Moving Out

Moving out is a good time to assess ones wardrobe.

I most recently moved out of my old apartment and just now have acquired internet access. The majority of my things are in the apartment now, save two mirrors. I'm bruised. I'm battered. And typing is one of the few things that isn't a trying effort.

I made about 3 or 4 trips to the Goodwill donation drop off, with good reason. It never occurred to me that living in my apartment for 2 years would result in the acquisition of "stuff." So it came as a surprise that I could not close my luggage and attempts resulted in clothes being spewed out of the openings. A good time for a clothing assessment is when your poor muscles are at stake. Of the things I did chuck out, some of the more memorable pieces were: a skort bought at 579 many years ago that I felt was inappropriately short for my age, a collection of little boys dress vests, and pairs of pants that were bought ill fitting and stayed ill fitting.

In essence, moving is a good time to assess a wardrobe in terms of "Do I still wear this?" and "Do I still want to wear this?" As for the little boys vests, I like wearing tight vests, but the ladies section was always too big and they don't make dressy black vests for women of small builds, at least they didn't when I was going for the look. It seems that this has resurrected itself in my embracing mens ware for women. That's a rather nice change.

Despite my trips to Goodwill, I still had a load of clothes that would not fit in the suitcase and had to be transported by other means. One thing that I did notice was that, for living in Texas, I have a rather large volume of sweaters considering that the climate is predominantly hot. That's for another blog~

College Warp

Ok. Sunrises are beautiful. Birth of a baby panda, that's beautiful. Finding that a Victoria's Secret Outlet has opened up in your local outlet mall, that's beautiful too.

The point I'm trying to get at is that words like beautiful or nice can easily be perceived differently. I think you know where I'm going with this.

In my teaching course, we had to give presentations on activities that were developed and tested. One of the girls presenting had the courtesy to dress "nice" for the class presentation. While I'll admit, she was more dressed up than anyone else who had presented, I'm not sure...well check that, I'm pretty sure that what she wasn't dressed the kind of nice that was meant for the occasion. She was wearing a corset type blouse that was rather low cut, that had puffy sleeves, a satin skirt with some diagonal detailing and stilettos, black patent with silver heels. School presentation? I'll give her props, it's the thought that counts here. She was dressed "nice" though her hair was in a rough pony tail. For the purposes of the presentation, the outfit was rather distracting.

I'm beginning to think, since my teaching class is a class on how to effectively teach math and science, it shows that we're more math and science oriented when it comes to a lack of interpretation of the English language. There's a date "nice," there's a professional "nice," there's a casual outing "nice."

There's a little view of the hard transition into professionalism that occurs during college.

Tipping the Balance

Now, I go to the University of Texas. I can comfortably tell people that knowing that the Uni is so big that the odds of finding me are still small.

That's one of the issues that arises when it comes to college fashion...College fashion...is there such a thing? Or is fashion for after college? Now the University of Texas is one of the largest campuses in the nation, so the norm that comes from this is the consistent jeans and t-shirt uniform - whatever happens to go with sneakers. A healthy life-style recommends 30 minutes of activity (it can be interrupted), my classes are so far apart that I get that 30 minutes while I'm at school with some mild weight training that I call "carrying around my backpack." Because of all of this, school life limits displays of my personal style. Dressing nicer actually is a sacrifice on my feet.

I am also a science major. Lab protocol dictates that we have to be covered and definitely pushes students in the direction of jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. While I know that there are nicer versions of pants, t-shirts, and sneakers - lab students don't wear lab coats, so there is the possibility of spilling nitric acid or sodium hydroxide on your nice clothes.

Summing it all, no one really wants to ruin their nice clothes. It's not necessarily that nice clothes = good style, but I do wish I could dress better for school sometimes. When I see people take fashion risks and more often fail than succeed, I feel I could pull off my risks better, but I feel that I'm in no position to judge, I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt just like 98% of the campus. There are definitely some days that dressing good harder. I'm just not in a situation where I can make a statement everyday. Can circumstance justify that?

I don't think people should feel bad in the situations where it's a matter of want vs. capability.

Finally

Welcome to my new blog I'm aiming in the direction of clothes and fashion. I actually have about 5 or 6 blogs floating around in the internet but they all turned out to focus on rants. What's worse is that having 5 or 6 blogs full of rants just go to show that I rant so much - it can be divided into categories.

I've been wanting to do a fashion blog for a while. In addition to seeing growth in my own style, I'm most certainly not a stranger to the trials of being a college student:

- usually never having any money
- classes that dictate what you wear (I'm a science major)

The odd weather of Texas also adds the bonus of:

- dressing unseasonal because the weather conflicts with the season

...of course, growing up leads to:

- transitioning into "grown-up" wear from teenage wear

and lastly,

- having blog time dictated by school

I'm nearing the end of another semester - papers, presentations, and finals. Luckily the semester is ending and, for once, I'm taking the summer off. I'll be trickling in until then.