Globally Elite

After four emails, Sebastian finally responded and we scheduled the interviews on 3 consecutive days. On the day of the first interview, I received a  Skype message expressing that he felt uncomfortable using video cam for his interview. I quickly texted Sophie for advice and we decided to let the interviewee set the terms in this case. Reflecting back on this moment, I am glad I didn’t press for the video option. Sebastian quickly opened up over Skype, with our interviews averaging at one hour each (Sorry transcriber Skyler). I doubt the interviews with Sebastian would have yielded as much success if we use video chat because he may have not been as comfortable with me.

Mean Girls is an early 2000’s movie that showcases divisions and corresponding hierarchy among high schoolers. I used this movie to engage Sebastian in conversation and, in return, he provided me an insider’s peek at the social divisions at The Croft, where students group under social categories such as unpopular, average and popular. He informed me that he considers himself an average student. Additionally, he described the popular students as sporty, and he would have to devote more time to sports to be considered popular. Rugby is the top sport at the cross but Sebastian said their team is good but beatable and describes their biggest rival as an institution that values sports over academics. At The  Croft, people look down on those values, as academics always come before extracurricular activities; this rules goes unstated but remains in everyone’s mind. The popular kids are jocks who excel in sports while nonathletes at The Croft are seen as unpopular.

Despite initial setbacks, the process of interviewing Sebastian felt rewarding. Saying goodbye at the closing of the third interview gave me a weird feeling- I built a connection with someone I will never meet or hear from again.

On the brighter side of things-  I found that I love interviewing people. This weekend, my roommate’s friend Sam came over and I interviewed him about his schooling experience. Sam transferred to Unity college after attending Landmark College. Landmark College, in Vermont, exclusively serves students with specific learning disabilities. Sam stated disability-based discrimination rarely occurs among the student body and that the professors always acted as great resources. However, Sam looks back on his experience with distaste – he, almost forcibly, dropped out due to the institution’s high tuition. Tuition at Landmark is $65,430 and Sam claims that the majority of students either pay full tuition or fall into student debt. The average income earned with a Landmark degree, $22,000, only further plunges the students into debt. The institution breaks through the barriers of disability but not without the creation of a financial barrier.

To begin, I would like to say that my overall experience of being a part of this larger research project, while also creating our own paper for our own project, has been a very interesting and rewarding experience. Through working with a team to conduct an interview, transcribe the interview, and ultimately analyze that interview in the context of our larger focus on the reproduction of elites I learned a great deal about the process of research and also about myself in terms of my own eliteness.

In terms of the interview process, I was in charge of transcribing the three interviews once they were conducted and recorded. Prior to the actual transcribing, everyone said it would take between two and three times the length of the interview to transcribe the interview, to which I somewhat laughed, thinking I could OBVIOUSLY do it faster than that. Wrong. A solid 6 hours of my life was inevitably surrendered to typing out every “umm,” “like,” and “uhh” uttered in the two hours worth of interviews. And that excludes the time sacrificed to my poor attentional skills spent checking snap chat, chatting to friends, and eating a snack whilst transcribing. Despite my inability to live up to my own expectations at being an efficient transcriber, I actually really enjoyed transcribing. It allowed me to listen in on the interview after the fact and really grasp the ideas Kostas was getting at in his answers and their connections to themes of privilege and social class we’ve discussed in class. The process of writing out the words I was hearing really committed Kostas’ answers to mind, and made the process of writing the student case study much smoother and easier. So I guess what I’m getting at is that the seemingly tedious time spent transcribing ultimately benefited my understanding of the interview, and thus deepened my understanding of it’s connection to our broader research focus.

In terms of being a part of a larger research project, it made the subject material much more intriguing, since it was focused on a real life phenomenon that is extremely prevalent to our surroundings. Researching elites with the intention of analyzing the ways in which they contribute to the inequity definitely made me question my own intentions in attending such an elite institution.  We, as Colby students, embody and represent much of what we have looked at over the course of this semester, and that is not necessarily a good thing.  Accepting this, coming to terms with the status that accompanies Colby, as well as thinking critically about the choices I made to get to Colby College has been a very self informative experience.  At various times throughout this process I have felt as though everything I stand for is wrong; my complacency with the eliteness that I have strived for, up until now subconsciously, became a source of embarrassment at times.  Though it was distressing sometimes, this project opened my eyes to critically think about my role in all of this.

Additionally, the relevance to real life and current issues of inequity led to a much more invested analysis of the interview. Previous research projects I have been apart of, mostly in the psychology department, are obviously interesting to me, but the topics are always self proposed and only for the purpose of a grade, tainting my natural curiosity on the subject matter. The fact that it is real and will be published was really motivating and made the research feel more worthwhile. Further, because it is an ongoing, much larger, research project meant that we had access to others work in different countries, but on the same material. This aspect was very helpful in guiding the direction of our focus and individual project.

This project has allowed me to understand the importance of learning about prestigious institutions. I have always focused on issues prevalent in low income schools because I plan to work in a low income school after graduation. In the beginning phases of the project seeing how difficult it was to access the Croft School was bizarre. In order to learn about eliteness, you have to be elite!

This for me began the trend of exclusivity that was blatant throughout the research we conducted this semester.

Micaela, the student I interviewed for the project, recognizes the privilege she has to attend the Croft School. Throughout our interviews Micaela made it clear that she understood the odds were in her favor. During the interview process, I tried my best to only ask questions relevant to the interview topic. I could tell she coped with benefiting from this unjust system by rationalizing that she was different from the other elite people who surround her. In the future she wants to improve the systems in place and help the poor. How? She does not know. During all three interviews I wanted to peer into why she felt guilty and ask if she really thought she could make significant change. However, I felt like asking further questions would put Micaela in a uncomfortable position since they do not have simple answers.

Learning about both sides of the spectrum, or about people who more or less inherit their success or failure, to me is essential in trying to create equality in the future. This idea clicked for me when I was able to talk to Micaela about her mothers business. Micaela’s mom wants to promote someone who is not elite. Her social circle advises her against it because the person is ‘not one of them.’ Micaela’s mom disagrees with this and has decided to promote this person. She has taught Micaela that this exclusivity should not happen.

Researching eliteness for the last semester has made me reflect on my social standing and how I hope to create change. For me doing this research and interviewing Micaela was enjoyable. As a low income student it was interesting to see the assuredness that came with the amount of wealth Micaela’s family has. I also really liked Micaela as a person. The most challenging part of this project for me was trying to process, understand and come to terms with the way society works around class.

While engaging in this research I often reflected on the privilege I have to learn about eliteness and systems of oppression. Throughout my Colby career I have had the ability to learn about the systems in place meant to keep people in the socioeconomic positions that they are born into. While I hope to use the knowledge I have acquired to teach my future students, how helpful is this to other people in my life? How does me knowing ways ‘the system’ sets certain individuals up for failure help the people I know that live paycheck to paycheck? What about the people I know who feel powerless in their situations due to their position in the cycle of poverty? It doesn’t. The knowledge I have acquired does nothing for them.

The reaction I expect:

I want to get to a place in my life where I can help these people. In the near future, I want to teach my students the western ideas necessary for them to succeed while also validating the idea that those people who have not achieved ‘the American Dream’ in their lives are not inferior. In fact, I want to emphasize that the most important lessons I have learned where taught to me by people who could not dream of getting the formal education I am getting.

As a chemistry major, there’s a lot of talk about synthetic pathways, organometallic reagents, buffers and what-not. I’ll admit there’s not much about learning about people, unless maybe we’re talking about the old white men who are in our textbooks who discovered the damn reaction or made some scientific discovery. So, you can imagine this research project to have been completely out of my comfort zone. And well, it was an interesting experience.

I was the group’s transcriber and trust me, it was not easy typing out three twenty-page transcriptions for each hour long interview. I spent wayyyy too long sitting in the science library furiously typing all the “ums” and “likes” in the interviews.

But it was rewarding. I was learning about someone in a different continent, and we lived in completely different worlds. Her educational experience, how she perceived the world around her, and her experiences in general were so starkly different from mine. One example, when she was asked to tell about an event where she had a bad experience with a teacher, she recounted the instance when she had written ill of a teacher in her notebook and had been confronted about it; she had felt bad because the teacher looked so upset that she apologized for her actions. While I was transcribing, I thought back to the time I locked my teacher outside of the classroom and decided to run the classroom with a group of friends. Not only had I been in second grade, but I remember refusing to apologize for all the trouble I had caused… In this way, this transcription process also allowed me to take a trip down memory lane and for me to reflect on my experiences.

Even though I had never met her, it felt almost personal. By the time I had finished transcribing the second interview, I was able to guess when she would say “um” or “like” or laugh. It felt almost unfair to know her so one-sidedly. Most of all, it made me hope that we would be able to accurately portray her given how there was so much more to her than these three interviews.

I have learned a lot from this class and it has made me reflect on my thoughts and experiences. I have come to realize privilege is a spectrum and the multifaceted nature of identities makes it hard to draw a definitive line in many instances. There were many times when I told myself ‘oh, they’re more privileged than me.’ And maybe in some cases they were. But my ability to look at others and say that they are more advantaged, without looking at those who have had fewer opportunities than I did, has been the most eye opening for me.