Career Advice

Dear children,

Here's some valuable career advice from your ever-loving mom:   
DON'T BECOME A WORLD-FAMOUS ROCK STAR.

Why?
Because I said so. Now, go clean your room.

Just kidding. There are many reasons to avoid this career option:

• Poor job security
• The grueling, mind-numbing travel of world tours
• People throw their underclothing at you

But there's more... If these disadvantages aren't enough to deter you on the road to rock stardom some day, I now have research findings [click here to read] that supports my cause. This study, published yesterday in the prestigious British Medical Journal, found that rock stars were statistically more likely to die prematurely than the general population.

Like we didn't know that already, right? But still, we moms appreciate having SCIENTIFIC DATA to back up our sound advice. We can print it up and leave copies on your pillow, in your electric guitar case, and on the front seat of your car, as needed. We can say, "See? I told you so."

We love saying that.

Here's a little more advice:  if you still can't resist the allure of rock stars, consider becoming a ROCK STAR SCIENTIST, like the university professors and British Health Department researchers who conducted this study. These authors got paid to read about 1,489 rock stars who were famous between 1956 and 2006. Elvis Presley! Jimi Hendrix! Kurt Cobain! Amy Winehouse!

Seriously. When I was a scientist, my research subjects were drosophila melanogaster (which is just a fancy way to say "fruit flies") and cultured fibroblast cells. They just weren't that cool. No groupies, no glitzy award ceremonies, no crowd surfing. Just me and a microscope in a quiet lab, maybe listening to some world-famous rock star singing on the radio, as I pipetted and aliquoted. The only exciting part was using a jellyfish protein to make the cells fluoresce. Then the whole microscope field glowed with little cells -- like a rapt audience raising their lighters in solidarity during a rock ballad. Beautiful.

Besides, there's just something so odd-ball and fun about researchers reading People magazine (or some such authoritative source on the lives of rock stars; or attend concerts as "field work"?) and then write lines like:

An actuarial methodology compares postfame mortality to matched general populations. Cox survival and logistic regression techniques examine risk and protective factors for survival and links between adverse childhood experiences and cause of death, respectively.  

Am I right? Anyway, just another little tidbit of maternal advice to help smooth the road to adulthood.

You're welcome.