During the time I have spent on this placement, I've been at the receiving end of many an odd glance of surprise. Sometimes I've wondered if I've accidentally offended, or maybe if there's been something on my face or stuck in my teeth, but I think I've figure out the cause of these small indications of confusion.
The best way of describing the phenomenon would be culture shock, I suppose.
Take an office full of engineers. If you were to stand them all up against a wall and ask each one a few questions about his or her life, what would you discover? One engineer likes to go quad biking on the weekends, one is a rugby enthusiast, one has a pet snake, one simply likes to get lashed and do crazy stuff. But, in my experience, none of them will say that they like doing musical theatre, or any kind of theatre. It's bizarre. You would think that taking any large sample of people there would statistically be a likelihood that at least one of them would love musicals. I digress.
A large part of having a job is communicating, so it's natural that you speak to your colleagues, share stories, discuss how everyone's day, weekend, trip away went. Despite this, nothing had prepared this bunch of rugged, hardworking people for hearing that I'd been away for 2 weeks to be in a musical. It's like I told them I went to Mars for the weekend, or spent it skinning voles for my collection. Of course, they're much to polite to show this, so instead the muted glances of surprise.
I won't claim to be a typical engineer because I most categorically am not. For starters I'm female, I'm not actually the most practical person and I don't spend my free time taking things apart. I'm just happy to know that I myself am the missing link between engineering and muscial theatre, and although I'm certain that somewhere out there there are other all-singing, all-dancing engineers, until I see concrete evidence of this, I'll keep holding the fort.
