(no subject)

[ocelot]

Dear patients,

While I suppose it is flattering that I apparently look a decade younger than I do, it is disconcerting being asked by multiple people if I still live at home. Please stop.

Love,
Student Nurse who is not 19.

Comments

[dymphna79.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that happened to me all the time. While I don't doubt that you're lovely and young-looking, I think a large part of it is that people really want to believe this student-nurse myth--that you're all young and sweet and innocent and possibly, depending on who's commenting, sexually available. (I can't tell you how many times icky men in the ER asked me why I didn't wear a little cap.)

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of it from that angle - in both cases it was women who didn't seem to have any particularly creepy interest. However, I imagine that the idea of "college student" generally brings to mind images of 19 year olds, even if the reality is that the vast majority of my class is "nontraditional students".

[jabberwokky.livejournal.com]

Sarah has been concerned about that as she approaches the point where she will have strong authority over grad students. She's always looked young, to the point that when she was 22, she was told at a PetCo that she needed a parent to buy a pet because she was under 15. Many years later, and she's still often confused with being an entering undergrad (and last summer, a high school student), even as she's dining professors and interviewing grad candidates.

She just dyed her hair black yesterday (she and several friends have been spinning through a rainbow of natural colors, just as a friendly activity -- she's been a redhead for awhile), and it made her look closer to her actual age.

It is a tough problem that can have some pretty serious consequences. Have you run into issues of ageism that actually affect your status in the workplace? If you look like you are too young to have experience, it would strike me as especially difficult in health care, where some patients seek out experience... of course, you're also facing the double whammy of some people not trusting anybody in a nursing capacity (triple for those old enough to have formed their perceptions when doctors were solely men, regardless of intentional sexism).

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

At this point, it hasn't been an issue, or at least indistinguishable from the issue of being a student. It was at my previous job, but at that point I actually was young, and, being female, assumed to be a secretary.

I read an article recently about blonde women dying their hair brown in order to be taken more seriously, and I admit the idea held some level of temptation, though I'm pretty attached to not dying my hair.