Good things about growing older
We now interrupt our regularly scheduled vacation-recap programming for an ode to growing older– or more accurately, more senior. Here are a few of the professional perks that post-PhD life has brought:
- More conferences. I have been going to about three conferences a year, and am happy to find that I am starting to know quite a few people in my field. This makes the conferences a lot more interesting, since you learn a lot in one-on-one discussions.
- More articles to review. This is pretty fun, as you get to read the latest work related to your own, and influence whether it is published and in what form. And it feels good to use all that highly-specialized knowledge.
- More people listening to me. Sometimes even faculty members ask me questions and listen to the answers.
- More access to higher-level discussions about science. Yesterday I joined my advisor for a meeting with a prominent researcher in our field, one of our competitors, who was visiting for a conference. I listened with interest as they traded broad opinions about where the entire field was going. Learning to do this kind of thing is quite an art– after all, you want to argue that the field is going in the direction YOU are headed!
- More papers published. Good for self-confidence: at some point, after the Nth article, the impostor issues do tend to fade away.
- More money. Always good. No longer am I buying lime green jeans just because they are on the sale rack at the Gap. If you see me wearing lime green jeans, it’s because I actually wanted them.
