How to Instill Confidence

I have a word of advice to all those baby docs I see around campus. I know that you are still in your training years, just out of your undergraduate salad days, and have yet to absorb the teachings of medical school that will allow you to stroll through this world with the utmost assuredness of your own genius and infallibility, but. But you cannot start to inculcate that belief in others until you stop dressing like you are going to med school in your pajamas.

Today on the train was a young man of above average good looks. He was studying a medical text. He had on scrubs, at least the bottoms. He was wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt. When he stood up, his scrubs were sitting low on his hips, showing a good three inches of boxer shorts.

Eww. And Eww. The thug look is overdone to begin with, but trying it with a pair of scrubs? Just icky. And the combination of scrubs and SpongeBob? Not a good image maker there, pal. Shouldn't a doctor, even a baby med stud, be beyond Saturday morning cartoon wear?

The female med studs are even worse, affecting as they do, at least on this campus, the just-prior-to-breakdown hair style of Anne Heche. Spikey, blonde with dark roots, and in desperate need of a shampoo. They are also fond of the belly-exposing scrubs. They are, to a man (oops, but if you could see them, you'd understand my confusion), fond of the black bra under pale tank top look favored by the lower-class stoop sitters of popular 50s fiction.

Eww. And Eww. For the last time, girls: Black bra under light colored clothing is bad. I don't care if Carrie wears it on Sex In The City. She is fictional. She lives in a fictional New York. She wears things on the streets of that fictional city that would get a real person in real New York arrested for real crimes against fashionable humanity. Do not emulate her.

And that dirty hair and dark roots thing? Why should I listen to you about my health when you so clearly can't shower on a regular basis, something that is generally known to promote good health? I don't want to see your belly, either. I want you to pretend to be a grown up, and I want you dress in a way that gives me a little bit of confidence in your ability to make decisions.

Doogie Howser wore a tie, not a Scoobie Doo t-shirt for a reason. I suggest you do the same.