Tuesday 27 August 2019
From Then to Now
Email to DC
Yes, the self-description problem is a challenging one. I usually, as well, include that I worked at Apple, even though Apple was half the length and two decades farther in the past than IBM, for the sorts of reasons you describe. Apple still has cachet. Amazing it’s lasted 40+ years…
I have a friend who commented after a charitable event she was hosting — she does a side-gig as president of a small non-profit — that she ran into “one of those guys who used to be somebody,” referring to the way he was presenting himself. I thought, ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ (not that I was much of a somebody) and ‘I don’t want to be that guy.’
So I am trying to let go of the professional component of my self identity. And of course it’s difficult to let go of an ~4-decade investment in a career that I feel turned out pretty well. Still, I have to accept that as time goes on it will seem less and less relevant to others. Other people of our age may be be mildly interested, but to most it will seem (at most) a historical curiosity.
I’m not quite sure what the alternative is to identifying myself with a profession. I can list a string of avocations, but that somehow doesn’t quite feel like it. And I will never be accomplished enough at either piano or geology, my two biggest foci, that I can call myself a pianist or a geologist. Saying I’m a bricoleur or flaneur seems more accurate, but almost no one knows those terms.
I’ve not yet had any negative interactions with younger students, but then I’ve had approximately zero interactions because so far I’ve only taken a lecture course. And I believe that to students, I am either invisible (a feeling which I’ve been increasingly noticing as I age), or perhaps a bit off-putting as I look like a parent (grandparent) or professor. We’ll see how it goes this fall, where one course has a sort of lab (it’s forestry, so I don’t think it will be what I think of a lab), and the other seems like it may have some group projects.
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