{"id":931,"date":"2016-10-03T23:41:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T03:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=931"},"modified":"2016-12-14T12:25:35","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T17:25:35","slug":"confessions-of-a-teenage-non-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2016\/10\/03\/confessions-of-a-teenage-non-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Teenage Non-Elite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s set the scene: I am sitting in a booth in a nice restaurant- too nice to fit my budget. Sitting across from me is my friend (we\u2019ll call her Nadine) and her mother (we\u2019ll refer to her as Mrs. H).<\/p>\n

Nadine had asked me to join them for dinner and meet her mom, an invite I happily accepted. Mrs. H did not know much about me; all she knew was that I was Nadine\u2019s friend, I was from rural Maine, and I was a student at Colby College. Mrs. H and I go through the formalities of introduction: I ask her how she\u2019s enjoying her time in Maine, she asks me if I\u2019m excited to be back at school, et cetera, et cetera. Mrs. H then starts to ask me about my pre-Colby life, specifically, where I went to high school. I attended Spruce Mountain High School; a small public school in rural Maine with a student body of about four hundred individuals. In my mind, my high school experience was great and provided me with the knowledge and extra-curricular activities needed to attend an institution like Colby College. However, Mrs. H and I did not share the same perception. Her feelings were made clear by the many questions she had about my school experience. \u201cDid anyone in your class besides you make it to a college like Colby? Do you feel like you learned anything in high school, or do you think you taught yourself mostly? There must have been a lot of students who didn\u2019t graduate, right? Are you glad that you made it out of Jay?\u201d To her, everything worth knowing about my high school could be summarized with two words: not elite.<\/p>\n

End Scene.<\/p>\n

Mrs. H was not entirely wrong; by no means was Spruce Mountain high school an elite secondary school. According to the Maine high school ranking list<\/a>, SMHS is ranked 81\/98, and that\u2019s only when considering Maine high schools. Although condescending, Mrs. H\u2019s assumption was correct.\"Image<\/p>\n

Many students in my class did not graduate, and of those who did, many chose not to go to college. Let me reiterate that I enjoyed my high school career. I worked hard in my classes, I was a member of many clubs and sports teams, and I fostered connections with my teachers and peers, but for many of the students in my class this was not the case. It would be ignorant to say that my educational experience was not affected because I did not attend an elite secondary school.<\/p>\n

Throughout most of my time spent in high school, my view of the world was admittedly egocentric.\"Image<\/p>\n

The student population was mainly white and middle class like myself, and I was rarely, if ever, pushed to view situations from a perspective that differed from my own. Spruce Mountain High School was not trying to shape me into a \u201cglobal citizen\u201d. Elite high schools generally have a common goal of molding their students into a global citizen. Although we have not yet interviewed any students from Croft School, I expect that they are aware of this goal. Consequently, I expect the students to promote more altruistic qualities than my high school self did.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, my secondary education experience differed greatly from the experience of the students we will be studying. Compared to the rigorous academic lives of Croft School\u00a0students, my academic career was not particularly challenging. I knew that I was one of the top students in my class, second only to my twin brother, and I did not have to work very hard to maintain that position. I did not feel pressure from my mom or dad to achieve the highest grades. I suspect the familial pressure felt by Croft School\u00a0students is more intense.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the differences (positive or negative) between my public high school and elite high schools, I am appreciative for my experience. Being privileged enough to attend a liberal arts college has made me realize the lack of critical consciousness I had in high school. Since then, my time at Colby has been spent developing a better sense of global interconnectivity. When learning about education systems across the globe, I am able to view information from a critical lens because I know, first hand, the difference between a non-elite school (like Spruce Mountain High School) and an elite school (like Colby College). For that, I am thankful, regardless of the barrage of questions I’m asked by the Mrs. H’s of the world.<\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s set the scene: I am sitting in a booth in a nice restaurant- too nice to fit my budget. Sitting across from me is my friend (we\u2019ll call her Nadine) and her mother (we\u2019ll refer to her as Mrs. H). Nadine had asked me to join them for dinner and meet her mom, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6780,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6780"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1596,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/1596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}