Wow. I've had a beard for 46 of the past 48 years. I shaved it off 26 years ago when it started going gray before my head hair. My head hair caught up and made my conceit irrelevant. I blew an interview for Oral Roberts University medical school, when they had one, by accepting an invitation to play a game of basketball in the student gym. Beards were forbidden by their dress code, and non-students were forbidden in the gym. My participation lasted less than five minutes before I was kicked out. There was at least one faculty member at ORU at that time who had a huge beard. He was an Eastern Orthodox priest. How annoying that my beard, which isn't a statement indicating anything, could now make me appear a hard core wannabe alpha male Calvinist.