Is My Grey Hair Showing?

I was 17 years old on my first day of university 10 years ago.  This fact weighed heavily on my mind when I started my second undergrad degree this September.  10 years ago I was self conscious about how young I was compared to everyone at Grant MacEwan.  Everyone seemed so much older than me. Most of my peers had gone to the University of Alberta and I found my 17 year old self making friends with 21 year olds. I thought I was soooo cool.

10 years later, I know I'm not cool and this time, I'm self conscious about how incredibly old I feel.  Grant MacEwan has changed since I first started.  The crowd of older students is still there but since becoming a university, MacEwan seems to have attracted many more fresh from high school, first-time post-secondary students.  I tried to mentally prepare myself for being surrounded by teenaged behaviors and speech but found myself completely unprepared for the shock of the physical variety.  On my first day this year, I couldn't help being completely amazed by how small everyone was!  I'm 5'2" and for the first time ever I felt like I was towering above the masses.  Are kids no longer drinking milk?  Are they drinking organic, hormone-free milk?  Should they be switching back to the hormone laced variety?  It was deeply disturbing.  And they all looked like they couldn't have weighed more than 100lbs.!  Where is the obesity epidemic I keep hearing about?  All I could see were waifs in leggings and impossibly skinny jeans.

Thankfully, with the help of enthusiastic moisturizing habits, I don't think that I necessarily look much older than my fellow students but there are subtle differences that might have given me away.  Having been in the job market for the last 4 years, my casual wardrobe is not exactly trendy.  For four years I've been spending money on nice grown up clothes and that usually means classic not trendy.  I told myself that I wouldn't give in, that I would continue to dress like the grown-up I'd worked so hard to convince myself I was.  I lasted a week before I began bemoaning my lack of leggings and Toms shoes.  I still don't own either of those but I don't know how much longer I can hold out.  For now my school style mantra is "don't dress like a soccer mom" though this is probably a great disservice to some of the exceptionally attired soccer moms I've encountered.  Thankfully sweatpants are still a standard that I can rise above.  I may not be trendy, but at least I'm not wearing sweatpants in public. Yet.

And yes, there is the matter of the grey hair.  Although everyone I've ever complained to has reassured me that my grey hair is not nearly as visible as I think it is, I panicked like a cornered gazelle during the first week when I noticed in a bathroom mirror that the location of the part in my hair had flipped to reveal the almost perfect stripe of grey that has emerged over the years.  I thought I had done such a good job of hiding it until my next hair appointment, but alas, I had failed.  I broke down and bought a box of hair dye that day.

So now with my grey hair banished and my wardrobe de-soccer momified, I am carefully trying to blend in with teenagers.  Or at least go unnoticed by them.  Until I open my mouth.  But that's another story.