I am team-teaching a class this term, and today was my colleague's turn to teach. As I was sitting and (mostly) listening to my colleague teach today, I realized that he was wearing a shirt that he has had for a very long time. I don't know for how long, but we have been team-teaching this course together for most years of the last decade, and it was not a new shirt way back when. Then I started thinking about all the 'old' clothes that I still wear. And that reminded me of when I was in college and grad school and several of my professors wore clothes that they clearly had been wearing since they were grad students (or undergrads), and we students thought this was entertaining (and kind of sad, it must be said).
OK, so maybe wearing clothes from the 60's and 70's stood out more in the 80's and 90's than circa 1990 clothes do today? (she asks, hopefully). More likely, we have turned into our professors and lost all sartorial sense, if we even had any to begin with.
Random note: There was an optional spelling bee at my daughter's school today, and the kids got to decide for themselves if they participated. Not a single boy participated. Spelling is for grrls?
14 years ago
11 comments:
Sucking up to teachers is for grrls.
Well, that comment brings up memories of elementary school. Stupid girls. Who knew I'd like them so much just a few years later.
Circa 1990 clothes...I don't know. The styles have really changed in a decade and a half. A couple of weeks ago I put on a pair of L.L. Bean corduroys that I bought 17 years ago because I was washing every pair of jeans and cords I own. They still fit, but my husband was laughing about how high the waistband was and how the legs tapered in. Well, I'd only been using them to go hiking in for the last few years anyway...
These weren't trendy to begin with, but now I think they are so far behind the curve that they're bound to come back into style again any minute now!
That is very interesting about the spelling bee. I always loved spelling and was once very good at it.
Kids are funny. I am part of a volunteer program where we go to schools and teach kids about the scientific method and help them develop projects for a science fair we will put up in the spring.
On the first day I asked them to draw a picture of a scientist. 25/25 drew men. Most of the pictures looked like a cross between Einstein and Frankenstein.
Jaws dropped when I told them what I do. They told me they thought I was a nurse.
most of the prof I know are really fashionable anyway so even though they own clothes that are old and crappy, they are as dismally out of syle as trendy old clothes.
Old dudes eith go for
a)button down shirt with pens in the front pocket and kakis and a crappy old belt
or
b) jeans and a tshirt
possible
c)) horrendous plastic frame glasses
Most of the old chicks either go for
a) turtlenecks plus kakis and a sweater
or
b) jeans and a t-shirt
possible
c) hair pushed back with headband
However uncool all that may be its lightyears ahead of parachute pants, members only jackets, acid wash jeans, flourescent spandex hoop earings or Michael Jackson socks.
whoops my first like should be aren't really fashionable. are.not.
I heard someone refer to pants with high waists and tapered legs, especially those with pleats, as "carrot pants". I thought that was funny. Maybe you can determine if your pants are outdated if you look like a carrot. :)
for some reason I call those pants "duck pants". They also tend to be pleated which exagerates the effect at the hips
"Carrot pants" were so popular in earlier nineties. My mother didn't like them, so I never have owned one pair while everybody else in my highschool wears them back then.
My Dad, who is a retired history professor, wore the same suit most of his career. Or may be he bought a new one every decade that looked exactly like the old one. I think he had more than one shirt but definitely only about two ties.
It was quite a shock when my mum got him to wear cords and a jacket. He still wears collared shirts, despite being retired and I think he prefers wearing a tie, especially if visitors are expected.
My ex-husband - a tenior professor in his late 40's - dressed exactly as a young doctorate (poor) student. He even still had "Miami Vice" style (white) pants. When we moved in together, I realized he also *lived* like a student: with just the minimum, second hand half broken furniture, one salvation army pot, etc. He relied on my car, otherwise used the bus system in a town where it was almost non-existant (and before, he had relied on his ex's car). Was it that as an intellectual he had never learned anything else, or that even though he was a full prof his salary was too low?
While we were married I bought him decent clothes, with my humble instructor's earnings. He even discarded his Miami Vice pants! I eventually caught on, though: wether I was taken advantage of or wether he truly was too good to bother with the material world, he was not going to change. And I couldn't live with (and as) a permanent student. At some point, one has to accept that we change, we age, we evolve. So I left him.
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