A long time coworker is reaching a special age mark tomorrow. It got us talking (again) how it is so hard to imagine we are really as old as our drivers licenses say. We still visualize ourselves as 20-30 year olds. It is only when students indicate that we are in their parents age group that it hits we are much older. The common consensus is that we are always working with 20-30 year olds. We age but the group we work with does not. Therefore, we do not age.

To me the attraction of science was the experimental aspect - thinking of questions, figuring out experiments to address the questions and getting the experiments to work. I have always been happiest in the lab. To me it is unfortunate but if one is to really make it one has to spend less and less time in the lab - you are directing others, working on papers and grants to get the money to keep the enterprise going. I tried to grow at one time but was becoming more and more unhappy - is it worth it? Each person has to answer that question for themselves. I will never reach the pinnacle of success whatever that may be. But isn't it a reality that most of us are producing good work but the groundbreaking results are very few and far between.