See, and I did skip a grade. Just the one--and then I got to college and made friends with people two college years ahead of me, so three calendar years ahead of me. I skipped a grade and had friends--and when people acted like I wouldn't, I treated them as dangerous lunatics. (Dangerous particularly because they might have influence over people who could control bits of my life.)
What I wanted when I was 20 was not for people to mistake me for 25 or 28 but for people to treat a 20-year-old as part of the indistinguishable mass labeled "people who can carry on interesting conversations." (See also: when I was 12; now that I'm almost-31.) And I think that a lot of the things that were particular about being 20 for me will not be the same as the ones that will be particular about being 20 for you, because they were less about being 20 and more about having been born in 1978.
It was important to me to make an audience largely composed of Baby Boomers wince in unison once when I was on a panel talking about science fiction and space travel by saying that human beings had not walked on the moon in my lifetime--because there I was, a fully adult person saying that. It was a perspective shift I felt they needed. They needed to know that someone in my position could remember Challenger but had no chance whatsoever of remembering a lunar landing because it was not physically possible for me to remember that. That set of markers, whatever they are, will vary substantially with time--dealing with one group of 20-year-olds will not teach you how to deal with the next one 2 or 4 or 10 or 15 years later, wherever the line of change goes. Obviously there are things like going to college, or having a settled job if you're going to, or having a child or children if you're going to, that are difficult and uncommon to do outside a particular age range. But I have friends in college and friends who have children in college, so those parts of age-markers have just not been a major deciding factor for my friendships. And also possibly some of this is that you were homeschooled for awhile and I never was: I never felt a shortage of people my own age. At all. I felt like I was being surrounded with people my own age, suffocated by people my own age, so the idea that I would need some time to just be around people my own age never computed for me.
(I hope it's clear that when I say "this is what I wanted" or "this is how I aligned my identity," I'm not saying "and you should do the same," I'm saying, "Huh, I think this is a difference I've spotted that might be interesting to discuss.")
I have also experienced programming chairs who suit me better and worse, and I have not noticed an age-correlation with that. Which is not to say that you're not noticing one--but I do think that there are people I know who are in their 60s who would like to hear some of the teen-related discussions you've mentioned over on shadesong's lj, and some who are in their teens or twenties who would Really Rather Not. I particularly fear that a teen track is not likely to be very well suited to you personally because you self-identify as book fandom not media fandom, and what I have seen of "what teens like/making more teen-friendly programming" has inclined very heavily towards the "MORE ANIME!" school of programming. And not because of lack of teen influence, either.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-07-16 03:22 am (UTC)What I wanted when I was 20 was not for people to mistake me for 25 or 28 but for people to treat a 20-year-old as part of the indistinguishable mass labeled "people who can carry on interesting conversations." (See also: when I was 12; now that I'm almost-31.) And I think that a lot of the things that were particular about being 20 for me will not be the same as the ones that will be particular about being 20 for you, because they were less about being 20 and more about having been born in 1978.
It was important to me to make an audience largely composed of Baby Boomers wince in unison once when I was on a panel talking about science fiction and space travel by saying that human beings had not walked on the moon in my lifetime--because there I was, a fully adult person saying that. It was a perspective shift I felt they needed. They needed to know that someone in my position could remember Challenger but had no chance whatsoever of remembering a lunar landing because it was not physically possible for me to remember that. That set of markers, whatever they are, will vary substantially with time--dealing with one group of 20-year-olds will not teach you how to deal with the next one 2 or 4 or 10 or 15 years later, wherever the line of change goes. Obviously there are things like going to college, or having a settled job if you're going to, or having a child or children if you're going to, that are difficult and uncommon to do outside a particular age range. But I have friends in college and friends who have children in college, so those parts of age-markers have just not been a major deciding factor for my friendships. And also possibly some of this is that you were homeschooled for awhile and I never was: I never felt a shortage of people my own age. At all. I felt like I was being surrounded with people my own age, suffocated by people my own age, so the idea that I would need some time to just be around people my own age never computed for me.
(I hope it's clear that when I say "this is what I wanted" or "this is how I aligned my identity," I'm not saying "and you should do the same," I'm saying, "Huh, I think this is a difference I've spotted that might be interesting to discuss.")
I have also experienced programming chairs who suit me better and worse, and I have not noticed an age-correlation with that. Which is not to say that you're not noticing one--but I do think that there are people I know who are in their 60s who would like to hear some of the teen-related discussions you've mentioned over on