A pop musician's and a mathematician's twenties are a precious part of their life. During those ten years of early adulthood, there seems to be a residual childlike creativity or randomness in the brain at a time when a person has had a chance to amass skills and experience. In some fields, the window in time when you will produce your best work is open only during your twenties. Take the Beatles, whose albums appeared when Lennon & McCartney were 23-30 and 21-28 respectively. Few would argue that either of them made a Beatles-quality album after the split, and looking at other bands, I wonder if they could have even if they'd continued to record together.
Since I think a lot about pop music and ageing (the first time I felt like an old man whose time was past was at ~22), I've been thinking about my twenties. What did I do with that finite resource, those ten years? Well, one common thing I did not do was try a bit of this and that. I was a professional archaeologist for the entire decade, if you count grad school as a professional activity. Luckily archaeologists do not bloom and wilt early. Two classic PhD theses that are mentioned among the best Swedish archaeology has produced were published when their authors were 35 (Ulf Erik Hagberg) and 41 (Mats P. Malmer).
As I wasn't given a very well thought-out thesis subject, a lot of the work I put into the project had to be descriptive and enumerative rather than creative and analytical. One grumpy older colleague even told me I was squandering the best years of my professional life. But not being a pop musician, I can't say that those years were of an unusual quality and should have been invested more carefully. Outside of work, I spent my twenties as I have spent my thirties, married and occupied with geeky pastimes, and I became a dad at 26. I guess I haven't developed all that much since my teens, actually, which means that I am either a youthful or a stunted soul.
Dear Reader, to what did/do you devote your 20s? Are you happy with what you did/do?
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2011/10/investing_your_twenties.php
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