We slowly tire of being mistaken for students

[hbevert]

This was really funny: at the end of a Japanese movie we saw with two other Illinois Wesleyan faculty members and another prof's wife, an audience member near us made the comment "It would be great to have that bowing to the teacher ritual here [like what happened at the high school in the movie]." A person in front of our group turned toward us

Comments

[mrissa]

Not that long ago, I had a conversation with a friend who had gone to college in an actual city about how St. Peter, MN, had a great big population gap between about 22 and about 32. I'm not surprised (though I am sympathetic) that one of the side effects is that people don't get used to judging the gap there very well.

Also, if Andrew wore a tie to work, they might think he was not a math professor, so clearly even if he cared what people thought, it wouldn't be a solution.

[hbevert]

The idea had occurred to me that perhaps there were a rather small number of people in this town who were in their 20s and 30s who were not students, but I had to discard that one

[mrissa]

My new explanation: these people are crazy.

[frausensei]

Take it as a compliment that people believe you could be young enough to be students?

[hbevert]

If I felt people were actually mistaking me for a 20-year-old, I'd joke about finding the fountain of youth, but I really think it's people making the lazy assumption that everyone in their 20s is a student. Not thinking about the reality that most undergrads have completed their studies by age 22 or 23.

[aaron_pike]

The solution, clearly, is tweed.

[hbevert]

I asked Andrew once if he wanted a tweed jacket with leather elbows as a Christmas gift. He scoffed.
Yesterday he told me that the older, stodgier professors here are the ones in jeans and T-shirts.