Building a Professional Wardrobe

Now that my exams over I finally have a little bit of a break - the last one I get before my final unit exam, clinical competency exam, shelf exams and the big bad Step 1 exam. With all that ahead, it's easy to forget that early this summer I'll be seeing real patients and working in the hospital every day. I feel like there's still so much I don't know which makes me a little bit nervous, but I'm also excited too. Even the little bit of patient contact I get at refugee clinic makes me so excited for what's to come. Spence and I will have a few weeks of break before we start back up this summer so we've planned a couple trips which should keep us busy. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time to prepare for the start of third year, so I'm trying to get a head start now while I have a little extra time.

Shopping for professional clothes is going to be a big change for me. I follow along with Fran's med school journey over at Franish, and her medical school requires professional dress from day one, which means that she has a pretty bomb professional wardrobe (which I will definitely be trolling for ideas). My medical school on the other hand, has absolutely no dress code unless we're working with real or standardized patients. While it's given me a lot of flexibility to dress up or down, I'm now faced with daunting task of building a professional wardrobe from scratch. So I've decided to make this as fun as possible by doing a little series of posts on building a professional wardrobe. Since I'm obviously no expert, I'll be using it more to organize the pieces that I see myself needing. I'm planning on doing posts on each type of clothing item I'll be needing and then organizing that based on what I need, what I have, and what I want. I'll do updates on things I've actually purchased and include prices so you can get a realistic idea of what it costs. I'm hoping to make this fun for me as well as share some good finds and get some good input from others. I would love to get some suggestions on must-have pieces and favorite stores so feel free to comment and share your tips in the comment section!

Oh and I should mention that although this will definitely be a big expense, I'm selling some of my old clothes that I no longer wear to help offset some of the cost. It's really not hard at all (I use eBay) and it's an awesome way to declutter. I would highly suggest taking a few minutes to build a profile on eBay and try it yourself!