Friday, November 12, 2010

What Not to Wear: Faculty Edition



So, I made this exciting new technological advance for this cartoon. It's called USING COLORED PENCILS. Whoa, I think this is even more mind-blowing than the time I recklessly experimented with rulers. This time, it's like my crappy drawings have come alive! I hope you can handle the excitement.

Unfortunately, my scanner stopped working this week, so I had to photograph this to share with all y'all. A one-step-forward, two-step-back kind of deal.

Anyway, you can click on the image for a larger (but fuzzier) version.

P.S. What are YOUR favorite dress-like-a-vaguely-stylish-professor tips? Inquiring minds want to know!

15 comments:

  1. Color!!! This is great!!!

    Is 3D next?

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  2. Unkept hair for a male scientist is out. Yes, I know Einstein looked like he just rolled out of bed because he was too focused on solving relativity and all. Guess what - you're no Einstein. How do I know? Because you work at the same school that I do. Here's a comb.

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  3. Ahh, chemists are too button-down, BB. I tend to dress like a geologist (without the hiking boots), but so do all the other scientists in my little department.

    I have an interesting picture, taken on Easter Sunday, just before my thesis defense. Some months earlier I had decided not to cut my hair or beard until I had a defense date. I looked like Bearskin.

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  4. I wore tucked-in dress shirts and black chinos for a couple of years at my CC, looking better than any teacher in the building, and more like an administrator.

    After a while, though, the tucked-in thing started to drive me totally fucking insane. They came untucked, they bagged around the waist, they were hot in the summer, they were just annoying as HELL.

    So I switched to the ubiquitous polo shirt, not tucked in, and I've been happy as a clam ever since!

    I also still wear pants. And shoes.

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  5. Man, standards have fallen. Suit and tie on teaching days. That's how real men do it. If I'm feeling a little frisky, I might skip the tie. And I never let them see me without a jacket on. Pants, now that's another story...

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  6. Archie, I like that old school style. The problem is that dress codes have sunk so low that if I wore a suit and tie, I'd be confused with a business professor or the gods who dwell on Mount Administration. I would have to carry around a pay stub just to prove which department I belowed to.

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  7. Most of my "older" profs dressed like it was 1969.

    Frayed and faded concert Ts. Ripped jeans. Bra-less profs. Messy hair. Unkempt beards. Peasant blouses. Big, hoopy skirts. Ratty sneakers.

    It was like I was at Woodstock! Too bad it was grad school at Semi-Prestigious U in 2002!

    My fave will always be the esteemed anthro prof who always arrived to class in his pristine sweatsuit. I started to wonder if he had cancer.

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  8. @Meanie - Yeah, I hate it when those bra-less profs have unkempt beards.

    Since I have to walk to work, I used to keep a suit and heels in my office and change when I arrived. My "walking" clothes weren't particularly slobby, but they weren't sharpish, either. Then I got to the point where I was tired of the stuffy jackets and just changed into the nice skirt. Then I got tired of the skirts (or rather, my expanding girth made them less comfortable, and not as snappy-looking), and just stayed in my walking clothes. Now I've pretty much ditched the heels (plus my campus has a lot of hills, so the heels were never really a wise choice).

    Frankly, no-one really seems to care. And I'm more of a Sweater Person than a Suit Person, anyway.

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  9. Just don't dress like your students and you should do OK....myself I think that certain student attire should be banned on aesthetic grounds or replaced with bizarro substitutes; that ballcap - ZAM! now it's an Einheitsmuetze...that shitty Ed Hardy T-shirt - ZPOW! a Telnyashka. You have to understand that for three years I went to a private school that had uniforms and that was great because there was none of the clothes snobbery you got elsewhere....when I was going to Northeasern Ghetto Tech I used to wear a linerless US Army camoflage jacket because my real jacket made me sweat and nobody bothered me because they thought I was ex-military or a narc (NGT was in an actual bombed-out ghetto and student muggings were semi-common.)

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  10. Snugglebunny, just remember to shave your areolas before the grad seminar.

    ;)

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  11. Never much cared about dress in the proffies I have or those I work with as long as inappropriate body parts aren't hanging out. Most of the best proffies I had either looked like they just rolled out of bed or were pretty casual with the whole polo/khaki or jeans look.

    Most of my former proffies and current colleagues who are hard core about upscale dress codes are either wannabe admins, wishing they were 30 years younger, or the gossips who like to be able to say they dress more "professionally" so they can snark about those who don't emulate their style, and then they don't have to talk about their actual scholarship or pedagogy. That's not to say I haven't known some snappy dressers who were great scholars and teachers, only that those who did/do have been fewer than those who were more casual. YMMV.

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  12. I dress in a suit and tie because I am a professor in the business college. I make real fucking money and dress the part. Nothing snazzy but nothing from K-Sears.

    My students fucking get it and say the suit and tie intimidates the hell out of them. They know I am not fucking around when I say failure to follow instructions results in a zero for the assignment and my big ass Bostonions sliding up their ass.

    When I heard colleagues complain about student behavior, I tell them to look in the fucking mirror. Dress the part and they will behave the part. You dress professionally, which means no jeans, and they will act professionally.

    The clothes make the faculty member.

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  13. Yes, as a small and somewhat chunky middle-aged woman, I look just terrific in my suit and tie. I also wear a false beard and a small dildo. That's how real men do it. Dress the part and they will behave the part, believe me.

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  14. When I first started teaching, I wore heels and snappy outfits. I think I was looked at askance by the scruffier set; how could I possibly look good AND be intelligent? Soon, my outfits changed to slacks and nice tops. Then it was just dark denim jeans and moderately decent t-shirts. The heels are long gone. I just got too tired to bother anymore. If I'm going to look good, I really think I'd rather expend the effort for someone other than my students.

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