Chemist Stereotypes: Part 1
Bench Monkey: never wants to leave the lab. Brain never fully developed, but hands start turning solid gold. Life slowly turns into romcom titled, “Gollums and Their Chromatography Columns.”
Savior of the World: believes their big idea solves The Problem™. Usually in academia, but sometimes in business world. Research behaviors of Thomas Edison with personality of either Ted Bundy or a sand dune.
Savior’s Disciple: effectively designs entire research program and executes it without saying a word in public. Platinum hands meet diamond mind. Driven by pathological insecurity, crippling social anxiety, enthusiasm for paying karmic debt, or congenital case of Company Man Syndrome.
The Expanded Consciousness: obsessed with fringe psychedelics. Most likely to ignore lab safety, ingest manually purified alkaloids, and record resulting trips in lab notebook. Great to have a beer with, but never bring up fungi unless you want to hear all about them for the next 6 years.
Walter White III: starts as dead-end dissertation project, ends as small-batch artisanal meth brand. Most likely to wear orange for 7 to 12.
Escaped Convict: likes talking to people about more than HPLC gradients. Tunnels out of Fume Hood Penitentiary with a spoon and desperation, then goes on the lam disguised in an allied discipline. Makes twice the money for half the effort, but twenty years later, a faint whiff of paint thinner in their garage still cues a nostalgic mental montage of cleaning glassware while contemplating reaction mechanisms.
Kid with Expensive Toys: one of twenty world experts in NOESY-COZY-INEPTITUDE pulse sequences. Looks for jobs based on NMR magnet frequencies instead of paycheck sizes. Who needs to drive a 120k BMW when you can play with a $10M magnet? Bonus: most likely to wear cargo shorts and a Pink Floyd T-shirt to a black-tie award ceremony, and could happily set a record for hiking the Appalachian trail while bringing nothing but the clothes on their back and a dull Swiss Army knife.
Pyromaniac: ‘nuff said.
