Getting older means never having to… wait a second
I seem to be mixing my popular cultural references. Must be that early Alzheimer’s. Or is it so early?
Friday night, the director of the INSERM structure in which I am working in Toulouse organized a lavish celebration of the structure’s renewal, at the 800 year-old Hotel Dieu. In two years, this genial man will be moving to direct a thousand-odd people at the new Canceropole; he can’t be that far from definitive retirement, but he seems to have plenty of energy to spare. In his saying thank you to each and every significant person who came to his mind, it crossed mine that the vast majority was male and most of these men were recently or imminently retired.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but at least in France, researchers under 40, even 45, are considered “young researchers”. Huh? A long-running debate at least on the scienceboards.net forum seemed to conclude that if you haven’t made your major discovery by the ripe old age of 30, 35 tops, you’ve already burned out. Is there not any middle ground for us middle-agers (or those of us rapidly getting there)?
Ellen Goodman hit the nail on the head in her last column, Junior Envy:
I find it bewildering to hear so many Americans worrying that a man who is middle-aged, by any demographic measure, might be too young. The question — “How green is Obama?” — may say less about the senator’s youth than the country’s age. Or the baby boomers ‘ aging. (…)
Most of the green-talk is indeed from boomers, a generation that was just coming of age — teen age — when Jack Kennedy was killed at 46. Is it possible that the same generation that famously didn’t trust anybody over 30 when they were 20 doesn’t trust anybody under 50 now that they are turning 60?
(…) My favorite factoid comes from a Yankelovich study showing that boomers define “old age” as starting three years after the average American is dead. It’s a new wrinkle on the 1965 lyric by The Who : “I hope I die before I get old.”
But the side effect of feeling forever young is that boomers may regard their juniors as perennially too young. It’s seen in the generational lament about the adult children who can’t get launched. It’s also seen in the boomers’ defense of their (primary) place in the pecking order.
(…) Harvard faculty has more tenured professors over 60 than under 50. Then, too, scientists once got their first major research grant from NIH at 37; now the average age is 42. Sorry, Einstein. (…)
Well, it’s a shock when the people you went to high school with start ruling the world. It’s another rite of passage to acknowledge juniors as your superiors. But boomers are now turning 60 with a life expectancy of 82. It’s an early sign of memory loss to forget that at 45 you were wise or foolish, or both — but you weren’t young.
Well, thanks, Ellen. But you’re really right.
Posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 10:24 am Categorized as:General You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 29th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I think you hit this on the head
Or however you are supposed to put it… (English and all) The scientist must get older to recieve grants in order to have more publications and experience, and in the mean time some might have dropped out. “What is the problem?” one older scientist asked me when I said that “If they aren’t dedicated they wouldn’t have been good scientist anyway”. I looked at him thinking, you might not be a bad scientist just because you can’t survive on nothing when there are other jobs where you actually are considered to be “mature” when you are in your late 30ies/yound 40ies … ah well, I guess I am only trying to defend my own decision to maybe stop doing science in academia since I feel the pressure might not be worth it?!
I still would like not to be called “younger” when I am 45 – not that I am even close now though
January 29th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Hey, it’s not all bad to be considered to be getting better as you get older. Think of advertising, or fashion, or finance, or marketing of any sort – automatically as you get older, you don’t hear the pulse of current society anymore. At least we are supposed to be growing wiser.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:16 am
Yes, in my world (specialist advisor in a financial sector)…. I keep getting criticised for not rushing through my career.. leaving it too late even though I am still in my early-mid 30’s! I quite like to meander, goddamit.