Doctor who?

I keep forgetting that I'm this doctor person. 

 

I know my title is Postdoctoral Reserach Fellow.  And the PhD is hanging on the wall right in front of me, but I still forget.  No one refers to me with that title.  Walking through the corridors of the medical center and university, I see the residents, facutly, and MDs, forgetting that I am a member of that hierarchy.  I guess after five years as a laboratory technician and then another five as a graduate student, the habit of being staff or student is hard to break.  I forget that there are people here to assist me in my mundane tasks, that I don't have to do them myself.  I'm meant to be synthesizing and analyzing, and I am.  But when I need something copied, I copy it.  When I need references entered into the database, I do.  I'm used to that. 

 

I suppose it doesn't help that most of the staff who are available to assist me are old enough to be my mother.  I feel like I'm bossing my elders around, and that just doesn't fly in the mountains of my youth.  I suppose if there wasn't the age disparity, it would all make sense.  I'm caught in the middle between student and faculty, though in the nursing school most of the graduate students are older individuals.  It's just weird.

 

The impetus for all of this is that my boss just came round to my office (still weird that I have my own office) to introduce me to an undergraduate volunteer and wanting to know if I had anything for her to do.  This on the heels of me teaching last night.  It's not that I've not taught before.  I helped develop and teach a course during grad school.  But all of those students were my fellow students.  Last night, I was this doctor person, lecturing.  Strange, but cool.