On Personal Style And Role Models

While "fashion" has never been a hobby of mine, for most of my life I have prided myself on having something of a "bold" personal style, preferring big, colorful, and interesting-shaped outfits over the boring and overdone fashion trends of my time and culture. T-shirts, jeans, and expensive sneakers just never seemed all that interesting to me.

That said, I have noticed my personal style has changed over the past two or three years. Slowly at first—I didn't even realize it was changing, let alone think of it as a conscious choice. I started wearing more loose-fitting clothes, ditched some of the wild bright colors for slightly more muted tones (but still colorful, don't worry), and started wearing oversized, floral short-sleeve button up shirts more often. I started letting my hair grow out longer and no longer maintained a clean shave.

To perfectly illustrate my point, here is me wearing the same reversible jacket, six years apart.

Me in Early 2025 - About to present some of my PhD work

Me in 2019 - about to finish my undergrad

After a while, I decided that this was simply the transition between being an early twenty-something and a late twenty-something.

But then I thought about it.

And then I overthought it.

And I think I figured out why.

To some degree or another, everyone attempts to emulate those they respect. That is what it means to have a role model. It's also how social groups identify, and cliques form and evolve. You can spot the difference between a metalhead and a pop fanatic thanks to their different uniforms.

So what I actually witnessed was my personal values changing, which led to my role models changing, which led to my style changing.

When I was in university, I was consuming heaps of transgressive art and seeing heaps of live music, and as a result, tried to emulate those cool artists I admired. Then eventually, the life I was chasing for myself started to change. Like I think a lot of people going through their mid-twenties experience, the desire to "do something big" and "change the world" started to cool down a bit and was replaced with the desire to live a slightly slower life and enjoy the ride.

With this shift, I saw my role models change. Instead of trying to copy the super "successful" people—CEOs, major artists, Nobel Prize winners—I started to look towards my colleagues who actually seemed content in life.

Overwhelmingly, these are the types of folks who fit all the stereotypes of the slightly disheveled engineer or scientist. And they always have some incredible backyard science project going on as their weekend hobby. (I know literal hobbyist rocket engineers whose day job is in photonics.) So, over time, as I started to emulate their behavior, I also started to copy their styles.

Basically, what I'm saying is: I got STEMbofied.