OOC ][ Age Math
Just how old is Aaron Hotchner?
If the question were, "How old is Thomas Gibson?" the answer would be much easier. Unfortunately, we can't quite go by that.
The only clue we have in canon to Hotch's age is an episode in season one where he's been cleaning out the garage. He finds a hat that he kept from high school: a prop from the performance of Pirates of Penzance that he tried out for when he saw Haley Brooks, his wife-to-be. He wants to keep it. She tells him to come up with a good reason and he can keep it. His good reason is the story he tells her over the 1987 yearbook. He says it was his junior year. In Omnivore, it's stated that Hotch's first case as lead profiler was in 1998. There are eleven years between the two that have to be filled in.
Most people are sixteen to seventeen their junior year in high school. Following that logic, Hotch would've been born in 1970. However, this presents problems. Hotch's career is laid out for us. He spent some years as a prosecutor for the District Attorney's office and two as an agent in the Seattle field office. If he was seventeen as a junior, it would be impossible for him to have any kind of law career. His undergraduate degree would've taken up four years and law school would've taken another three. Following that with two years in the Seattle field office (he's also said to have some SWAT experience which may have taken place in Seattle) leaves him only one year to have had a law career that he's somehow still known for.
As odd as it may seem, I believe he was born a year later - on November 2, 1971. What we know is that Hotch was a junior in high school in 1987. What we don't know is how old he was in 1987.
It was more common in past decades for a school system to want to skip students ahead grades if they were performing above the usual expectations. It's definite that Hotch is intelligent, so it's possible that he was skipped ahead during school, but keeping in mind his emotional development, I don't think he was skipped ahead more than a year.
While a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old may see a girl and decide that was the girl they want to marry, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old probably wouldn't. I propose that Hotch was sixteen when he left his junior year of high school and graduated at seventeen. This places him at being born in 1971. 1
I also believe that he would've pushed himself with the same doggedness that he uses in his job to get his undergraduate degree in three years and his law degree in two instead of the usual four and three respectively.
This doesn't buy him much time but it gives him three years to have a noted law career instead of one and makes him 39 years old as of November 2, 2010. 2, 3
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1: A child born in November would have to wait almost a full year before going to kindergarten.
2: The day of his birth is given in Machismo, where Hotch arrives in Mexico on the second day of the Day of the Dead, called away from the birthday party his wife and his sister-in-law were throwing for him.
3: I don't like this age. It makes mathematical sense, but I don't like it. I wish the writers had re-thought what year that yearbook was.
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Subject to change, if I find out differently or if I got my math wrong.
If the question were, "How old is Thomas Gibson?" the answer would be much easier. Unfortunately, we can't quite go by that.
The only clue we have in canon to Hotch's age is an episode in season one where he's been cleaning out the garage. He finds a hat that he kept from high school: a prop from the performance of Pirates of Penzance that he tried out for when he saw Haley Brooks, his wife-to-be. He wants to keep it. She tells him to come up with a good reason and he can keep it. His good reason is the story he tells her over the 1987 yearbook. He says it was his junior year. In Omnivore, it's stated that Hotch's first case as lead profiler was in 1998. There are eleven years between the two that have to be filled in.
Most people are sixteen to seventeen their junior year in high school. Following that logic, Hotch would've been born in 1970. However, this presents problems. Hotch's career is laid out for us. He spent some years as a prosecutor for the District Attorney's office and two as an agent in the Seattle field office. If he was seventeen as a junior, it would be impossible for him to have any kind of law career. His undergraduate degree would've taken up four years and law school would've taken another three. Following that with two years in the Seattle field office (he's also said to have some SWAT experience which may have taken place in Seattle) leaves him only one year to have had a law career that he's somehow still known for.
As odd as it may seem, I believe he was born a year later - on November 2, 1971. What we know is that Hotch was a junior in high school in 1987. What we don't know is how old he was in 1987.
It was more common in past decades for a school system to want to skip students ahead grades if they were performing above the usual expectations. It's definite that Hotch is intelligent, so it's possible that he was skipped ahead during school, but keeping in mind his emotional development, I don't think he was skipped ahead more than a year.
While a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old may see a girl and decide that was the girl they want to marry, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old probably wouldn't. I propose that Hotch was sixteen when he left his junior year of high school and graduated at seventeen. This places him at being born in 1971. 1
I also believe that he would've pushed himself with the same doggedness that he uses in his job to get his undergraduate degree in three years and his law degree in two instead of the usual four and three respectively.
This doesn't buy him much time but it gives him three years to have a noted law career instead of one and makes him 39 years old as of November 2, 2010. 2, 3
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1: A child born in November would have to wait almost a full year before going to kindergarten.
2: The day of his birth is given in Machismo, where Hotch arrives in Mexico on the second day of the Day of the Dead, called away from the birthday party his wife and his sister-in-law were throwing for him.
3: I don't like this age. It makes mathematical sense, but I don't like it. I wish the writers had re-thought what year that yearbook was.
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Subject to change, if I find out differently or if I got my math wrong.