My whole life I've looked younger than I am. When I was 21 and stopped by the public library in my hometown to renew my library card, the librarian asked me if I was 14 yet. On a train in Chicago a fellow passenger asked me where I was in school, and when I said it for the third time, she looked at me abashed and said, "Oh, I was so sure you were in junior high that it didn't make sense."
Whenever I complain about my youthful looks people always tell me that I'll appreciate it when I'm 40. I smile thinly, and then spend the two months before my new job obsessing over how to put on make-up so that I can be taken seriously.
It's amazing that so many of my capable peers are not allowed to do real work until getting a degree, putting in serious time in their career fields, or both. I have to wonder what U.S. productivity charts would look like if we could cut through the nonsense and let people work at capacity, with the goal of improving everybody's capacity. What are people afraid of, that there will be no one left to do undesirable jobs? Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
Last week, I was at a dinner meeting and found myself in a conversation about everyone's children. In general, I find it awkward to identify more with the children in the story than the parents/my colleagues, but this time was particularly pronounced because I had just met them, cared a lot about my own credibility, and their children were all 24. After the third person in a row told a story about her 24 year old daughter, one of my colleagues looked at me to include me more in the conversation. "How old are you?" I admitted that I was a month shy of 24. The next day, as we were saying good-bye, she mentioned to me that she was just so surprised about how young I am. There goes a month of carefully crafted emails (no smiley faces or exclamation marks!).
It's dissonant to me that this month's Glamour does a series on looking good in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, and the description of the 20s sounds like the pinnacle of everything good in this world. But then I get to work and I wish that my voice were lower as I contemplate using some white out for some in-a-pinch years (I think it would probably look like I whited-out my hair, but I'm certainly not above trying). I don't mean to suggest that I'm as capable now as I hope to be in 20 years. Or that I'm more capable than people who are doing these 'more challenging' jobs. But after spending a day -- in my dream job -- struggling to focus long enough to 'synthesize' meeting notes, I have to wonder if there's a better way to make good use of young people than pretending that the learning curve is really this steep.
*By the way, I don't really wish I was 40. While it would help me to be taken seriously, I'm pretty excited about the next 16 years.
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Amen. The average age in my grad program seems to be around 27. I'll admit to saying, "after college, I worked in D.C. for HHS" rather than "I graduated and spent last year in D.C. working for HHS." Nicely, er, abstract. Must be working: some Class of '00 in my reading group were stunned to learn that I'm 23. Sadly, I was just as surprised to learn how old they are, I could have sworn the women were my age. I guess it goes both ways in your twenties. Of course, I CAN tell that folks in my program are older than those in Doran's -- mine are actually mature and here to learn. The immediately post-college in the Chem Dept still seem to think that the world owes them.
(totally off topic: the Bay Area NPR suxs. The only good parts are when they air D.C. NPR. I miss WAMU 88.5!)
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