Living the scrub life: Change of clothes not needed. For a week.

I still remember the first time I wore sweatpants to school.

I had been sick that one fateful week in junior year, with a nose that rivaled Rudolph’s and a headache that felt as if an angry child was taking a cast-iron skillet to my brain. Too tired to mull over my outfit that morning, I donned my favorite ash-grey sweatpants and went to school.

The rest of the day, I endured taunts of “Grace Ma is wearing sweatpants? The world must be ending” and “How sick are you?” from my friends.

Until recently, I had been one of the girls who spent a good 10 minutes each morning staring at a closet full of clothes, thinking there was nothing to wear. So when I agreed to wear the same clothes to school for an entire week for newspaper, I was convinced that there would be some outstanding reactions.

The first day of the experiment, Tuesday, Nov. 12, I walked onto campus wearing my grey Forever 21 cardigan, rose-colored Tilly’s tank top, American Eagle jeans and Havaianas flip flops. I planned to talk to as many people as I could (despite having nearly shouted myself mute at a K-pop concert the previous evening) to get as many people as possible to notice my outfit so they would realize when I wore the same clothes for the next few days.

Wednesday morning, I donned the same clothes again, awaiting confused looks and weird glances from my peers.

The rest of the week proceeded in a similar fashion. 

No one noticed. 

By Friday, I thought the entire school population had gone blind or something — how does a girl wearing the same exact clothes four days in a row go unnoticed? 

The results of my social experiment made me feel silly for worrying about others judging me on what I wore for so many years. Why had I spent mornings stressing over what to wear to school if people didn’t even notice?

The only answer I can come up with is that people overlook trivial things likes clothes much more than we think. While my friends did harass me over the sweatpant incident, I doubt many of them even remember that day now. With tests, extracurriculars and other responsibilities, where in students’ minds could they remember little details about others’ appearances?

Clearly, the 10 minutes spent stressing over what to wear to school each morning was 10 minutes wasted. Ten minutes a day totals to 35 minutes each school week, or 30 hours every school year.

The takeaway is this: People care about their own lives a whole lot more than they care about anyone else’s. Whether this is good or bad, society can judge that. However, I know that I will no longer be spending any more than 2 minutes on my outfit each morning — and if this results in me wearing what I wear to sleep to school, so be it.