Autopilot

"Jane Edelsborough was a widow in her early fifties. A statuesque but untidy woman, she normally dressed in loose ethnic clothes and sandals. She had a commanding intellect, but no one would have guessed it to look at her. Berrington found such people baffling. If you were clever, he thought, why disguise yourself as an idiot by dressing badly? Yet universities were full of such people--in fact, he was exceptional in taking care over his appearance."

-from The Third Twin by Ken Follett


When I was an undergrad, I had a professor who wore the ugliest shirts I have ever seen. He seemed to only have three or four shirts that he just cycled through repeatedly. The least offensive of the bunch was a plain red turtleneck, which he always wore with a pair of brown corduroy pants. They took steps for the worse from there, with the worst one being a mustard-yellow sweater that had huge patches on the elbows and shoulders. The patches were red, green, blue, and brown -- each one a different hideous color.

He was the only instructor that earned the title "ugly-shirt prof," but I had plenty of others professors that clearly put very little effort into what they were wearing. The clothes might not always be so ugly, but they were usually plain, and each professor seemed to own only a handful. Every couple of weeks, the outfits (that's a generous term, really) would repeat.

Now that I work on the fringes of academia, I have found that this phenomenon is not isolated to my alma mater. Professors everywhere seem to dress the same way. They are always clean and somewhat presentable, but almost never stylish or even neat.

This trend fascinates me. Over the years, I have formulated several theories that could explain why academians seem to put so little effort into their appearance. At first I thought it was just laziness. Most professors who fit this profile of wearing the same boring clothes over and over had been doctors of their subjects for a while. They had already finished a PhD and attained a job in their respective fields, so why bother dressing sharply? After years of being forced to sell their ideas to others, there was simply no one left to impress. But this first theory went out the window when I got to grad school and noted that many PhD students (who still have a long way to climb) also fit the pattern.

Next I thought it was more of an issue of comfort. Academians tend to work long, late hours. They almost never operate on a traditional 9-to-5 schedule. Instead, they work against deadlines, alternating periods of 3-hour days with periods of 14-hour days. Maybe they just dress in simple, comfortable clothes just to make those long days more tolerable. But after a couple years of working at a university, I discovered that most professors don't mind those long days so much. They are so interested in what they are doing that it usually don't seem like such a sacrifice to them. I really doubt that they are making wardrobe choices on account of their schedules.

I'm now on to a third theory that feels like it is close to the truth. Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant minds in my field. My bosses are the rock stars of mathematics education. And I can tell you the one thing they have in common, the one thing that has set them apart: they are always thinking. Always. Their minds work like conveyor belts; when they solve one problem, all the rest are waiting on the belt. They never stop thinking about their work.

This means that the rest of the things that us average joes think about -- like the clothes that we wear -- don't get any time in the conscious brain. Academians just operate on autopilot. You know how, when you wake up late and have to rush out, you end up having no memory of choosing your clothes? I imagine that it's like that for academians all the time.

People in all walks and phases of my life have branded me as a smart person. I was on top of my class in high school, and no one was surprised when I graduated from college cum laude or got accepted to a prestigious graduate school. Many of these people are probably expecting me to get a doctorate someday. It's just what smart people do. But this line of thought has only made me more sure that academia is not where I belong.

The people that succeed in academia are the ones that choose their clothes on autopilot. I, on the other hand, go to autopilot while I am running so that I can spend that time deciding what I will wear that day.

I could never become a research scientist or professor. I love cognitive science and I love math -- but I also love the moments when I can stop thinking about them.