Earlier this week, a friend who works in the state legislature invited me to lunch up at the Capitol. Real estate lobbyists hosted the meal, and it was open the public. I asked him if how I was dressed was okay- blue jeans and a polo shirt with my shirt tail out. He said it was fine. I took him up on the offer and walked five minutes east on Pensacola Street from the law school to the Capitol.
When I arrived, however, I realized that I would have been much more comfortable in a suit. Everyone else was in professional attire. While I tried to smile at them, they did not smile back at me the way they would have if I had been in a suit. I could almost read their minds: "He's not one of us. This is just some man off the street looking for a free lunch."
I don't hold it against my friend for inviting me at all. He's younger than I am. I now understand that when you're young and you dress down, people don't care as much. He could have pulled off jeans and a loose polo. But not me. Not anymore. This is a threshold I've crossed since coming to law school.
When I'm among people in professional attire, I now need to be in professional attire, too. I am a "man," now. No one calls me "kid" anymore, the way the salesmen out on the car lot in Las Vegas did when I worked with them five years ago. A "man" needs to already be successful and look like he's successful. A "kid" still has success waiting for him in the years ahead. I can't pull off the Gap or Old Navy look in a crowd of professionally dressed people anymore- if I ever could pull it off.
I've noticed this change from comments people have made to me this year, too. One day earlier this semester when I came to school in a suit, a law school administrator looked at me and said, "You don't look like a student. You look like you are already a lawyer, years beyond school."
"I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not," I replied.
This past week, one of the librarians stopped me and told me that she had decided I was a chameleon. "When you are in a suit," she said, "I think that a lawyer has just walked into the library. But today you are not in lawyer clothes. You are in jeans and you look like a different person."
Of course I would like to remain forever young, but this change I am going through has some benefits if I learn how to play it right- especially when I am wearing a suit...
It is officially exam season. I have to hit the books even harder. This will probably be my last entry until after graduation.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
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