class rage speaks

A reintroduction.

For new followers and old. I had someone ask me a while back “who is behind this blog?”, and though I handled it privately then, I thought I would also provide a public answer.

I don’t use my real name here, but I can tell you that I’m a woman in my early twenties and I grew as the oldest of six kids in a college town in the Midwest. Both of my parents grew up quite poor, and aside from a few scattered courses, neither attended college. As a child, I was not among the most disadvantaged- I had a house to live in, my working parent had a steady job, we had good medical insurance- but I was still noticeably different from most of my peers, and my financial situation had a significant impact on me. My community wasn’t wealthy or ambitious either, and the resources available to me were limited. I started working at age fourteen because there was no one to give me spending money for social activities or clothes, and beyond the basics of life, my parents always expected me to pay my own way. Today, unlike many people my age who I meet, I can’t depend on my parents for financial help, even in an emergency.

Financial aid, the “right” kind of talent at things like standardized tests, and sheer good luck sent me off to an Ivy League school, where I marveled at the opportunities suddenly opened to me, but eventually became depressingly aware of the huge gulf that separated me from my classmates and new friends- a gulf they usually refused to acknowledge. The resistance and ridicule I encountered (and still encounter) when I tried to talk about my growing class-consciousness surprised me, but in the end, only strengthened my conviction that this really is important.

Now, as a grad student at another prestigious university, I struggle daily with the difference between my background and current reality and that of my peers. I panic over money and supporting myself, worrying that I’ll never get a job, while my classmates have parental safety nets, savings from wealthy childhoods, and the sense of sureness that comes from just assuming that everything is going to work out financially. I wonder whether my loan debt is worth it, if I can make it in grad school when I didn’t grow up knowing how academia works- or if it’s even worth it to try and succeed in a field that I love but where I’m always at a disadvantage, my reality and people like me are mocked and erased, and I may never feel truly at ease. I worry about how to be myself now, how to manage my relationships with people who are different from me, and how to maintain my sense of self-worth in the face of a culture that tells me to just work harder, just do better, and everything will somehow magically be okay.

This is a space where I write about my life and the things I’m experiencing. I write about family, work, and the community I live in here. I write about the challenges of maintaining a romantic relationship with someone much wealthier than I, especially long-distance (as it’s been for the past year) and sharing a household (as it will be soon.) I write a lot about being a a poor student at elite schools and dealing with financial aid there, which is of course not relevant to everyone, but is where my personal experiences with class distinctions predominantly occur.

Mostly, though, I write about the small things- the little twinges of feeling hopeless and alone, the moments of fear and insecurity, the sudden realizations that someone I’m speaking to has no idea where I’m coming from or what my life is like. These things may seem obvious, but to the people who don’t experience them, they’re really not. During my senior year of college, I found myself finally living with a housemate who was in a similar situation, and over time we began to talk a lot about our moments of frustration and stress and our experiences of difference- our “class rage,” as we came to call it. This blog grew out of my realization that I deeply needed spaces like that to process my experiences with class and to feel truly like I was not alone.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned, this blog is a side project for me, and I post irregularly, as I find time. However, I’m considering devoting more energy to it and posting more regularly starting in a few weeks; I really value the experience of writing here, as I have few other spaces to talk so openly about this issue in my life, and it makes me so, so happy to know that I’m helping others like me not feel so alone. If you have any comments, post ideas, or issues you’d particularly like to hear me talk about, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know.