Post-Modern Aristotle 101: Virtue Through Habitation (and Desire)

I am not going to show any pictures of what I am wearing today. I don't think it creates a vision of professionalism: blue Gap body t-shirt, Champion black cropped yoga pants, brown Old Navy flip-flops, and reading glasses. But if you are a researcher, it is likely that you understand this uniform as a professional one; today is a serious work day. I'm not teaching today, meeting with colleagues, or leaving my apartment until I go to yoga at 5:30.

And I am working, specifically, so that I can wear the dress pictured below.

LHdM's carrot-not-the-stick approach to reaching personal and professional goals has inspired me. I bought that dress from Anthropologie using my birthday coupon (15% off). I cannot wear this dress until I complete Chapter One of The Dissertation.

I have been ABD since the Winter, wrote 9 pages in February, have a MA thesis on the subject, and a database full of new notes. Part of my lack of progress is due to teaching during Spring. I taught my own course as the sole instructor for the first time and found myself in a constant, arrested state of tharn. And then summer came with the summer projects and travel. And now I am scrambling to finish another first-time-syllabus.  After this week, however, the majority of the new syllabus should finished and I will be back on the dissertation wagon and if I start feeling sorry for myself I can remember that the versatile Star Dress is waiting for me.

Don't think it's quite versatile? Au contraire! As a Humanities instructor I believe it is important for students to acquire skills (discourse/rhetorical analysis, methodology/historiography, critical thinking, argumentation, attention to use of evidence, etc.) that are applicable to a wide variety of situations. I also like the clothing I acquire to have versatile applicability--and the constraints of my budget demand that they do.  I think, after the beginning of the academic term that I can wear it in the classroom with a brown cardigan and maryjanes and to a fall wedding with flashy earrings and taller heels.

This dress was expensive, even with the 15% discount, but I reconciled it because of my visions of versatility. Do you find yourself doing the same?