Poor Me: On Geese

I have a jacket that keeps me warm and costs me, not my parents, forty dollars. To assume I’m jealous of your Canada Goose is condescending and tone-deaf. It hurts me to see every discussion on socioeconomic disparities at Exeter centered around these jackets. In both a recent Exonian article and last year’s assembly on socioeconomic awareness it was embarrassing that no students of low-income status gave input. This might be because most of these Exonians, while feeling uncomfortable with cultural elitism, recognize the invaluable opportunity for social mobility Exeter presents. This leads to these Exonians keeping their heads down and focusing on squeezing as much as they can out of the school. So, my message to affluent Canada Goose wearers is as follows: I don’t care about your jacket in the slightest.

Coming from a modest background, I don’t know how allowances work. Yet, I recognize that rich Exonians don’t have direct access to a Scrooge-McDuck style vault of gold, and we’re all struggling together at Exeter. But, as a wealthy student, there are a few things that you should be considerate of besides your jacket. So, without further ado, here are the things that actually make me uncomfortable as a student receiving full financial-aid.

First is food. I’m financially independent at Exeter which means I have to budget out my money carefully: I don’t use E&R; I don’t buy gear; I rarely go out to eat; I don’t take Ubers; I have never ordered food; when I shop, toiletries take precedent over snacks. I probably get through each term spending around fifty dollars. So, after hours, I’m hungry a lot. Shout-out to all my late night snack donors in the dorm.

Second are the creative visual arts. Exeter is not great at facilitating creativity. To be creative, one needs a willingness to take chances and free time, neither of which are encouraged at Exeter. Now, this issue isn’t exclusively a socioeconomic one; however, those who seem to have the most trouble with this hurdle are from cultures in which they feel a need to get an economically viable job and catapult themselves through social classes. By the time I built up the courage to try and take advantage of Exeter’s visual arts opportunities and flex my creativity, I was bogged down with requirements and mind-numbing skill-building classes. Conversely, kids from rich backgrounds tend to have an affinity for mainstream pop aesthetics and feel the security to pursue “impractical” fields like art from the get-go. For this reason, the upper strata of Exeter’s art curriculum, which allow for the most artistic freedom and resources, are largely populated by rich kids, skilled or not.

Third are social media and vacations. I live in Vermont and it snows a lot in the winter. I often find myself at 6 a.m. shoveling snow off of our family minivan so my mom can get to her second job. I can’t remember the last time my parents paid for us to take a vacation. So, the last thing I want to see when I warm-up in my fifty-five-degree house is you in Bermuda or Cabo. This also applies to your beach house on the cape, your fancy apartment in New York, and your cabin in Park City. If I could be there I would, but I can’t. At these moments, I become very aware of the distance between you and me.

Fourth is the college process. This is probably the least trivial of my discomforts. My parents had no hand in my college process; they didn’t know where, when, why or to what school I was applying. They were supportive, but they were busy and very uneducated on the subject. By my being at Exeter, I’ve succeeded in their expectations and they don’t push or pressure me to do anything but get into a college that pays for me. There are kids at this school whose parents invest in private tutors and test prep, even private college counselors. And, regardless of if these services actually advantage their clients, which, statistically, they do, having a team of hired professionals coach you through the college process in itself is a gross privilege.

Fifth are clothes, but not Canada Geese. I pride myself in not wearing your clothes, they’re overpriced, ubiquitous and leave no room for individualism. However, this past winter break my mom insisted on buying me a suit jacket and pants. I had dodged this event for four years, opting to wear a blazer formerly owned by my deceased grandfather. But, I had grown, and the blazer no longer fit me. I told my mom that I didn’t need a suit, that I could avoid formal events; they were vertiginous, overexposing and elitist. But she insisted, and I backed down. Nothing was more gut-wrenching than watching my mom pay for that suit.

I could go on. And I may. And I’m not proposing any solutions short of socialism. I want you to know that I believe adversity is the ultimate character builder. I’ve seen too many upper-middle-class white boys float through life, untouched by any real struggle and have an existential crisis when they realize they’re just a convictionless glob that regurgitates other, better people’s thoughts and theories. I’m proud of how the adversity in my life has shaped me. But also, I need to work on being conscious of my own privilege within the socioeconomic spectrum.

At Exeter, being constantly surrounded by the highest social strata, it's easy to develop a victim complex, and because I can’t take advantage of the luxury I observe, I’ve had moments where I’ve discredited the simple comfort within which I was raised. My family is not in danger of getting evicted; both of my parents are employed; we’re not on food stamps. There are many kids on this campus who can’t say any of that, and they have much more serious struggles and adversities than my aforementioned discomforts. But their voices go unheard, and still aren’t, because I speak for me and me alone. In fact, I encourage them to write Opinions articles for The Exonian.

This hasn’t been a grateful Op-Ed; I didn’t intend it to be one. While I do feel grateful at Exeter, this piece is a distillation of my discomforts, not my gratitudes. And I believe that I should not be obligated to make you all feel better, present “both sides” and distract you from the point that I wanted to express. And some of what I wrote about holds admittedly weak links to socioeconomic disparities. However, in each and every one of these situations, the rich should take full responsibility.