One night when I was working in the Libe, my sister called me crying. She said she had just had the craziest day at school and needed to talk about it. After she had calmed down a lot and I was able to ask questions, she told me what had happened. It turns out her small graduate school had had a workshop on class for students, faculty, and staff, and as part of the workshop, the directors had them divide themselves up into lower, middle, and upper class. They went through each category and read off a few possible indicators, like: “you were the first one in your family to go to college,” “it’s a given that you are going to grad school,” “you had money for vacations,” “housing and/or food was not always a given for your family,” “you had enough money for non-essential health care growing up,” etc. She walked towards the “upper class” group, confused that she seemed to fit in to that category and the only one in the group that had considered herself middle class. Then she started sobbing.
I got where she was coming from. Growing up in a wealthy suburb we were told we were “upper middle class.” I didn’t feel rich because I was comparing myself to the families around me that seemed to throw away money on fancy cars and on fancy houses. My family felt different because of what we chose to spend money on, like books, education, travel. My sister went to a state school on scholarship and went to college for free. So when it was time for me to choose a college, and because my family could afford it and wanted me to go to the best school possible, I came to Carleton with no financial aid. I entered this decadent campus paying the entire tuition with my family’s inheritance not considering myself “upper class.” I thought of being rich more as being reckless with spending money than having a lot of it. I walked around with tinted glasses, not really thinking about money much, and not being aware of the economic struggles that most people in this country experience day to day. I remember telling someone at Carleton that my family had four Hondas and them just taking in the fact that my four-person family had four cars. But because two of the cars were bought used and they weren’t Mercedes’ and they were just for convenience and not “for fun,” I didn’t think of our four cars as a comment on my class. It took me awhile to realize how much money my family has.
I’m still working out what this means for how I live life. I want to be more conscious of when I spend money and keep track of my accounts more responsibly. I don’t want to work somewhere that survives on making rich people richer and poor people poorer. I don’t want my passions and clothing and values to be contingent on having a lot more money. I want to have a better idea of what $60,000 actually means and accept a life less comfortable than I had growing up. I want to follow a track that feels right to me and not one that sounds good to my parents.
- Anonymous
I got where she was coming from. Growing up in a wealthy suburb we were told we were “upper middle class.” I didn’t feel rich because I was comparing myself to the families around me that seemed to throw away money on fancy cars and on fancy houses. My family felt different because of what we chose to spend money on, like books, education, travel. My sister went to a state school on scholarship and went to college for free. So when it was time for me to choose a college, and because my family could afford it and wanted me to go to the best school possible, I came to Carleton with no financial aid. I entered this decadent campus paying the entire tuition with my family’s inheritance not considering myself “upper class.” I thought of being rich more as being reckless with spending money than having a lot of it. I walked around with tinted glasses, not really thinking about money much, and not being aware of the economic struggles that most people in this country experience day to day. I remember telling someone at Carleton that my family had four Hondas and them just taking in the fact that my four-person family had four cars. But because two of the cars were bought used and they weren’t Mercedes’ and they were just for convenience and not “for fun,” I didn’t think of our four cars as a comment on my class. It took me awhile to realize how much money my family has.
I’m still working out what this means for how I live life. I want to be more conscious of when I spend money and keep track of my accounts more responsibly. I don’t want to work somewhere that survives on making rich people richer and poor people poorer. I don’t want my passions and clothing and values to be contingent on having a lot more money. I want to have a better idea of what $60,000 actually means and accept a life less comfortable than I had growing up. I want to follow a track that feels right to me and not one that sounds good to my parents.
- Anonymous