So, I had a pretty cool experience passing over the weekend. My partner and I went down to help with the state Academic Decathlon. For those of you don't know about it, its a conference where teams from each high school (or the schools who have teams) go and take various tests, give speeches, and do various relay events to try and win the top place to represent a state at regional and national academic events. My partner has been helping out with the events for the past four years as both part of his job and this year as a volunteer. Its a pretty interesting event. It is doubly cool since for the most part, a lot of these kids do not fit into the social butterfly catagory at all, but they have a chance to interact with other kids from around the state and a lot of them really come out of their shells.
The organizers of the event don't know me in person, but know that my partner is married and knew about me when I was still presenting female. Aside from the organizers, no one else knew about me at all. Despite wearing a nametag that had my legal name and said "Mrs ***" virtually all the students called me 'sir'.
It was pretty awsome. But they were not the only ones. Some of the coaches, organizers, and even hotel staff sir'd me. So basically I got to the spend five days being addressed correctly. It was awesome. I was also volunteered to be the photographer, and given my general style of clothing, people just assumed that I had been hired from a professional firm. The students who knew I was a student at the University my partner worked for also ended up asking me a ton of questions about college life. Apparently my voice isn't nearly as high as I thought, since only a few gave me second looks even when I had the nametag.
The number of times I was hailed as "Mr. Photographer" and "That guy from <insert university>" gave me a huge confidence boost.
