Originally Posted by
daeira
What bothers me is being called old and that in his attempt to prove that I was indeed a student, insulted the very basis of my research. More importantly what disturbed me is that at no time during that questioning did he even ask about the nature of the goods I brought back. The questions he posed didn't even seem relevant to assessing whether I should be given a secondary or whether I had duties or taxes to pay. It seems as he was on a fishing expedition to make me feel purposely lousy about myself and my profession.
Never, ever tell them you're a student unless you're prepared to give a mini-seminar on what you're studying. They seem to love making people explain all about what molecular biology or knot theory or morphosyntax is - and then of course you get sent to secondary anyway because everybody knows students are dodgy people who use drugs and so on.
This 'explain your discipline and the nature of your research in 30 seconds' happened to me numerous times until I had a good enough day job to disguise my studentry, so your experience was not an isolated incident by any means (and I occasionally got 'you don't *look* like a student' too). It doesn't serve any Customs-related purpose as far as I can tell and is really freaking annoying.