Day Three of the New Semester

I have no idea what to wear today. I'm exhausted and sore from walking all over campus the last few days, and the heat takes it out of me. I'm really not sleeping well, either, and even though I have made detailed plans for the first month of each of my classes, I'm feeling unprepared. Going from a busy but flexibly-scheduled summer to teaching four days a week and needed to dress up and be presentable is draining me.

Today I didn't want to get out of bed, much less get dressed and photograph it. I'm used to having a non-teaching day in between my teaching days (like when I've taught a MWF class or only T/Th classes), so teaching four days a week is rough for me. Maybe it would be for anyone, but with my chronic pain, my disability, and my stubborn refusal so far to use my cane (something that's likely to change soon), my body is taking a hit. I find myself extremely self-conscious, more so than I remember being in my last job. I already hate it when strangers look at my body, but when an entire classroom full of youths stares at me, it sometimes feels unbearable. Oh, anxiety.

This outfit, which I think is pretty simple, inspired one of my high school-aged students to remark "WHAT are you WEARING?" I sort of instinctively replied, "Whatever I want" and kept writing on the board, but I sort of wanted to punch her, something I don't think my dead would think highly of.

Dress: SWAK Designs
Camisole: Re/Dress Teggings camisole
Shoes: not pictured, Orthaheel Mia (we don't wear shoes inside, so that's why no shoes)

I wouldn't mind adding a colorful belt to this dress, but I think it's a pretty basic outfit, nothing outrageous enough to warrant the student's comment. Weird. I chose this today because it's very thin and light and I wanted something that wouldn't make me even hotter than I knew I already would be in my no-a/c classroom.

Day 2

Top: Lane Bryant

Skirt: Old Navy

Shoes (not pictured): Orthaheel Mia 

Today I ended up misreading my wonky teaching schedule (the same class is held at different times tuesdays and thursdays. It's going to be a headache.), and got to campus 2 hours early, meaning, with an hourlong commute, I left the house 3 hours early.

It's so hot lately, and after yesterday's uncomfortable experience of dripping with sweat throughout my class, I decided to wear a skirt and light top today. I also decided, since the skirt is a pencil skirt and shorter than a lot of my dresses, I didn't want to wear the bulky cotton shorts I usually wear to prevent chafing. I'd try my new Bandalettes (as recommended by Marianne Kirby on xojane). Marianne and I wear the same size in dresses, so I hoped these Bandalettes would fit me. Well. They really don't. They are uncomfortable as hell. If they weren't lace, they might be ok, but they are so painful to wear. They keep rolling down my legs and the lace is not smooth enough. I'm hot and sweaty and the rubber that is supposed to make them stay up is really uncomfortable. Anyway, I chose this outfit, because I think that, with a tight skirt, it's good to balance that with a looser top. I love the black/white color scheme, too.

These pictures are, once again, awful. This weekend I hope to figure out a better camera solution. I feel like I'm always rushing. Living with other people is hard, because sometimes they prevent you from doing what you'd like to do. I need to plan better so that I'm better organized and not too dependent on others in my daily routine. I'm also having trouble sleeping lately, and I need to be better about establishing a firm bedtime routine and getting up early in the morning so that I'm not rushing around at lunch time. 

First Day of School

First of all, I apologize that these are horrible photos. I do not have a good place to take outfit photos right now, but I thought something was better than nothing. I'm working on it.

Today was my first day of classes. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I only teach one class, and it's about ten minutes from my house, which is lovely. This class is at the community college, but the students are all in high school, part of a special program for advanced HS kids. Most of them were home schooled, and one of them is 13. I used to teach HS, and am actually still certified, but it's strange to think that I'll be teaching one section to traditional community college students and one to children! 

Dress: eShakti (custom sizing)
Camisole: Re/Dress (teggings camisole)
Watch: gift from my dad for my PhD graduation
Shoes (not pictured): orthopedic flip flops
Glasses: Warby Parker

This dress is so comfortable and it has pockets. I love the yellow color on top, and the ruffles, though I don't love the puffy sleeves. The birds and butterflies on the skirt are fun, too, I think. I wanted to wear something on the first day that would communicate my personality to my students, and I think this really does. It's bright and colorful and fun, yet still professional enough.

The class went pretty well, too, except for the fact that it was unbearably hot. I was literally dripping with sweat the entire time, and that was so uncomfortable. My glasses were fogging up, and some of the students were whispering and giggling in the back row, the thin pretty ones, and who knows whether they were talking about me, but it's hard not to feel self-conscious about that, even if they are just children.

I'm really looking forward to the adventure of teaching HS students again. I considered looking for a high school teaching job last year, but ultimately decided I didn't want to deal with parents, so this is kind of the best of both worlds. We'll see if I still feel this way mid-semester, but I look forward to keeping you posted.

What did you wear or are planning to wear for your first day?

New Faculty Orientation

Oh no! I wore such a cute (if simple) outfit to my faculty orientation tonight, but I forgot to photograph it. I wore a blue tank dress and a cropped 3/4-length sleeve black & white striped blazer, and my orthopedic flipflops. The dress is one of my favorites, and it's from SWAK Designs. Depending on the bra, I can adjust the amount of boobage.

This is my first job as a real faculty member, though I have eight years of teaching experience. I was a student teacher/HS teacher hybrid, then a graduate assistant teacher (though I did all the same work I do now, minus faculty meetings), so the formality was a bit different. I was never seen as a real employee by my colleagues or my administration. Being an adjunct is also a weird space to occupy, but my new place of employment seems (so far) very supportive of adjuncts. Even though the pay is crap, for example, they've been very upfront about that with me, throughout the hiring process, and I appreciate that transparency.

What I'm still navigating, though, is the level of formality I should aspire to in my outfits. I don't yet understand what appropriate work wear is at this new school. At my previous universities, professors tended to dress up a little more (or at least some did, and all pre-tenure seemed to dress nicely), at least nicer than my colleagues have dressed at the two orientations I've attended so far. I think dresses often seem more formal, even if it's a casual dress, and since I frequently pair a dress with a blazer in a work setting, I've been the most formal at any meeting I've so far attended. I am trying to tell myself there's nothing wrong with that, and better to be overdressed than underdressed at work, but I wish I knew what was expected of me.

Another thing to consider is that it's been hot here, and humid. Humidity is something I grew up with and dealt with as an instructor when I lived in the south, but the past four years, I've lived in a dry climate, so adjusting my wardrobe to fit these new constraints is interesting. I tend to cover up my half sleeve tattoo upon initial meetings with people, too, even though plenty of other teachers here are tattooed and no one says anything to them as far as I know. Still, I feel safer being cautious as I feel out the expectations of this new job. I want to do well, I want them to like me, and I want to get promoted.

I'm sure my level of formality will fluctuate during the course of the semester, but now that I'm no longer a graduate student but a real professor--a doctor, even!--I want to dress the part. I also want an excuse to wear all my cute clothes.

But lest I get seduced by mulling over fashion questions and forget to tend to the actual teaching, I best go back to first day syllabus prep.

What do you wear to less formal faculty/work meetings?

Recap

My friend Nicole, from A Well-Rounded Venture, encouraged me to continue posting here, even if it would be sporadic. Every time I search for academic/professional fatshion, I don't find it, so I keep coming back here looking for what I wish I had. I don't think I'm that fashionable or skilled at putting together outfits, but I have fun doing it, and it's empowering (sometimes), so we'll see. Sporadically back.

I know it's been almost a year since I blogged here. In the time since we last met on the page,  I defended my dissertation successfully, and graduated with my doctorate degree in Literature! I got a huge half-sleeve tattoo on my left arm, which makes me a tad nervous in the work environment. Also, I've moved home to the Midwest and I'm an adjunct professor at a local community college. I start teaching Monday, so my focus has turned again to obsessing over outfits. Even more than as a grad student, I want to look professional. I'm teaching four days a week, in two different cities (luckily the same city in one day). I'm not allowed to miss a day without being docked pay, and I'm nervous about that, what with my chronic diseases, but I'm looking forward to being called "Dr." by a class full of students.

my brother with me after my PhD graduation

The place I'm living now is, hopefully, temporary, just for this year, until I get a better job, and can afford a place of my own. My closet is tiny, and I still haven't unpacked all my clothes, something I desperately need to do, so I am able to find clothes to wear. Moving has been stressful, and this summer has been so busy. Now that I live in the same small town as my family, I've spent a lot of time with them, especially with my niece. I also went to NOLOSE again this year, though it was a more difficult experience than the first two times I went. I participated in two poetry readings to promote my work and my forthcoming book

my go-to look this year at NOLOSE: a dress

with my denim vest over it, covered in feminist

& fat-positive buttons

my friend Sarah did my hair, and I want it like this

every day from now on. This photo is from after sleeping

on it all night, too!

Reading my poems at a local bookstore.

I went on a bit of a shopping binge this week, buying pencil skirts and dresses and tops and Bandelettes to prevent chub rub beneath those cute pencil skirts. I shouldn't have done it, shouldn't have spent any money on clothes, but even as I'm kicking myself for destroying my budget (have you heard about YNAB-You Need a Budget software? I'm obsessed), I'm gleefully awaiting packages with clothing more appropriate for a professor. I'll admit, I've chosen more conservative clothes. I'm hoping to get a full-time job at this school (or to find a full-time job at another local school; I want to stay in the area), and I think it will be beneficial to look a bit more buttoned-up. That doesn't mean I'll be forgoing my bright colors or teggings, but I did buy a lot of classic black pieces.

My goals for this week are to get my bedroom and bathroom boxes unpacked and put away. My mother gifted me a beautiful jewelry armoire, and I need to put my jewelry away, so I can actually access it. I need to find a solution to bathroom organization, and clothes organization. And I also need to unpack from NOLOSE at last!

How have y'all been this past year? Are you also hurriedly planning your teaching wardrobe?

Chronic Disease & Disability in Grad School

Even though I'm less busy now that I've passed my exams, my comorbid chronic diseases have decided to flare up, after fortunately offering me a respite during the last few weeks of my exam period. Commenter hleighh asked me to write about how I manage depression and chronic disease in grad school, and I think now is a perfect time to do so.

The short version is that it's difficult. I feel so ecstatic that I survived my comprehensive exams, because I was never sure if I would survive, not just pass, but survive. I've never been more depressed than I was during the past year, with what felt like all the pressure in the world riding on my ability to remember and analyze my reading despite many months of fibro fog, severe pain, anxiety, and depression.

To be frank, Xanax and beta blockers helped me a lot. I got a prescription for Xanax the semester before I started studying for my exams, and I don't take it regularly, but when I need it, I REALLY need it. This summer, there were periods of time when I could not study without having a full-blown panic attack.

What helped? Asking for help when I needed it. Giving myself permission to be less than the best when it came to my teaching in order to focus my energy on caring for myself and getting my studying done. I regularly studied with Cee, who has about a month left until her exam (good luck, Cee!), and that helped a lot, to feel like I wasn't alone. Also? RuPaul.

It sounds silly, maybe, but a clip from RuPaul's Drag Race always made me feel better. I've tried to find it on Youtube, but I haven't been able to. Basically, RuPaul tells the drag queens that they can't ever let someone else determine their self-worth, that they have to build up their self-esteem and never forget they're fabulous, but that no one can tell them that, they have to believe it themselves, they have to walk through the fire and "earn it." Every single time I listened to the audio clip, I felt better. Impostor syndrome was strong with me, and it was difficult to fight it. Something about studying all day every day makes you go a little loopy. I couldn't concentrate. My attention span waned and all of my insecurities were ramped up. And you know, I didn't expect this, but having passed my exams, having "walked through the fire," I do feel a great deal more confident. Having done this, I feel like I can do anything.

I have to admit that part of that confidence comes from the fact that a week before my exam, my poetry collection (which will be my dissertation) was accepted for publication. For a creative writer, having a book is absolutely the best thing that can happen, and it's what I've wished for my entire life. Having that accomplishment gave me the extra boost I needed to ge through the exam. In fact, after my orals, I experience a strange dissonance; I was furious that it hadn't been more difficult. Everyone tells me this is because I was prepared, and they're probably right. I just felt so frustrated that I spent a year working so hard, and then felt that the questions asked weren't challenging. (I didn't feel that way about the written exam, btw.)

Most of all, self-care was important. Now self-care has recently come under fire, but Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha  wrote a brilliant piece recently about the important role self-care plays for disabled and diseased folks. For me, self-care meant going to bed at 10 and getting up by 8. It meant adopting a dog last September, because I needed some other mammal to be my companion, someone to make me get up in the morning. It meant drinking A LOT of herbal tea (in a stress-relief blend). It meant asking for a lot of help from friends, who overwhelmed me with their care and love, their support through food. During my 72-hour written exam, I craved pancakes, and a friend brought me not only a stack of fresh pancakes, but also two kinds of homemade soup and jam.

It is not easy for me to ask for help. I was raised by folks who believe heartily in the bootstrap myth, because that worked for them, and it's been a huge challenge for me to recognize that my physical abilities require me to get help from others, which requires asking, because I live alone (with my pets).

Being disabled and diseased has meant I need to not pursue certain opportunities. I've had to turn down fellowships for writing residencies that, it turned out, weren't accessible to me. I haven't been very social at all, and that's been very lonely, but I have a lot of days when I need to spend the day in bed on painkillers. Sometimes I've missed a lot more classes than allowed, and not all professors are sympathetic. It's difficult. I'm glad that my field is one that is relatively conducive to illness, in that I can sometimes feel awful and still get a lot of reading done, rather than having to go into a lab and do work, but so often I have a migraine as part of my pain, and I can't do anything but feel pain.

I guess the truth is, I don't have many answers for how to do this, other than recounting how I've managed it.

And it's also the reason why there haven't been any posts here in about a month. I have been getting dressed to go to class, but not in anything special. I'm having difficulty getting through the day again. I think a lot of it is that all the stress I couldn't deal with during the month of my exam caught up to me, and I'm so fatigued. I've been sleeping literally all day, getting dressed to go teach, then coming back home, getting back into pajamas and going back to bed. Fortunately I did a thorough job planning my class, so there's not much prep work to be done. I also have some senioritis. I'm graduating in the spring, and I'm using my already-written manuscript as my dissertation (upon the advice of my committee chair), so while I do have to plan my class for the spring, as well as revising my dissertation manuscript, I fortunately don't have that much to do (other than job applications, which are stressful).

In fact, even writing this has used up a lot of spoons, so I'm going to end it here, but I'd love to have a discussion about coping mechanisms with disease and disability in grad school.

The Sweetest Acronym

Y'all. I passed my exams. I'm ABD!

I'm sorry for my long absence. I just found out yesterday, and I totally forgot to take outfit photos the last few times I left the house, but you haven't missed anything (except that I got these colored jeans from Lane Bryant and they're amazing).

I feel so relieved that I passed and now strangely, wonderfully empowered with my new almost-doctor status.

I drank a bottle of champagne and Skyped with my NOLOSE roommate last night to celebrate, and then promptly requested letters of recommendation and started working on my job letters and CV for the market.

Really, the pressure never ends, it just changes.

But I'm feeling very good because I'm ABD, my first book is getting published (I found that out just a little bit ago), and there's something about putting together a CV that makes me feel really proud of how far I've come and grateful that I've survived despite disability, systemic oppression, chronic disease and depression.

Next week is fall break, and then expect more regular posts to resume.