Age Is Just a Number…or Is It?

Age is a topic we’ve often discussed here at Healthcare IT Today. There are so many angles to age when it comes to careers. Am I too young? Am I too old? Does a potential future employer think I’m too young or too old? Age can be a challenging issue when looking at your current and future career.

While age has a lot of nuances, I was struck by this list that gave me some new perspective on age:

At age 23, Tina Fey was working at a YMCA.
At age 23, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job.
At age 24, Stephen King was working as a janitor and living in a trailer.
At age 27, Vincent Van Gogh failed as a missionary and decided to go to art school.
At age 28, J.K. Rowling was a suicidal single parent living on welfare.
At age 30, Harrison Ford was a carpenter.
At age 37, Ang Lee was a stay-at-home-dad working odd jobs.
Julia Child released her first cookbook at age 39, and got her own cooking show at age 51.
Vera Wang failed to make the Olympic figure skating team, didn’t get the Editor-in-Chief position at Vogue, and designed her first dress at age 40.
Stan Lee didn’t release his first big comic book until he was 40.
Alan Rickman gave up his graphic design career and landed his first movie role at age 42.
Samuel L. Jackson didn’t get his first major movie role until he was 46.
Morgan Freeman landed his first major movie role at age 52.

Whatever your dream is, it is not too late to achieve it.
Never tell yourself you’re too old to make it.
Never tell yourself you missed your chance.
Never tell yourself that you aren’t good enough.
You can do it. Whatever it is.

I definitely agree with the final sentiment that we shouldn’t let age shatter our dreams. In many cases, experience can help us better understand and realize our dreams. Plus, it can give us opportunities to find new dreams that we hadn’t even considered before because we were so busy dealing with the rat race that is life.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • I know all about being a late bloomer.
    At 43 I went back to college to become a nurse.
    At age 49, I began to seriously work in the field as a consulting nurse EMR software trainer.
    And now, 6 years later, I’m working for a very prestigious hospital as a nurse informatic, building the software that I once taught.???? I’m not finished yet…

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