Half-rant half-humor, really. I am pretty sure I am the youngest tenure-track professor at my university, and it really doesn't help that I look quite young for my age. It's a pretty regular occurrence that people mistake me for a student. Today, I was at a small retirement party for a colleague I got to know this last year, and was lamenting to my Department Chair that people keep mistaking me for a student. He kinda half-believed me, but mostly we were just having a laugh about it.
It wasn't that much longer when another professor comes along and my chair introduces me to this prof from a different department.
Me: "Hi I'm EyeclopsPhD, nice to meet you (uses first name of the person, as that was how I was introduced)."
Their response: "Oh, Nice to meet you. I am Dr. (very explicitly emphasizes last name)." There was definitely a tone of use my title, student, since I am 100% sure she thought I was a student and was disrespecting her.
I tend to just default to, "Ah, I am an assistant professor in a different department. I'd love to discuss what you do sometime," as my default response, since I don't really blame them for thinking I am, well, a student... But damn do I have so many quips I wish I wasn't smart enough to filter.
To be fair, it feels weird introducing myself as "Dr. EyeclopsPhD" to other colleagues who have PhDs as well, but I suppose the alternative is they passive-aggressive do the same thing back to me.
Anyways my chair teased me after that interaction, and now believes me that I do, in fact, have this conversation quite often.