I'm an applied molecular scientist!

I remember a secondary school geography teacher who had a good figure and unfortunately a funny face. She said geographers are busybodies. Anything that's related to human beings from landscapes to politics is of interest to them. That was the only thing I remember about her apart from a very nice pink sarong she wore to school after having acquired it on a trip to Thailand (if you recall that as you sat in class and always had the waists and hips of teachers at your eye level, you'd understand why I remember about the sarong.).

What I'm saying is, I'm reminded of chemical engineers' professional cuckoo-ism - laying own eggs in others nests - by this remark deeply ingrained in my memory. I mean I think geographers don't practice professional cuckoo-ism - at least not to the extent of chemical engineers. But chemical engineering is doubtless the most blatantly and brutally generalized disciplines in a lot of academic institutions. You really can't tell what a chemical engineer does these days. In undergrad days they're trained to be businessmen or theoreticians. In grad school they are trained to be a vague sort of "applied molecular scientist". They dabble in physics and biology AND chemistry and engineering. Nothing seems to be impossible for these all-rounded guys. I bet one day they'll be expected to unclog drains and design landscapes as well. Thing is though, a chemical engineer's field has become so wide that it became precisely the reason for him to focus narrowly in his own little world of work. An applied molecular scientist might just go on and study the same kind of molecule for the same application for a long time, before he is stirred by the eerie absence of people in an abandoned, pipe-crossed unit operations lab.