The power of a label, jumping to the wrong conclusion

When you know that you are sick, but all the tests come back negative; it's a very frustrating place to live.  But our modern medical system doesn't allow for diagnosis unknown.  Every interaction between a patient and a provider requires a procedure code and a diagnosis.  Thus doctors are required to work under a presumptive diagnosis.  Within 30 seconds, most doctors have labeled a patient.

And it's these instant labels that are the problem.  If a doctor labels a patient as a drug-seeker, he may never ask the questions that say why she is in so much pain.   My balance problems were written off as a drug interaction, until I had insanely overactive reactions to a vestibular eye motion provocation test.  When I was in the emergency room with chest pain and trouble breathing, I'm sure the instant diagnosis was panic attack.  Luckily the doctors followed the heart attack protocol and my second cardiac enzyme test came back positively.  With a bedside echocardiogram, they found significant heart failure and I was in the hospital for 2 days of observations and testing.  It would have been an easy miss, and if I went home and assumed the shortness of breath as asthma; steroids and albuterol would probably have further trashed my heart.

Now all of us use these instant labels in real life.  Instant classification is encoded deep within our brains.  Its learning to push yourself past these labels and identify the real person inside that can be a challenge. The black teens gathered on a street corners are presumed to be discussing drugs and not calculus. A teenager playing with smoke bombs and explosives will either be classified as scientific prodigy or a troublemaker depending on their looks and history.

And all too often a teacher will classify a student almost instantly, and will shape their interactions with the student based on this label.  Your brother was a slacker who never worked hard, so I don't expect you to succeed.  Your sister was a star student, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and really push you to your best.

And if these labels are based on the color of your skin, your ethnic heritage, your financial background or even your looks, you are going to deal with these labels in every interaction with a new individual.  Having to wash off that label with every interaction in your life is exhausting.

If you are a white male who graduated from a fancy ivy league college, you're assumed to be a competent, intelligent individual until proven otherwise.  If you are a black student at the same fancy college, it's presumed you didn't really earn your place.  If you are an attractive woman in the workplace, it's assumed that you are eye-candy and not a professional.  If you are obese, you are labeled as lazy and stupid.

It's these labels that make an individual's path through life either a stroll down the boardwalk, or an uphill climb.  And while I have a lot of the positive checkmarks, even overcoming one stereotypical label can open your eyes to the lives of those stuck with labels that can't erase.

So take time to get to know someone new in your life.  Whether it's at church, at work, at school or a neighbor; learn who the person is and move past that label you stuck on their chest.

I'm good at what I do. PAY ME!

Somehow it has become the norm in this society to ask individuals to do their work for free or a very minimal wage.  Often the temptation of "exposure" is supposed to substitute for the fact that you don't make any money.  We no longer have to live on love, now we have to live on exposure.

If you work as a waitress, the restaurant will pay you $3/hr and expose you to restaurant patrons who are expected to pay for your services as well as their food.
If you are a college student, you are expected by Federal Financial Aid formulas to make several thousand dollars each summer to contribute to your education.  Future employers however, want to see that you've worked as an unpaid intern for the experience and exposure to the real workplace.

Colleges feed the adjunct system with the idea that people will teach for almost nothing for the exposure of leading a class which will be good for their resume.

Minimum wage is set at a level that is half of the living wage with the idea that this is a "training wage" that individuals will get for a short period of time until they have exposure to the workplace.

Freelance writers are expected to write for free for exposure of their work to a larger audience.

All of this exposure is a lot closer to the victimization of pornography, then a legitimate on-ramp to the professional world.   Just like a lead in XXX films is unlikely to lead to life as a main-stream movie star, taking any of these positions puts the taint of desperation on your resume.

Right now I'm living in that gulf between minimum wage and a living wage.  This is a horrible place to be, especially when I consider myself a talented professional.  

Lets STOP expecting people to work for free for exposure.  And shame on bio-online for calling dnlee a whore for asking how much she would be paid for writing a guest post.  Maybe that word jumped to mind so fast since they knew they were the pimps trying to peddle exposure instead of money.