| I walked into the second day of my
summer-session course wearing my typical summer-session outfit:
Birkenstock sandals, short pants, and a short-sleeved golf shirt. An
adult student was sitting in the middle of the room, a woman who had not
been at the first class. "Are you the professor?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, setting my books down at the front of the room with
authority.
"You don't look like a professor," she said, shaking her head in wonder.
While I was probably 10 years this woman's junior, and while I also had
not shaved in five days, I'm pretty sure she was referring to my outfit.
In sharp contrast to me, she was wearing a white suit jacket and skirt,
and a pink blouse. Her outfit emanated much more authority than mine. I
can't even guarantee that my shirt and shorts matched.
But her comment started me thinking about what it means to look like a
professor, and about what our clothes communicate to our students.
Professors are both blessed and cursed with the lack of a standard
uniform. I loved my high-school dress code, because it absolved me of
the need to match my clothes to my identity every morning. That we have
no dress code — either of the coveralls-and-name-tag variety or of the
suit-and-tie variety — gives us a sartorial freedom that, unlike some of
my colleagues, I'm not sure I enjoy all that much.
The colleagues who seem to take the most pleasure in our fashion freedom
fall at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
On one end sit the sharp dressers — the tailored, the natty, the formal,
the chic. Male sharp dressers wear ties to class every day. The ties
match the shirts, and the shirts are sometimes in bright, bold colors.
They wear brown and black shoes; sometimes those shoes are shiny. The
most extreme wear suits — not khaki pants and a blue sports coat — but
actual suits, in which the pants and the coat have been cut from the
same material.
I'm not quite as educated about the nature of the female sharp dressers,
but they seem to wear things like scarves and pointy shoes. Suit jackets
cross gender boundaries, so I see some of those on women as well.
I will confess that I wonder about the motivations of the sharp
dressers. I wonder whether they use sharp dressing as a means to
establish their authority with students: "Within these pointy shoes are
contained the wisdom of the ages. The pointy shoes make me the boss."
I'm tempted, too, to equate sharp dressing with teaching style.
According to reports from his students, the sharpest-dressed faculty
member I ever knew — expensive suits hanging off a sculpted body —
presented his views forcefully in his humanities classes, in lecture
form, and expected students to repeat those views back to him on papers
and exams.
But I'm not prepared to stand behind that generalization. My brother, a
political scientist at a Scottish university, has always worn a coat and
tie to class. "Why do you dress up like that?" I asked him once. I knew
it didn't relate to his teaching; he runs a very interactive classroom,
with plenty of discussion and argument. He's also a nice, laid-back guy.
"I don't know," he said. "I like dressing up."
Weirdo.
I'm slightly more prepared, just based on anecdotal evidence and
personal observation, to stand behind the idea that faculty members at
the other end of the spectrum — the slobs — generally run less
authoritarian, more student-centered classes.
One of my current colleagues has the most casual dress code I have yet
to encounter among the faculty. On baseball season's opening day, he
arrives in the classroom in a pair of shorts and his St. Louis Cardinals
T-shirt. He runs the least centralized classroom that I have ever seen:
His students are usually writing in class, doing group work, or having
discussions.
Almost all the other folks I know on campus who run that sort of
classroom dress like my colleague — let's call it "extreme casual."
That's not to say that some suits don't run loose classrooms as well.
But I haven't seen too many instances of colleagues in shorts and
T-shirts who lecture straight through their 75-minute classes, pounding
the lectern and glowering menacingly at students.
Of course the extreme-casual dressers probably use their clothing
choices to make the students feel more comfortable: Hey, says the
outfit, I'm one of you guys. If it weren't for all of these damned rules
and regulations, I'd throw on my flip-flops and meet you over at the
kegger. In the meantime, let's shoot it about James Joyce.
And then there's me. I like to think and act as if I'm above caring
about something as mundane as fashion.
"I wear the clothes my wife buys for me," I say when people ask. Such
sartorial insouciance. Such high-minded disdain for the things of this
world.
But if I look deep within my casually attired soul, I will confess that
I do think about my clothes, and that — probably like most others in
this profession — I expect that my outfits send specific signals to my
students.
Let's consider a typical Jim Lang outfit.
Boxer shorts. They don't mean anything.
Shirts come in three basic varieties: button-downs, golf shirts, rugby
shirts. Sometimes a crew-neck sweater or a fleece. Mostly dark or dull
colors with the occasional flash of red or orange; if the shirt has a
pattern, it's probably checked.
Pants are almost always jeans. I used to wear khaki pants on the first
day of class, out of some unaccountable belief in the sanctity of that
day. I gave that up last year. It's all jeans, all the time, from here
on out. I wear shorts only during the final day or two of classes, at
the final exam, or in my summer courses — New England doesn't offer much
else in the way of shorts weather.
I'm broadcasting some mixed messages here, deliberately so. The casual
shirt and jeans let the students know that I'm not uptight. They can
open up in the classroom, and I will welcome their contributions. The
occasional button-down, collared shirt reminds them that I'm still
giving out the grades. I know more than they do about literature and
writing. I'm not actually going to meet them at the kegger.
It may not be true that others match their wardrobe to their teaching
style, but I do. I incorporate plenty of discussion and interactive
exercises in my classroom, but I have a carefully scripted lesson plan
for each class. So while my classroom may resemble that of the casual
dressers, the plan follows a script as detailed as that of the most
controlling and authoritarian of lecturers. Mixed clothing style; mixed
classroom style.
Of course, those are only the messages that I imagine my clothes are
sending. What messages are the students getting? Perhaps this account of
a casually dressed professor in Tom Wolfe's latest novel, I Am Charlotte
Simmons, might be helpful: "This morning," Wolfe writes, from the
perspective of his young female protagonist, "[the professor] had on a
short-sleeved shirt that showed too much of his skinny, hairy arms, and
denim shorts that showed too much of his gnarly, hairy legs. He looked
for all the world like a seven-year-old who at the touch of a wand had
become old, tall, bald on top, and hairy everywhere else, an ossified
seven-year-old, a pair of eyeglasses with lenses thick as ice pushed up
the summit of his forehead."
I'm only 35, and I don't wear glasses, but I am (mostly) bald and I do
have hairy arms and legs that probably look a lot skinnier than I
imagine them to be. I'd like to think that my students don't see me as
an old, bald 7-year-old, but I'm willing to accept that possibility.
Professors are both blessed and cursed with the lack of a standard
uniform.
Source:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=11&hid=120&sid=58495a79-d672-4ba7-ab3d-1cd241439673%40sessionmgr102
By James M. Lang, Assistant professor of English at Assumption College,
writes a regular column about being on the tenure track in the
humanities.
James M. Lang new book, Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons From the First
Year, was published this year by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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