{"id":135,"date":"2020-05-11T15:19:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T19:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/?page_id=135"},"modified":"2020-05-12T04:25:30","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T08:25:30","slug":"student-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/student-interviews\/student-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Student 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is composed of highlighted quotes from an interview with an anonymous Bowdoin student. It is a detailed look into one Bowdoin student\u2019s thoughts on wealth and its impact on their lives. It is color-coded by theme. <\/span>Blue<\/b><\/span> represents the development of the wealth stigma based on one\u2019s previous and current friend groups and environments. <\/span>Red <\/b><\/span>represents the perception of material goods and actions as symbols of wealth and the conclusions drawn from that information. <\/span>Purple <\/b><\/span>represents the notion that wealth is a challenging and uncomfortable topic that people avoid, due to its stigmatization.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWealth is definitely not something that I considered as much until I went to Bowdoin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I’m from, it’s just a middle class town. And so [wealth] was never something that I guess I really considered. We had people who were maybe low income or poor, but there wasn’t really a huge difference between everyone where I’m from in Indiana.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut then at Bowdoin, you see people who come from backgrounds. For example, the GCS kids are even getting money to go to Bowdoin versus kids who can pay the full tuition, and their families make over $630,000 a year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to whether our campus is socioeconomically diverse: \u201cYeah, for sure. Well, yeah, I don’t know. It is, it is. I don’t, I just don’t know really. I guess you have to define diverse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the people that I’ve surrounded myself with [at Bowdoin] happened to not be, for the most part, people whose families make more money [than mine], and so I thought that there are more [people of my socioeconomic class at Bowdoin] than there actually are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I would have gone to a state school, Macs are a huge [wealth symbol], but because THRIVE gives Macbooks\u2026 they aren\u2019t really a symbol anymore at Bowdoin specifically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[Wealth symbols are] kind of just little things; people going out repeatedly, or taking trips to Boston, or where they go over spring break and seeing what their posts are on social media.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[My wealthy friend] would just throw away things that were new or not used.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne time I was having a conversation about someone else who had an experience where their roommate had asked them if they could pay them to do their laundry and stuff\u2026 What a crazy concept\u2026 It\u2019s interesting how they just see the world in a completely different way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne girl was sitting there who I didn\u2019t know very well, but [she] was starting to get incorporated in our friend group. She got really offended [when we were talking about wealthy people stereotypes]: \u2018not everyone\u2019s who\u2019s rich acts that way… I don\u2019t like to tell people that my family has money, because then I can surprise them with things.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about privilege a lot at Bowdoin, but it’s never directed at anyone [in particular.]\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI do notice that a lot of kids who are within the same socioeconomic status tend to group together, and I think that a lot of that is just due to experiences that you’ve had growing up, or now you just kind of live a different way. Maybe see things a different way. And I don’t know, I guess it’s just a part of life, the way I see it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI lived near Chicago, so when I go there, I’d see things like Canada Goose jackets and stuff. But in terms of my hometown, I think that you wouldn’t really notice when people had more money, because a lot of us lived in the same way. I think you noticed more so when people didn’t have money by the type of clothes people wear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a lot of people at Bowdoin are abnormally attractive, more so than where I’m from. This could relate to our hair products, skin products, being able to get food that’s healthy, or seeing dermatologists. I don’t know. It’s weird. That’s one conversation that I had, including my friend who has money. And she agreed. That’s all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen talking about privilege or anything like that, I feel like usually [people with wealth are] the people who go quiet and maybe step out of the room or just kind of disappear a little bit. Or they never talk about themselves when we bring up those conversations. Because I know that a lot of kids feel like they’re not going to be liked, or people are going to think of them in a different way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our friends ordered several pairs of the same shoe with different colors; she told us about it casually.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of my friends and I will go out and guilt ourselves for buying something that’s $10. So [ordering the same pair of shoes in different colors is] just kind of hard to conceptualize.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had to work towards making sure that I didn\u2019t seem like I was judging her or anything [for her wealthy status.]\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[We remind our upper class friends] about not being able to do something sometimes: \u2018is that gonna cost this much?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think [conversations about wealth do] get easier [with more repetition] just because I think we both realize that we’re not against each other. It’s just more about having an open conversation and trying to understand where we’re all coming from.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI guess [fixing the stigma around wealth is] just having conversations with kids who are wealthy and getting to know them and realizing that they’re people who\u2019ve had hardships, [too]. And it’s hard to balance because obviously some kids are maybe going to fit the stereotype, but not everyone does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me [initiating conversations about wealth has] been easiest to do naturally, just as it comes up and then finding points to open the conversation even further.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t hear [conversations about wealth] back at home, but I hear it from a lot of different students at Bowdoin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into any normal conversation I would still have a lot of anxiety [talking about wealth] because I don’t know what they’re going to say back to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is composed of highlighted quotes from an interview with an anonymous Bowdoin student. It is a detailed look into one Bowdoin student\u2019s thoughts on wealth and its impact on their lives. It is color-coded by theme. Blue represents the development of the wealth stigma based on one\u2019s previous and current friend groups and … Continue reading “Student 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1015,"featured_media":0,"parent":114,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-135","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-tgreene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}