Wearing a face mask covers the patch of gray that is now my beard. When the lady at the cash register confuses me for one of the college students, I smile inside. I suddenly realize that the mask makes me look decades younger… and I like looking younger! As middle age has stealthily set in, I now grasp at any bit of youth that I can hold onto. However, this was not always true. I think back to more than a decade ago.
“I know you just came out of that hospital room,” the nurse tells me in a hushed tone, “but the patient is asking when the doctor will be coming.”
A flush of emotion comes over me, somewhere between embarrassment and anger. I’m the doctor! I just saw her… I was trying to finish up work for the day as fast as I could so that I could get home, and this just slows me down. I suddenly felt like an invisible 4-year-old in the world of adults.
I had gone into the patient room and done all the doctor things: asked her how she was doing, examined her abdomen, told her the plan for the day. I was just headed to write a note and some orders in her chart… But the patient thought I was someone else: a student? a nurse? I was suddenly aware of my appearance. I had been working in the hospital overnight, so I was dressed in light blue hospital scrubs. I had taken off the white coat with my name tag. I looked young. I was the person in charge of her care for the day, and yet she had not recognized me as the doctor.
When crafting a good story, it is important to introduce the characters appropriately. In that moment, I recognized the importance of the assumptions that my appearance can create. I committed to wearing the symbols of my profession, long white lab coat embroidered with my name, stethoscope around my neck, hospital ID tag visible… and for good measure always introducing myself after entering a room, “Hi, I’m Dr. Joel Ying. I’m the doctor taking care of you today.” In fact, looking older is the whole reason I started growing a beard.
While the skill and knowledge of doctoring has nothing to do with appearance, I needed patients to know that I was the doctor in order to get my work done efficiently. I needed to be aware of all the assumptions that my patients (or my audience) will make when they create the story in their head because it does not always match the story going on in my head.
How can you get the story in your head to match the story in the heads of the people around you?
Hmmm… looking younger… maybe it’s time for me to shave the gray? No, I’m too lazy… I’ll just change my story. This gray beard does NOT make me look old… it makes me look “distinguished.” Right?
