Glass Half Full

Title: Glass Half Full

General Information about Item:

  • Joke
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Annie Hang is a Dartmouth 18 studying mechanical engineering. She’s 22, Chinese, from Belmont, Massachusetts, and she’s an only child.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • This joke would be shared in a casual setting among engineers. It references the stereotypical mindset of engineers, so it would be less likely to be shared among people outside the group, even if the stereotype is understood.
  • Cultural Context
    • This joke is rather straight forward, and it derives its humor from highlighting the disparity between philosophical matters and practical matters. The punchline is very accessible to those outside of engineering fields–it’s clear that the engineer has broken from the philosophical convention and given a purely practical answer. Stereotypically, engineers are logic-oriented, and so the joke depends on that cultural understanding when it humorously deviates from a question that is exclusively emotional and gives it a purely logical solution.

Item:

A pessimist looks at a glass of water and states it’s half empty. An optimist looks at the same glass and states it is half full. But an engineer sees it and states the glass it twice as tall as it should be.

Transcript:

  • Chrissy: So can you state your name and background?
  • Annie: I’m Annie Hang, I’m an 18, and I’m a mechanical engineer.
  • Chrissy: And what joke do you have for us?
  • Annie: So a pessimist looks at a glass of water and states it’s half empty. An optimist looks at the same glass and states it is half full. But an engineer sees it and states the glass it twice as tall as it should be.
  • Chrissy: Uh, do you remember when you first heard the joke?
  • Annie: Yeah one of my group members told me, like, towards the beginning of the term when we were not dying yet.
  • Chrissy: And what about the joke, uh, makes it funny. What about engineering culture?
  • Annie: Uh, it’s just like, you know, the half-empty/half-full thing. That’s–that’s like a philosophical thing, and engineers are more into the practical solutions.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

 

Collector’s Name: Christina Long

Tags/Keywords:

  • Joke. Engineering. Glass Half Full. Philosophy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *