I am sixty-five, and I will be retiring soon as a professor at a university in Japan. This has been my second career; previously, I had been a freelancer for twenty years.
In the past twelve years or so, I have supervised about fifteen master’s and Ph.D. students, and I have served on committees for maybe two dozen more. The fields have been linguistics, language education, lexicography, translation studies, etc. Most of the students have been in their twenties, but some have been in their forties or older. One of my students who finished his Ph.D. successfully earlier this year is a year older than me.
Overall, the older students who were admitted to our programs have been more successful at sticking with their studies and eventually finishing. Younger students seem more likely to hit roadblocks in their graduate studies: they might become disillusioned with academia or the prospect of an academic career, or marriage and childbirth might make them need to focus on supporting their family. While life events can interfere with older students’ studies, too—several of my students had to take breaks for a while to take care of an aging parent—overall the older ones seem to have been better able to balance their studies with their personal lives.
The life and work experience that the older students bring with them is, overall, a plus both for them and for the younger students they interact with. It often takes time, though, for older students to learn how to think more abstractly and objectively about issues they dealt in the workplace. Often their motivation for graduate study is to study some practical problem they dealt with at work, and they often think that they already know the solution. Getting them to think about the issue as a researcher and to realize that their research should contribute not only practical solutions but also deeper theoretical insights has sometimes been a challenge for me. But, overall, the older students have been quite successful, and I have enjoyed working with them.
In the past twelve years or so, I have supervised about fifteen master’s and Ph.D. students, and I have served on committees for maybe two dozen more. The fields have been linguistics, language education, lexicography, translation studies, etc. Most of the students have been in their twenties, but some have been in their forties or older. One of my students who finished his Ph.D. successfully earlier this year is a year older than me.
Overall, the older students who were admitted to our programs have been more successful at sticking with their studies and eventually finishing. Younger students seem more likely to hit roadblocks in their graduate studies: they might become disillusioned with academia or the prospect of an academic career, or marriage and childbirth might make them need to focus on supporting their family. While life events can interfere with older students’ studies, too—several of my students had to take breaks for a while to take care of an aging parent—overall the older ones seem to have been better able to balance their studies with their personal lives.
The life and work experience that the older students bring with them is, overall, a plus both for them and for the younger students they interact with. It often takes time, though, for older students to learn how to think more abstractly and objectively about issues they dealt in the workplace. Often their motivation for graduate study is to study some practical problem they dealt with at work, and they often think that they already know the solution. Getting them to think about the issue as a researcher and to realize that their research should contribute not only practical solutions but also deeper theoretical insights has sometimes been a challenge for me. But, overall, the older students have been quite successful, and I have enjoyed working with them.