I'm 54, single, live in NYC and highly educated.

I feel like I have one good big adventure left in me. Should I try for one last long term relationship and see if it sticks? (I've had two - 5 and 12 years - and both were great. Both guys are still good friends of mine.) Or should I try to do something fantastic in my career and leave a professional legacy. I have an ivy phd, but I got it later in life, so there is no big book or big body of work, though I had a pretty successful career berfore the PhD. Sorry, I'm not a multi-tasker in life. Just don't think I have it in me to do both. I know I'm going to regret the one I didn't do on my deathbed. And I may not have that much time left anyway. Who knows.

• Have you met DL poster charlie?

• What's the phd in? Academia's a crapshoot - go for dick instead.

• "Who knows." More to the point, who cares?

• Leaving out what you studied is a big omission, OP. How can we form an opinion on the matter if we don't know this pivotal piece of information?

• The challenge is I put on 25 lbs. finishing up the PhD, and I dont feel like I can get on the dating market until I take that off (I know...) And my tendency is just to stay at home, work my ass off at my desk and computer, eat and feel lonely. The career is safer, but more lonely. Who is Charlie? My gradaute work is in sociology (media studies).

• For a guy with an Ivy PhD, you do not sound like you have a lot of common sense or a very good take on how life works. Since when can you make a big career splash or have a relationship but not both- even more, since when can you count on your choice, career or relationship happening? I wonder why you got the PhD? I say go after whatever it is that you went to the bother of getting a PhD over. Relationships are not a premeditated choice as much as something that happens if you are open to people. Do both and good luck. Still, your's is an odd post in my opinion. Are you Condi Rice or something?

  charlie

• [quote]leave a professional legacy That just sounds fucking tragic. Once you're gone, no one cares about that shit, or how much time you spent at work.

• Oh dear, have you been out of the loop in academia for more than 5 years? With media studies you might well be out of date and struggle to catch up in order to publish a book or some articles. Even then, if you want to make a mark with your work, that's like every fiction writer wanting to be JK Rowling. How many academics turn out to be Edward Said?

• I am clearly not interested in being Ed Said. I knew him at the end of his life when he taught at Columbia and found him to be a roaring boar.

• Get a blog.

• Whales, OP. Still time to save them.

• What sort of professional legacy do you want then that would be more fulfilling than a relationship?

• OP are you rich? Seems like media studies is one of those fields only rich people can indulge in.

• [quote]I feel like I have one good big adventure left in me. Well there's your first problem.

• On the prospect of OP leaving a professional legacy... [quote]That just sounds fucking tragic. Once you're gone, no one cares about that shit, or how much time you spent at work. My thoughts exactly, R7. Did OP never see the old geezer who comes back to the office where he was once the big man and flounders about, looking for someone, anyone whose face seems the least bit familiar. All the while he wants someone to tell him that, in his absence, the place has gone down the tubes when these things churn on regardless of personality and "legacy." He wants someone to tell him that his policy or his revolutionary finding or great innovation is the linchpin for all that has happened since, to this very day. In fact, he's been forgotten, his policies and wonderful innovations have been forgotten, and now he's just some old feeble dude who took a wrong turn. If you want to leave a legacy, endow a library or a school or a museum, build a park, or write a novel or sculpt something that will endure for many generations. Professional legacies are as lasting as a gift pen set.

• OP -- Remember: you don't HAVE to do anything.

• A roaring boar?? Sounds dangerous! Buy a Harley, OP. You won't regret it.

  ...and%20try%20an%20Iron%20Butt%20ride%21

• P.S.- the "ivy" is kind of off. Ivy league PhDs have no advantage over many many PhDs from any number of Universities in the US. Im my world, nutrition science and clinical nutrition, the premier school is Tufts- not an Ivy- although Cornell is up there.

  charlie

• charlie, I thought your area of work involved running the Barbra Streisand Impersonators Convention.

• R18... your silly note about ivy being off shows more about you than you can imagine. Nobody who goes to an ivy school does it because they are trying to calibrate some financial "advantage" over some second tier school like Georgetown, UVa. or *cough* Tufts... except maybe some new rich or somebody trying to make a social leap. You just don't get it. We go because we want the individual educational experience that tops the other educational experiences we have had and because those are environments we are comfortable in emotionally and physically as well as intellectually. That is all.

  OP

• You're capable of having long-term relationships, OP. You have had a few already. Just keep doing what you have been doing. You should know that! You're Ivy! ;)

• Au contraire, R21. OP is obnoxious and sounds a little socially retarded. And media studies? Really?

• Travel solo

• Oh lawd. r20 says it all. /thread closed

• .