in your post (extraneous comma, maybe, s/that/who/, mixed construction.) No one thinks that you're "dumb" because of this.
Maybe he's overweight, and would rather consume his food cold in order to burn more calories.
Maybe he has some degree of Autism, which hinders his ability to distinguish between the taste of cold steak and warm steak.
It is possible to ride your bike to work without being Lance Armstrong. In an ideal world, no one would have to choose between being admitted to MIT and knowing exactly how to cut a steak at a formal dinner. But this ain't it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Of course, 'alphas' will frequently participate in the cretinous and meaningless rituals of their own culture in order to be 'polite'. However, 'alphas' are usually happy to have this participation be seen as 'clumsy' by the idiots to whom ritual is everything.
Let me guess, you're an alpha+, but socially 'awkward' because your mind is on higher things, and anyway the plebs don't understand you.
A familiar twist on an old slashdot favourite meme. I expect you failed at college, because true 'alpha' types don't need certificates to validate their inherent sense of self worth, amirite?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I suspect the reason most nerds are bad at social etiquette simply because they don't see the point and don't care. It's a waste of time and/or something beneath their intellectual pursuits. If you are on the verge of a breakthrough in a new black hole theory, or revolutionary AI algorithm, everything else might seem unimportant by comparison.
Ah yes, the "Albert Einstein often forgot to put socks on in the morning" argument. And everyone's Albert Einstein here, of course.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is pretty much what I clicked on this story in order to say. Charm school should instead concentrate on how to interact with psychopaths. It is a much more general skillset than simply knowing which utensil to put in which hand at dinner.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Mappers and packers.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If they started caring, picking up proper social etiquette is really not that hard. I should hope so; most normal children manage to do it by the time they're ten. What I'm wondering is, why didn't they?
They've been brought up being told that they're 'special' and don't need to worry about fitting in with the hoi polloi?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I give an example of what happens because Caltech doesn't have similar classes.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
"The hard part is to hold an engaging social conversation talking about nothing, but that's a story for another day."
Actually the hard part is doing so while reinforcing or improving your social status through word choice, topic choice, tone of voice and non-verbal cues. Then after having set the stage you can proceed to collect information about the subjects of your interview, I mean the people you are talking to, filed away for later use. The goal in these situations is to socialize without offending and while making the others feel like they a) were the most important person in the room or b) that you had disclosed something useful about yourself.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
...has described the "tossing" of the fork from hand to hand as the proper form.
This is my problem with a lot of so called "rules" of etiquette, it's entirely arbitrary and typically just one person's overly judgmental opinion. While I have no desire to offend anyone (most of the time) the notion that holding your knife and fork together or switching hands could possibly have a right or wrong answer is absurd. The point is simply not to gross anyone out with your eating habits and possibly give the impression one is attempting to be social.
Keeping your knife in the right and and the fork in the left is ok too, but that supposedly gives the impression that you are in a hurry...
See, I would think that the actual rate at which you shovel food into your mouth would be a more useful measure. I could make an equally valid (and just as absurd) argument that the noise from constantly switching eating implements is disruptive and distracting. If someone is reading that much into how you manage your tableware then they are being rude and judgmental and I doubt I'd care to dine with such a person.
Everyone looks good in a suit that fits.
That is a matter of opinion. While that might be the consensus it is not a universally held opinion. And in my opinion they often look quite silly. An attractive person will look attractive in casual or formal clothes. An unattractive person will be made at most marginally better looking with nice clothes but it is demonstrably true that not everyone looks good in a suit no matter how well it is tailored. 20 seconds on google images will reveal lots of ugly people in nice fitting suits.
I don't understand the nerd hatred of suits and ties at all.
Partly because a lot of suits and all ties are uncomfortable. (a good suit is comfortable but usually expensive) Worse a tie is a completely useless piece of clothing worn just because people expect it. It is purely decorative and does not even look very good for that purpose. Partly because circumstances that dictate wearing a suit tend to come with a lot of fussy social conventions that frequently make little sense. Partly because suits and ties are costumes without any fun clearly attached. Partly because suits and ties are expensive. Partly because nerds tend to value how people act more than how they look.
That has as big of an effect as charm school. The guys have more opportunities to socialize than when I attended at 90% male.
THANK YOU. Regardless of the specific subject at hand, GP has completely overlooked that fact that optimization is dependent upon constraints.
Maybe I don't give a good goddamn about the temperature or tenderness of my food: I just want to forget about cutting it.
The ability to socialize and represent oneself well in social situations is important, but it's not that important. If it is that important to you, your intelligence or engineering prowess may not be as great as you'd like to think.
Fact is, falling somewhere in between Social Retard and Master of Etiquette is just fine for most people.
Etiquette is silly anyway. I care what kind of stories you tell and how you view the world around you, not how you hold your fucking fork.
It is infinitely more important to be an interesting person than it is to be a well-mannered person.
around here we can't afford a separate knife for every diner, so you have to cut everything you'll need and then pass the knife along.
Wow. In America, it's not unusual for people to have more than one knife per person! Maybe Americans really are spoiled. I can't imagine everyone having to pass around the knife every dinner.
The deal is, if you only intend to deal with your peers, lacking social etiquette is fine. However, that also limits your interactions - if you ever intend to communicate your ideas to others who you consider "lesser" (less educated, the general public, whatever), then not conforming to what they expect discounts you as an "expert" in their eyes.
After all, just like everyone on /. thinks people should learn more about the computer that they use because they're smarter than the general population. Of course, the general population easily says the reverse - if these computer geeks are so intelligent that they should tell us what to do and know, why aren't they smart enough to look, act and play the part?
As much as everyone loves to say to not judge a book by its cover, it's what happens. Dress sharply, and people will listen. Dress like a slob, and people will think your thoughts and ideas are the same and refuse to listen.
And if you have to ever deal with customers (travelling, say) - even if they're engineers themselves - it doesn't hurt to be extra polite and show you do know your way around a dinner (especially with bosses and managers present).
It's why a properly fitted suit is often the ideal garment - it's one of the easier get-ups to instantly add credibility in the eyes of others.
Hell, look at scams out there. You'll find the perpetrator in confidence moves always dresses up because people typically let their guard down. If a slob approached you trying to sell you some hot investment, you'd turn them away. If a sharply dressed person did it, a lot of people drop their guard and listen. Same goes for pick-pockets.
An interesting study also shows that "clothes make the man" - how the simple act of wearing say, a lab coat can increase attentiveness and carefulness of anyone who wears them.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103112000200 (paywall)
http://www.psmag.com/science/the-brain-focusing-power-of-the-lab-coat-40108/
Everyone I know, and I mean EVERYONE, will be really shocked to find out I'm not a computer geek. However, I'm not a computer, at least not of the electromechanical kind with cores.
But to follow your analogy, it generally takes much less time to cut a piece of meat than it does to chew it. Under your model, the hands-core spends a lot of time idling while it's waiting for the mouth-core to finish. That's probably okay if the only thing you're doing is eating meat. But there are probably other foods on that plate, and beverages in a glass not far from the plate, and a napkin you may wish to dab your mouth with between bites. But your hands-core is occupied, holding the knife and fork and doing nothing, so you have to waste cycles putting down the knife and fork when you decide you want a drink or a piece of bread.
Generally it's more efficient to bring a whole chunk of memory into the cache all at once (cutting the meat up at once) than it is to keep going out to memory (or disk) to get your data one byte at a time.
Food that is intended to be eaten while hot, over an unpredictable and possibly significant amount of time, is served in a condition when it's ready to eat, and will remain so even over the course of a relatively long dinner. This is easier to achieve with the lowest rate of cooling over time and initial temperature close to the upper boundary of the acceptable range. The less is the expected rate of cooling, the farther from the upper boundary this starting temperature can be set, and the food will be the closest to the optimal temperature over the whole time.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Geeks are not "normal". Most of us are concentrating on what makes us geeky and miss all the social clues normal people see. Trying to learn to read these clues when you are 18 is difficult if not impossible. it also seems like a big waste of time. We usually are concentrating on what we are doing or thinking about and we don't adjust our behavior to be socially acceptable.
Many geeks can't tolerate alcohol or do not like its effects and also find drunk people annoying so avoid most social gatherings. This also limits your options as a business man.
Being a geek, as I am, is no excuse for not knowing how to hold a fork correctly. Personally, I blame the directors of television commercials who seem to think that it's cute to have children hold their forks like a shovel. And, as far as proper dress goes, I suspect that it's not so much a matter of not knowing what to wear, it's not understanding that such things are important to the people you want to impress, and that doing things their way (when you're with them) will make it easier to get them to do what you want.
Now, there's an idea: present business attire to geeks as a specialized form of cosplay!
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On my first day of school during lunch, a large, bald headed kid ( he looked like Charley Brown) made fun of the way I held my spoon. That was 54 years ago. I try to do it correctly but often forget. With severe carpel tunnel syndrome I find that unless I grip my fork tightly it tends to fall out of my hand so I do it my way. If you are offended, don't look.
You do what you have to do; I might not like the way it looks, but I'd never say anything to you about it because it's none of my business. Middle managers and similar droids would probably disapprove, but how often are they likely to see how you eat? (The big problem, of course, comes when you have to be social with prospective employers, clients or customers. If you do your best to make a good impression otherwise, the smart ones will overlook this one "lapse.") I'd suggest sticking to Asian cuisine, but from what you write, chopsticks probably aren't any easier for you.
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Got full disability, no mortgage, wife works, no worries about getting a job. Thanks for your concern
Well, that works for you. However, I was writing about the general case, and there are lots of geeks out there who are simply making life harder for themselves by assuming that the rules don't apply to them.
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People who are sort of geeky may know how to act but it is hard work keeping track of all the social nuances, but the terminally geeky person can no more understand social norms than the average American English speaker can understand Chinese. There is so much to remember, your belt doesn't match your shoes, you use the wrong fork, you don't introduce your date, if you can actually get one, the right way. I was able to find a wife, I was nice looking and had my own house and business so she agreed to marry me. She is an artist so we complement each other in weirdness, and every time she screws up her computer I can fix it for her.