No respect.

Let me begin this entry today by saying one thing- I am in no way complaining about looking young. I know, and I always hear- I will be really happy about this when I'm 40. But let me just say, the way a lot of people treat a 23 year old who (apparently) looks 15 is pretty damn rude in my opinion.
The funny thing is, I think it's actually gotten worse since I started trying to look older at work- I dyed my hear from blond to red and started putting on some makeup- not working.
I've recently had an EMT threat to call child labor, which actually kind of made me laugh. I don't even mind when people ask how old I am. However, I do mind when people say stuff to me like:
"Well, what are you, anyway? You don't look old enough to be anything" or "You're so young you couldn't possibly know what I'm dealing with."
The worst so far, though, was this Sunday, when I went to help a nurse from my internship, who is older but graduated the exact same time as me. She needed a blood draw on her patient, so I went in, introduced myself, and explained what I was going to do. Before I could take 2 steps towards him, he looks at me and says, "Where's my nurse?". I smile and say,"Oh, would you rather she draw your blood?", to which he responds, "Yeah. Cause you don't look like you know what you're doing." Oooh. Burn.

I get it to some degree- if you look young, it's impossible that you've been doing this for a long time. But- I wish people understood that age does not necessarily guarantee experience or competence. There are some young nurses out there that are totally awesome, as well as some old ones who are awful. At least let me prove myself awful first! Shoot.