Clothes. Career. Thrifting. Productivity.
This year is in the bag now and I am one part relieved, one part too exhausted to process, and one part screaming “why does anything about my life have to change?! It’s fine as is!” What can I say. I’m a reluctant mover. Plus my regularly scheduled exercise classes are over and I am just totally adrift without necessary endorphins. Onto the outfits…
My mom is the happiest person I know, and I was always aware of it growing up. It made me proud, for a while. Then I became a teenager, and I started rolling my eyes. A lot. It was easy to make fun of my mom for being so cheery. Then I went off to college and I started to really appreciate her again. But then, I realized that not only was my mom super happy, she was also really smart about being happy–she made choices to make herself happy everyday. She sings in the grocery store. She laughs super loud while watching tv. She gets excited about everything from running into friends to hearing her favorite songs. And you know what? All of that takes work.
I really started to understand the work of being happy and that appreciation has only grown since I got to grad school, where it’s clear that I can either find a way to enjoy this life, or I can let my potentially demanding job choice swallow me whole. I definitely don’t make the more difficult choice every day, but I do try! So this week, I asked some wise grad school friends why happiness can seem so hard in academia. Here’s what we came up with…
Continue reading “Maintaining optimism in a demanding career–or, why happiness is not a waste of time in grad school”Graduation week is upon us! Here’s what I wore and read to do a lot of errands and celebrate the end of the year…
In the winter, I sort of look like a grayscale (almost typed Greyscale..too much GoT on the brain!) cartoon. But, maybe because winter was way too long this year, I am now finding myself craving more colorful outfits. The problem is that I don’t find pairing colors as “effortless” as picking neutrals. After browsing Pinterest for way too many hours, here are some colorful outfits I’ve put together lately:
Continue reading “4 combos for adding color back into my summer outfits”I’m a doctor now! I don’t believe it and no, it doesn’t feel different.
Oh, graduation is next week and I haven’t looked for any commencement dress ideas for graduate students. Which means…I don’t really have “the dress” for my own graduation. I am probably just going to wear an old favorite (which I was also supposed to take to get hemmed, oops), but if you’re on the hunt for a grad school appropriate graduation dress that you can get fast, here are some options…
This week felt like the beginning of the end (of my grad career) which means all the feelings EVER. It’s been so hard to start saying goodbye but I’m also getting the warm fuzzies. And the weather has finally been consistently warm, so I’ve been having fun getting dressed. Here’s what I wore this week and what I’ve read…
Continue reading “What I wore, what I read: End of April”I feel really bad when I buy clothes that don’t feel versatile, so much so that I usually return them. Hence a wardrobe of no statement pieces. But also a wardrobe that makes it easy to get dressed fast. So when I bought this pair of paperbag pants on impulse I thought I better put them to the versatility test…
A semi-regular post of outfits plus long form journalism
Well, my dissertation is officially in the hands of my committee, with 3 weeks until I defend. I get the feeling I should be sipping a lot of white wine on patios for the next 3 weeks, but that is not where my head is at, and it feels really bad. I’ve been so focused on getting a job and finishing the dissertation all year and now that’s all just…done. Which means I now have a lot of time to worry about how I’ll do at said new job, which leads to me feeling bad I’m not doing a ton of unrealistically productive things (prepping new courses, watching every webinar ever on being a new faculty member, churning out publication submissions…).
In between all of those feels, though, I have found time to order and purchase 5 different defense outfits (all returnable, don’t worry…). Am I displacing all of my stress onto the Nordstrom Rack website? Maybe. Anyway. My order came in this week. Help me decide (so I don’t end up just repeating my comps defense outfit, above)?
Continue reading “Help me pick an outfit: The dissertation defense outfit saga continues”