Analysis Of Informal Class: A Tale Of Looking Good
Informal Class: A Tale of Looking Good
August 17, 2015, it’s a new start, a new beginning, and a difficult journey I knew I could take on. It was my first day of my senior year and I had moved over 300 miles away from my original home, to a place I had no idea about, Andover, Kansas. It was a sunny day so I decided to put on some shorts and a nice button down polo shirt.
In my mind, the way you look says a lot about who you are. Since I like standing out and showing off that I’m an independent thinker, I consider myself a man who dresses with an informal class. Over the past few years dressing up nice and looking presentable has been my passion. Anyways, it’s the first day of school and I am nervous because the only group I am familiar
with is the football team, due to summer practices. My mind automatically thought that I would be judged and people would talk about me because I was the new kid around; an inevitable situation due to the smaller scale of the institution. I made my into the school and the first thing I notice is my classmates looking at me; smiles spread across the span of the newly-seen faces. I felt as if I was already welcomed into a place, yet it was completely unknown to me. After about two minutes of staring and smiling, classmates started to approach me as if they already knew me. I got comments such as, “You must be Antavious, we’ve heard a lot of good things about you.” Even the principal came and introduced himself to me. The main thing I focused on was the comments saying “You dress really nice,” or “You look really good today”.
There was one thing out of that day that changed how I looked at life forever. Around lunch time, I found a group of very welcoming people who actually invited me to come sit with them. For those thirty minutes, we talked about just general things such as school, life outside of school, and what fun things there were to do around Kansas. One comment changed my life forever when one of my classmates made a comment “Why do you dress so nice? I didn’t know black people dressed up, I only see black people who sag, or don’t even try.”
I was baffled. He questioned the way I dressed, yet he was wearing saggy jeans, an oversized Monster Energy t-shirt, and ripped up Vans. This guy was either ignorant, racist, or pasty combination of both. “Does my skin color matter?” I asked the guy. “I like dressing with style, an idea you clearly aren’t familiar with.”
There were a few awkward seconds of silence, but then as if almost nothing happened, we went back to talking about every day stuff. What happened to that guy? I’ll never know. I never really interacted with him again. Nothing like that situation ever happened again; most people in Andover were very respectful. Still, that one guy’s question has always stuck with me.
August 17, 2015, it’s a new start, a new beginning, and a difficult journey I knew I could take on. It was my first day of my senior year and I had moved over 300 miles away from my original home, to a place I had no idea about, Andover, Kansas. It was a sunny day so I decided to put on some shorts and a nice button down polo shirt.
In my mind, the way you look says a lot about who you are. Since I like standing out and showing off that I’m an independent thinker, I consider myself a man who dresses with an informal class. Over the past few years dressing up nice and looking presentable has been my passion. Anyways, it’s the first day of school and I am nervous because the only group I am familiar
with is the football team, due to summer practices. My mind automatically thought that I would be judged and people would talk about me because I was the new kid around; an inevitable situation due to the smaller scale of the institution. I made my into the school and the first thing I notice is my classmates looking at me; smiles spread across the span of the newly-seen faces. I felt as if I was already welcomed into a place, yet it was completely unknown to me. After about two minutes of staring and smiling, classmates started to approach me as if they already knew me. I got comments such as, “You must be Antavious, we’ve heard a lot of good things about you.” Even the principal came and introduced himself to me. The main thing I focused on was the comments saying “You dress really nice,” or “You look really good today”.
There was one thing out of that day that changed how I looked at life forever. Around lunch time, I found a group of very welcoming people who actually invited me to come sit with them. For those thirty minutes, we talked about just general things such as school, life outside of school, and what fun things there were to do around Kansas. One comment changed my life forever when one of my classmates made a comment “Why do you dress so nice? I didn’t know black people dressed up, I only see black people who sag, or don’t even try.”
I was baffled. He questioned the way I dressed, yet he was wearing saggy jeans, an oversized Monster Energy t-shirt, and ripped up Vans. This guy was either ignorant, racist, or pasty combination of both. “Does my skin color matter?” I asked the guy. “I like dressing with style, an idea you clearly aren’t familiar with.”
There were a few awkward seconds of silence, but then as if almost nothing happened, we went back to talking about every day stuff. What happened to that guy? I’ll never know. I never really interacted with him again. Nothing like that situation ever happened again; most people in Andover were very respectful. Still, that one guy’s question has always stuck with me.