What Not to Wear: Graduate School

I was talking the other day with my new Boss about my new job and my new work responsibilities when a woman walked by  - she would have been a perfect candidate for Stacey London and Clinton Kelly to fashion bomb right at that moment.  She was perfect:  black too-short double-knit slacks, frizzy hair with grey roots, shapeless faded purple t-shirt, intently watching her white Stride Rites hit the floor in front of her, dingy North Face backpack trailing behind, WalMart bagged lunch in hand.

He asked me an odd question just after she passed:  "Why is it that when people get their Ph.D. that they either lose their common sense or their ability to dress themselves?"  I LOL'd -quietly because the What Not To Wear team was surely standing by - and then he looked at me and asked me how it was that I had lost neither of those two things.

My wardrobe the past year of grad school and first year of my new dream job!

I've been asked to prepare a talk for graduate students on the basics of success in graduate school.  This is something I know a little about, as I have three graduate degrees which made it possible to now be working in my dream job!

Part of my talk is about fashion.  I must say that it is a bit difficult to articulate what graduate students SHOULD be wearing to class and to work, but it is not at all difficult to articulate what they SHOULD NOT be wearing to class and to work.

Graduate school is about becoming part of a profession, not about learning stuff or writing a thesis or dissertation. All of the classes and tests and papers are just the multi-year job interview with yourself to make sure that jumping into a new career is the right thing for you.  Graduate school is about immersing yourself into the culture of your profession.  That includes learning to dress like your peers.

My Mom tells the story of her first college years at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It's quite a conservative place, and female student in the 1960's were required to wear skirts and pantyhose to class every day.  Men were required to wear ties.  She didn't much like it then, but she remembers that when she started working full time that she felt that her ORU dress code had given her an advantage.  She was already comfortable in work clothes.  She could focus on being awesome at work (not her words, but my Mom IS awesome at work...)

I will say this - my Faculty Advisor loves her fashion.  Since she was my mentor, I took up her love for dressing to the 9's along with all of her years of research acumen.  Also, in my job, I have to be ready to meet with bigwigs in suits and clients in the business world and be ready to impress them with both my words and my appearance.  During my grad student days, I learned both of those things from the best!

That's the point I'm trying to make here with my talk.  Dress for the job you want, and when you get it (because you have looked the part for years and years) you'll be comfortable in your clothes.  People will respect you more for it, and you might just get more opportunities as a graduate student because of it.

Bottom line:  DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT, NOT THE JOB YOU HAVE.  

...even if that job is multiple years and multiple degrees away.

And folks who have never been to a day of graduate school in their lives won't suspect that you have a graduate degree (much less multiple degrees) because you've not lost your common sense nor your ability to dress yourself!