Is there a Doctor in the house?
I've been sorting out the last few boxes of stuff from Mom's house - the ones that have been lingering in the back of the hall closet for two years now - and honestly, I think I may just tape them back up and shove them back in the closet. Well, I think I can get it all down to one box at least but I have no idea what to do with these things and yet they are things I do want to keep. It's mostly Dad's stuff: his Army Air Corps medals, his flight training log book, his slide rule, a couple of his expired patents. I guess the family archives are going to be in the bottom of my hall closet for the time being.
One thing I came across has had me thinking all afternoon...It's one of Dad's business cards from when he was working in Zurich in the early 1980's and it has the honorific "Dr." before his name. To my knowledge Dad never, ever, referred to himself that way. There are certainly plenty of documents with PhD trailing his name, and older docs always list his P.E. or Professional Engineer status which seems to have been a bigger deal in the past (it's not now, right?) but "Doctor" is not a title he used or asked for. So I was wondering if it was included on the card since he was a nasty American brought in to run the office and needed some credentialing (and who made that call) or if it was just the custom and no one thought anything of it.
Which led me to ponder how very many PhDs I know and how few of them use the title. Sib 1 and SIL are both PhDs and neither use the title. The only time I ever knew SIL to care was when they got a piece of mail addressed to Dr. & Mrs. which, understandably, set her off a bit. Expanding this beyond the family, two of our very closest friends have PhDs from MIT but only use the title in their roles as coaches for The Boy's robotics team. And, I think that almost all of the Faculty I know prefer Professor to Doctor. I think that my friend who teaches at the Army War College uses Doctor now but that may very well be a function of being one of the very few civilians where he works and lives. lillian13 I trust you to correct me on that one if I've got it wrong.
Is it just the company I keep (academics, techies, engineers) and are folks in other fields more likely to employ the title? I know that PsyDs and other mental health clinicians who can claim the honor of Doctor are much more likely to use it but that makes perfect sense for clinicians who needs to distinguish themselves in a field where education and credentials vary pretty widely.
My only experience with the other extreme was an interim VP I worked under back when I was still mediating employee relations cases at Ye Olde Local Institute of Higher Learning. The guy in question insisted on being addressed as Dr. ________ since he had a JD. It was deemed odd and made everyone uncomfortable because it went against the prevailing culture so completely. Not to mention the fact that everyone- other than me -ALSO had a JD. In the end I think it hurt him because people took it as a sign of insecurity.
Not sure where I am going with any of this. Discuss...
One thing I came across has had me thinking all afternoon...It's one of Dad's business cards from when he was working in Zurich in the early 1980's and it has the honorific "Dr." before his name. To my knowledge Dad never, ever, referred to himself that way. There are certainly plenty of documents with PhD trailing his name, and older docs always list his P.E. or Professional Engineer status which seems to have been a bigger deal in the past (it's not now, right?) but "Doctor" is not a title he used or asked for. So I was wondering if it was included on the card since he was a nasty American brought in to run the office and needed some credentialing (and who made that call) or if it was just the custom and no one thought anything of it.
Which led me to ponder how very many PhDs I know and how few of them use the title. Sib 1 and SIL are both PhDs and neither use the title. The only time I ever knew SIL to care was when they got a piece of mail addressed to Dr. & Mrs. which, understandably, set her off a bit. Expanding this beyond the family, two of our very closest friends have PhDs from MIT but only use the title in their roles as coaches for The Boy's robotics team. And, I think that almost all of the Faculty I know prefer Professor to Doctor. I think that my friend who teaches at the Army War College uses Doctor now but that may very well be a function of being one of the very few civilians where he works and lives. lillian13 I trust you to correct me on that one if I've got it wrong.
Is it just the company I keep (academics, techies, engineers) and are folks in other fields more likely to employ the title? I know that PsyDs and other mental health clinicians who can claim the honor of Doctor are much more likely to use it but that makes perfect sense for clinicians who needs to distinguish themselves in a field where education and credentials vary pretty widely.
My only experience with the other extreme was an interim VP I worked under back when I was still mediating employee relations cases at Ye Olde Local Institute of Higher Learning. The guy in question insisted on being addressed as Dr. ________ since he had a JD. It was deemed odd and made everyone uncomfortable because it went against the prevailing culture so completely. Not to mention the fact that everyone- other than me -ALSO had a JD. In the end I think it hurt him because people took it as a sign of insecurity.
Not sure where I am going with any of this. Discuss...