“So, What Do You Work On?”: The Academic Elevator Pitch
“So, what do you work on?” “Tell me about your research.” “What do you study?” If you’re interested in the life of the mind, you’re going to hear these. A lot. It’s essential to make sure you have a quick answer, preferably one that invites your interlocutor to inquire further about what you’re doing. Your answer can range from the embarrassingly vague (“economics”) to the embarrassingly detailed (“I’m working on relaxing l’Emenant’s Second Restatement of McBigshot’s Theorem, which, as you know, is the key result in [impossibly narrow subfield consisting of three papers, all of which were published Thursday]). You want to strike the right balance. You might be familiar with the “elevator pitch,” which relies on a simple thought…