Talking about our youth, the elders inevitably made comparisons with today’s trainees. Despite the festive atmosphere and jubilant spirit of our group, the conversation turned serious. Those of us in academics have great affection for our trainees and respect for their accomplishments. Nevertheless, we worry about them. We worry whether the current generation has enough of the right stuff—chutzpah, cojones, and sang-froid— to keep rheumatology a vibrant and prosperous specialty. We also worry whether there will be enough academicians to take the helm of medical center divisions as current chiefs retire.
Struggling with the “Nerd Factor”
Another facet of this worry relates to the seeming paucity of trainees who are pursuing laboratory training and electing careers in basic biomedical research. Let me be clear. I believe strongly that basic research is the heart and soul of any medical specialty. Unless basic research bubbles with ideas and overflows with talent, a specialty can wither.
Our group pondered serious questions. Why do today’s trainees appear reluctant to follow a path that, in the past, has produced such enormous improvements in the treatment of rheumatic disease? Where are the dreamers, adventurers, and revolutionaries among the rheumatology trainees of the year 2010?
As the sun set in Vancouver and we savored the last ruby red drops of our pinot noir—watch out Burgundy for the upstart Canucks—one of our group brought up the nerd factor (a primo feature of researchers) and how it may impact career choices. In other words, does the prospect of being a nerd—be honest, not the most respected or admired kind of person—turn off trainees from a life in the ivory tower?
Frankly, most academicians are nerds, not just possible or probable nerds, but definite and classical nerds. Indeed, in current lingo, we are artisanal nerds. We read and write incessantly, fuss over footnotes, struggle with sentences, annotate references, contemplate, cogitate, conceptualize, theorize, hide in our offices, enjoy solitude, and focus our lives on what seems to be downright minutiae. Socially, we have issues, and our attention seems to wander.
Fortunately, traits of the nerds are not distressing to those who have them (I speak from long personal experience) and, on a much larger scale, they can be of great benefit to society. In their aggregate, nerd traits lead to striking advances in science, technology, and medicine. Witness how new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of lupus have come from the work of nerds on the genes regulated by interferon, the biology of B-cell subsets, and the role of private variants on the genetic disease susceptibility.
A Challenge for Trainees
So, to you trainees reading this column, while the elders of rheumatology are still around and kicking, give your mentoring committee a break in its ponderings and take a visit, better yet make it a pilgrimage, to the haunts of one of these gray-haired, absent-minded profs—a real nerd—who hopefully your institution still supports. I especially recommend someone who has a small, cluttered office, the kind where stacks of reprints rise perilously, precariously, upwards from floor and desk, the sheer volume of dry combustible paper a fire-code violation. As you enter this sanctum, turn off your cell phone and pager. No tweets, no texts, and no Facebook updates for an hour for a heart-to-heart talk about life with someone anchored in the past.
