My First Day of Teaching Outfit

August, for me, signifies the end of summer, but also the start of school. While I won't be going back to school this year, I do have time to sit and reflect upon my past experiences. This includes the fact that a year ago, I was entering the classroom for the first time as an educator instead of a student.

There is a lot to reflect on from that perspective, and I thought I would go on and take it apart bit by bit. For today's blog, I thought I would reflect on how I came at the question of choosing my first day of teaching outfit.

This isn't the outfit, and I wish that I knew where this jacket was so I could've taught in it. I also miss having my hair in fun colors like this, because I kept it very neutral for teaching as well.

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How Did I Get the Job?

Teaching is a job that takes a certain kind of personality, and I wasn't sure if I had it. There was a part of me that wondered if I would end up caring too much. The other part of me wondered if I would be able to balance it with my own schoolwork and thesis hours.

The way it was presented to me was that teaching was a professional development opportunity. During my MFA, we had the option to take a Teaching Composition class. At the end of the class, we had to go through an interviewing process if we were interested in a teaching position.

Needless to say, I did well enough in the class and during my interview that I received the opportunity to teach freshman composition for the last year of my Masters. I spent my last summer working on my thesis and developing composition material for my incoming students.

This was one of the textbooks I used with my students.

Where Was My Head At?

I think mindset plays a lot in how we choose our clothes. The night before my first day of teaching, I was excited and nervous. Excited because I thought I had a great exercise in store for our first day. Nervous because I didn't know if I presented as authoritative enough for the incoming students to believe I was supposed to run the classroom instead of being one of them.

That's why, when I went about choosing my clothes, I wanted to look as professional as possible. I tried to maintain that energy throughout the year, and I think it became a struggle to not repeat my outfits while also operating on a teaching budget. That's getting ahead of myself, though; we're here to focus on my first day of teaching outfit.

My favorite professional outfits seem to be some variation of this.

Breaking Down My First Day of Teaching Outfit

I'm going to insert my picture at the end of this section so you can see what I'm talking about. I'm also not going to say that I chose this outfit entirely on my own; with my boyfriend and sister in our home, I was able to ask them for their opinions as I was going through my closet.

I started with a blue blouse, because blue is a neutral color, and blouses are professional. This one was something I got from my mom's closet, but I often buy blouses from Express. I will say that when I find a blouse I like, I own it in a multitude of colors too.

Next, I paired it with a black skirt to keep it simple. Black is a color that goes with everything, so I try to have one of everything in black if I can.

So that my shoulders were covered, I threw on a black cardigan.

You can't see it because of the bench, but I was wearing a pair of black heels. Since I tend to be on the shorter side, I was hoping that my heels would give me some height and authority.

This particular semester, I relied on renting a laptop because of some technical things I was experiencing. So in this photo, I am carrying a laptop case, which I thought looked kind of like a professional suitcase. Could you believe that you could rent something so chic from a school library?

Something that I tried to do every time I was teaching was to make sure my makeup and hair were properly done. I didn't want the students to detect how tired I was, so this was one of the things I did to combat that.

I also had to carry a lunchbox so that I didn't spend too much money eating out, which is the green case that was cut off by the mirror. My schedule ended up being that my teaching schedule ended up being twelve-hour days on campus because then I had to be a student in the evening, so I tried to always have plenty of food on hand for myself.

find that I always take a selfie of myself in this mirror when I feel good. I'm glad I took one before I left to teach on my first day.

And that is what I wore on my first day of teaching. I also had the time to think about a lot of things when it came to clothes when it came to my second semester of teaching. Things like how professional dress is defined, and what articles of clothing communicate to different people. Maybe that is something to talk about at a different time.