Understanding Elite
Coming to Colby was a culture shock – I didn’t think private schools were a real thing. I knew that boarding school and religious schools were private schools, but I didn’t make a connection between private schools and “eliteness”.
I grew up in Milbridge – a small town in Washington County, Maine and attended public school in MSAD37. As a coastal town, many of the members of my community rely on lobster fishing to support their families. Statistically, Washington County is one of the poorest counties in the nation. My parents are both educators who encouraged me to do my personal best academically. In grammar school, we (public school) kids thought private schools were always about religion or bad kids being sent away. When I misbehaved, my parents would actually threaten to send me to Dana Hall School. I pictured it as a military boot camp version of school, where there was no fun and no friends- nothing I wanted to be a part of.
In high school, my opinions changed because I watched Gossip Girl. Their life at private school seemed pretty fun, and the people were all ridiculously good looking. I can remember discussing this with my mother, a Colby alumna, who graduated in the same class as Cecily von Ziegesar, the author of of Gossip Girl. I asked her if people like Serena and Blair actually existed, and her reply was a vague, “It is a different world.” This didn’t have any meaning to me until after I had experienced life at Colby.
Initially, I thought the laundry service was fake. I can remember information on the laundry service coming along with my first year student packet, and I threw it in the trash. I didn’t think about it until freshman move in day when my grandfather said people who use the laundry service are lazy and don’t have life skills. He said this in front of my freshman year roommate, who did in fact use the laundry service.
Freshman year resembled being thrown into a game that you were only given some of the rules to. Actually, I feel more confused about what middle class means since I’ve come to Colby. I would be considered “upper middle class” for rural Maine, but in Colby’s perspective, I am not. Occasionally, I found myself envious of peers who didn’t have to work and could eat at a restaurant every meal. How was it fair that during my winter break I worked double shifts at a nursing home, while others vacationed, completely carefree? My opinion changed and, now, I feel more confident navigating life at Colby. I find just as much happiness in my life as peers who have been better educated. I talked with peers who received elite education, and they often say that they expected to go to an Ivy League school. This makes me wonder if internally they are disappointed. Are their parents disappointed? I hope not because college is stressful enough without feeling guilt.
Colby brings together an array of people from different backgrounds, but a high majority of students received an elite education. Looking around in some of my classes, I wonder about divides exists between “smart” and “well educated”.
