Please stop stereotyping BC students as affluent and arrogant

I ran out of my dorm building only to be met with the unpleasantness of the cold rain and the bitter truth. The long-awaited, greatly anticipated, first weekend of October had arrived and the parents of Boston College freshmen were quickly filing into the driveway maze outside of Upper Campus.

I had been quite lucky in dodging Newton campus housing by landing myself a spot in CLXF, the long brick building sitting right on Tudor Road connecting four freshman dorms together. Having predicted the traffic chaos, I warned my parents to reconsider trying to beat the commotion by parking near the Brighton Campus. What I hadn’t predicted, though, was what I saw when I was standing there.

In choosing to attend a school with a yearly tuition of well over $60,000, I was putting a huge strain on my family financially. At that cost, I figured everyone’s family was in the same boat. For me, money had never seemed to be such a prominent issue until college talk rolled around, but now it was all my divorced parents talked about when they even talked. It’s difficult to sit with the idea that your college tuition is the sole reason for financial anxiety, but happiness comes at a price, doesn’t it?

I was lucky to grow up in a middle-class home sitting in the suburbs of Boston. I was lucky to have enough lunch money in my account to buy two lunches whenever they served buffalo chicken, to get $20 for a spontaneous movie or mall trip and to wake up on Christmas morning to a tree with perfectly wrapped presents sitting underneath it. I was always aware of the good fortune I had until suddenly, I wasn’t.

I stood there as the cold breeze dragged sheets of rain over my body. Parked in front of me was a great mass of the most expensive cars I had ever seen. Sure, I’d admired Range Rovers, BMWs, Lexus and Mercedes all before, but I was shocked at the quantity of these luxury vehicles all parked within this small space. Only in a fantasy world did I feel I could be roaming the BMW lot with my rich businessman husband picking out which car I’d like for my birthday.

It was the first time I realized the hierarchy of wealth here at BC.

I was immediately brought back to a conversation I had with a guy I had a crush on back home. Usually, when you tell people you’ve decided on attending BC, they congratulate you with a sense of approval and praise. After all, BC sits fairly high in the national ranking of top colleges and universities in the country. Instead, though, he looked at me puzzled.

He said, “You never seemed like one of those asshole, rich, preppy kids to me, but good luck. I guess.” I felt insulted, but I was introduced to the overwhelming stereotype – the little box – that the outside world has labeled BC students.

Affluent and arrogant. Those were the two terms I derived from outside sources to best match their idea of BC students. Now, standing there in the parking lot I started to feel, for the first time since arriving here, that maybe they were right – maybe my high school crush was right.

This feeling of uncertainty morphed into inferiority and jealousy which led to impulsive shopping and begging my mom for unnecessary pairs of shoes just because they were branded Tory Burch. I set a level of expectations for my appearance: I wore more make up, I straightened my hair often, I dressed up for class (a foreign concept to my usual high school attire of sweatpants), I ate salads every day, I went to the gym far more than usual.

I was constantly comparing myself to others around me and I was slowly becoming a clone. I no longer embraced the beautifully unique qualities I had to offer. I lost sight of them in the battle to fit in as the rich pretty girl with the nice shoes. But I wasn’t alone in this.

I’m taking a freshman seminar class called Courage to Know. It’s supposed to aid the transition into freshman year of college, but I signed up for it because it seemed like an easy A with minimal work. For homework one night, we were assigned to read Anna Quindlen’s famous commencement speech to Mt. Holy Oak College in 2008. A two-page speech for homework? Simple. But it was much more than that.

In fact, it shifted my ideology of BC and opened my mind to a major revelation: “Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” I see a similar message in giving in to believing stereotyping, be they positive or negative.

Ironically, here, I found myself trying to become the stereotype, trying to become the ideal BC student, trying to define the ways I should act, dress, look, based on what other people thought of me. Who wants to be the odd one out? The honest answer is no one. No one wants to be the person who doesn’t quite fit in, the person who stands out in the crowd, the person eating alone at the lunch table. But the answer should be everyone.

Everyone should strive to be unique, to express their differences, to break the stereotypes that shove us into the small labeled sections of an accordion folder. When you start to lose sight of yourself, when you finally break and when you finally give up on the standard of impossible expectations you set for yourself, you begin to realize the people who truly cared for you were the ones that thought you were cooler for wearing your ripped up LL Bean slippers to your 8am.

The Boston College stereotype is pejorative. Yes, there are wealthy people here. Yes, there are arrogant people here. I’d be interested to know where there aren’t. 75 per cent of students at BC receive some form of financial aid. That’s an overwhelming portion of the undergraduate population. Honestly, if you cared to ask, many of the students here would not define themselves as upper-middle class. We dress nice for class and we care about our appearance for ourselves, not for anyone else. Well, maybe the cute kid on the football team sometimes.

But honestly, friend groups form from all different socio-economic groups and clubs are composed of members from totally different backgrounds. Why? Because money, because race, because gender, because the clothes someone wears are not distinguishing factors to the BC community. People here are motivated to establish meaningful relationships based on similar mindsets, similar goals, similar studies. No one cares if you’re wearing a Patagonia vest and fitted khaki pants at the end of the day. People care about who you are as a person (and maybe what snacks you have in your room).

We really aren’t the assholes they warned you about. Some parents just drive pretty nice cars. Live and let live, people.