Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Sweatpants, like, galore ...

Well, it's that time of year again -- when undergraduate hygiene and fashion sense goes out the window, and one feels the palpable, frantic near-panic that pervades campus.

Yup, it's exam time -- a time whose inchoate anxiety is compounded by professors like myself who tend to set late deadlines for final essays, so the mad rush to finish writing increases exponentially the exam panic. Mwuh ha ha.

It's a time of ponytails and scrunchies, hair escaping in disheveled and frizzy clumps, sweatpants and hoodies, and even in some cases pyjama bottoms and slippers or flipflops. That, and the smell of fear.

There was however a revolution in exam-period fashion a few years ago -- one that, I became convinced, had its epicenter at UWO. All at once, it seemed, we went from shapeless sweats to form-fitting, hip-hugging and low-riding creations. So fashionable were these new avatars of comfort that they became de rigeur throughout the school year proper -- so one could only discern exam periods by the smell of fear.

I became convinced that this was a Western invention because it allowed typical exam-period dress to become fashionable, thus closing those troubling fashion-gaps that so irked the Gap-clad hordes at UWO. So, Western fashionistas, I salute you -- your innovation has ensconced itself out here on the Rock, thus spreading to the extremities of our nation.

Speaking of the end of the school year, it occurs to me that a lot of my former students back at the old school are entering what is, for a lot of them, their last-ever exam period as undergrads. Good luck, peoples.

1 comment:

Lesley said...

I think I may have gone to class in my pyjamas during that last week of school in my third year. In fact, I think there might have been days I went to class in the same clothes I was in while furiously trying to finish essays until 6 am. And hate me if you will, but I did also own a pair of those UWO sweatpants with the Western across the butt.