A conversation yesterday as we were running home to get the elder Free-Ride offspring ready for a soccer practice:
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you want to change out of your “picture day” clothes before practice?
Elder offspring: Nah, I’m good. I’ll just change into shin guards, soccer socks, and cleats.
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, I want to change out of this suit.
Younger offspring: Why do you want to change? The suit looks nice.
Dr. Free-Ride: I’ve been wearing this grown-up costume all day. I’m ready to wear some clothes that are just clothes.
Younger offspring: Grown-up costume? You are a grown-up.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, but that’s supposed to be a closely guarded secret.
Elder offspring: Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone that you’re a grown-up.
Younger offspring: Why did you wear a grown-up costume today?
Dr. Free-Ride: I had an important meeting with a committee where I figured if I didn’t dress in a suit, they might not take me seriously.
Elder offspring: What, would they think you were a kid on stilts?
Dr. Free-Ride: No, probably not. But for some reason, it seems like if you don’t dress in a way that says, “I am a responsible adult,” it can be easier for people to ignore your ideas.
Younger offspring: That doesn’t seem fair.
Elder offspring: Your ideas don’t have anything to do with your clothes.
Younger offspring: Unless they’re ideas about how to dress.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you guys ever feel like there are people who don’t take what you say seriously because you’re kids?
Elder offspring: Not too much.
Younger offspring: The kids in the upper grades don’t listen to what first and second graders say so much. They think we’re little kids.
Elder offspring: Yeah, but the fifth and sixth graders are almost teenagers, so they’re obsessed with celebrities and stuff. Their brains are so full of the teenager stuff that they can’t really listen to what people say and think about whether it makes sense or not.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. Do they listen more to people who wear the same kinds of clothes as they do, or who know about the same teen idols?
Elder offspring: Uh huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: Makes me wonder if any of them is wearing a “cool sixth grader” costume just to be taken seriously.
Younger offspring: You think sixth graders are serious?
Dr. Free-Ride: Good point.
Elder offspring: When I’m a teenager I won’t be silly like that.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yes, I’m sure you’ll be the first teenager in history not to be at all addled by the teenage brain chemicals. I look forward to that.
Elder offspring: I’m not kidding!
Dr. Free-Ride: I know you’re not. Anyway, kids in the upper grades aside, you’re telling me that people don’t usually talk down to you because you’re kids?
Elder offspring: No.
Younger offspring: Sometimes they have to bend down.
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure. But they treat you like you have good ideas, and can understand things and figure stuff out?
Younger offspring: Uh huh.
Elder offspring: Sometimes some adults don’t know that we can figure out even more stuff than they ask us to figure out.
Younger offspring: Also, sometimes even if your ideas are good, you can’t say all of them because you have to let other people have a turn.
Dr. Free-Ride: Of course. It’s only fair to let other people have their say.
Elder offspring: But we don’t have to wear costumes for people at school to listen to what we say. We get to just dress like kids.
Dr. Free-Ride: I’m happy to hear that. Maybe you can write a note to the people who run the committees to convince them that they should just listen to people’s ideas rather than weighing them based on the outward appearance of adulthood.
Elder offspring: Probably you need to tell them that. I’m not sure they’d listen to kids about it.
Younger offspring: And wear your suit when you tell them!
I firmly believe a major – though unstated – reason for people to continue into an academic career is that they can wear whatever they like in their day-to-day work. Tell a research department it is business dress mandatory from next month and you will end up with an almost empty department by the time the calendar rolls over.
1) I *hate* having to dress like a grown up! I’m not a grown up damnit!
2) She doesnt change for football?? She plays in “normal” clothes? That is completely the wrong costume!
3) Cleats?? For football?
PS
4) What is “picture day?”
Beautiful!
Please send the offspring to speak to my b-school husband who lectures me about my hippy-dippy-California-dyke clothes whenever I’m preparing for a conference or job interview. I do dress slightly differently for conferences and quite differently for East Coast job interviews, but not sufficiently for his training. It has been quite awhile since I pulled out the suit (in which, ironically, I am more comfortable in the skirt rather than the pants, still no heels for me though).
An “adult suit”. Huh.
Now I know how to dress up for Halloween!
“Sometimes they have to bend down.” Hee =)
Do they know about schools that use school uniforms? If so, what do they think of that?
As a rule of thumb, in the physical sciences the worse you dress the better your ideas.
If your socks don’t match and you are wearing an old, dirty t-shirt you are the only one who understands the computer system. (Add 10 points if you are wearing cut-offs.)
Can you pose a question, or really a few questions, to the sprogs for me related to the grown-up costume issue? Would they be more likely, or do they think kids their age would be more likely, to respect an adult who is wearing a grown-up costume? What if the adult did not typically wear a grown-up costume? Would it just be odd? Would they be more likely to respect that adult for the time, or would it make no difference?
“Maybe you can write a note to the people who run the committees to convince them that they should just listen to people’s ideas rather than weighing them based on the outward appearance of adulthood.”
Maybe if the offspring wrote the note and hand-delivered it wearing grown-up costumes, the people who run the committees will take them seriously.
My astrophysics Ph.D. boss considered one of the perks of his job at a government lab that he could wear jeans and sports shoes to work, and he did every day. He even wore them to speak at his son’s middle school Career Day, to impress the students on this matter (although the principal glared openly at him when he entered the building for this engagement).
There was one day when he showed up after 1 p.m. dressed in a suit, tie and dress shoes. I asked him who he married or buried that morning; your father figure it out immediately, and asked in which court he testified that morning. He was correct; my boss had been called to testify in a divorce trial.
There are some situations in which “dressing-the-part” really can help achieve the goal.
The ‘kid on stilts’ comment just made me laugh in an embarrasingly loud and hooty manner.
Man, I hope my kids will be this cool.
Janne- As for dress code I work in a clinical research department. It’s not jeans and tshirts for us.
Friday Sprog Blogging serves as a welcome and refreshing antidote to [snarky diatribe deleted] our too-often toxic culture.
Thanks for sharing another example of healthy, authentic human interaction.
4) What is “picture day?”
Picture Day is the day that a photographer shows up at an elementary school to take photos of the kids for a yearbook or class book (this may also happen at middle or high schools, although when I was a high school senior we had to go to the local studio for our yearbook graduation portraits).
Said photographer is often from a company which makes obscene piles of money by selling “packages” of pictures of the offspring to their parents for exorbitant prices, containing some small number of 8×10, 5×7, 2×3, and wallet size prints, along with way too many useless thumbnail size prints, and occasionally a few refrigerator magnets or a class photo. We get the standard pack so we can send the big pix and magnets to the grandparents, and put the tiny ones in the holiday newsletter. Seems like every year there are still big piles of them left over.
As for me, my school “uniform” is a khaki work shirt or solid color flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. I’ve taught that way my entire professional life (13 years as a grad student and 17 as faculty), and no one has said a word against it. I do have a tie, which I wear to commencement and the occasional wedding, but I don’t even own a suit. Dressing up is wearing the jeans which aren’t faded and frayed at the cuffs.
Heehee, grown-up costume.
Interestingly, as a budding grown-up (23), I have become more interested in the costume lately. I think it can help a young woman to be taken more seriously, and I’m also enjoying this age at which I can do grown-up things and not feel like I’m just playing dress-up. However, I wear t-shirts and jeans to the lab, not just because they are comfortable, but because I’ve ruined several articles of clothing by getting chemicals/mouse fluids/etc. on them, and would hate to have that happen to something nicer than a cheap shirt from Old Navy.
This presents issues when I have to do things after work that require dressing up (the symphony, dinner at a fancy restaurant), so I have occasionally had to change in the lab bathroom.
This ties in quite nicely to my “Life is Theater and We All Play Different Roles” theory. I’m a doctor, I’m a family member, I’m an educator, I’m a shooter, I’m play a whole bunch of roles.
Eccentricity has its place, but when I want to make sure my message is received, I want to be as congruent with my role as possible, this means dressing in grown-up drag, and acting appropriately.
Indeed, were I seeing patients, I could be the reincarnation of Sir William Osler, but if I showed up in jeans and a NASCAR t-shirt I wouldn’t gain their confidence. Critically evaluating someone’s ideas is hard work. Any noise to interfere with the transmission of the ideas leads to poor communication.
Also, dressing appropriately, in “grown-up drag” conveys respect to the audience and the situation. When I attend a wedding or funeral I wear my suit. When I go to court I dress formally to show respect for the majesty of the law and my cognizance that these matters are serious. That’s just what adults DO in this society.
Further, I would seriously question the judgment of anyone who is so distainful of societal roles as to go out of their way to flaunt them. Einstein could get away with not wearing socks and bushy hair because he was, well, Einstein. Most people are not Einstein. They may think they are, but that is usually indicative of an Axis II disorder.
William the Coroner
I am a senior graduate student in the biological sciences applying for postdoctoral positions. On the topic of what to wear to my interviews, my two most trusted advisors disagreed. My wife (not a scientist) instructed me to wear a tie. My graduate thesis advisor (a scientist) said, “I’m not impressed by ties. Don’t wear a tie.”
My wife won the debate. I wore a tie to both of my interviews, and at both of my interviews, the interviewer (scientists in both cases) stated directly that a tie was overdressing for the occasion.
Not wearing a tie to an interview goes against every grain in my being. I’m pretty sure that were I to interview again, I’d still wear the tie.