When I first began teaching here in the United States several years ago, I was frequently mistaken for a student. Initially, it gave me some pause.
Yet, by the time I reached my 40s, the mix-ups ceased, and I found myself worrying instead that I now looked conspicuously older—too seasoned to be mistaken for a student.
Yesterday, however, at a university symposium on the U.S. presidential election and its implications for the African diaspora, where I was a speaker, a staff member (in American academia, “staff” refers to non-teaching employees, while “faculty” denotes academic staff) mistook me for a student and directed me to the student sign-in register!
(She was mortified and apologetic when she realized that I was not only a professor but one of the three featured speakers at the symposium).
Rather than taking offense, however, I felt oddly flattered. After all, when a sartorially conservative, gradually greying, 51-year-old-year-old professor is mistaken for a 20-something-year-old undergrad, there’s a certain charm in it.
I’ve gone from being unnerved in my 30s at being seen as a student, to fretting over the visible passage of time, to feeling gratified by a mistake I once resented. Human beings, aren’t we complex, curious creatures?
