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A common complaint about the Ivy League gang is that we lead very sheltered lives. People on the outside imagine our lives to be one long champagne-soaked yacht ride, a life where all of our wants and needs are taken care of and mummy and daddy’s charge card is always on hand.
In reality, though, more than half of Princeton’s student body is on financial aid, and a very large percentage of that is on nearly 100% financial aid. In addition to that, students spend a lot of time in the summer traveling to developing countries, doing community service in struggling neighborhoods, and generally getting their hands dirty. And yet, the myth persists…and for good reason.
There are a lot of different ways people can be “sheltered.” Ivy Leaguers may not all be rolling in wealth, but they still have an embarrassing lack of practical knowledge across the board. Because most of us spent our young lives with our noses stuck in books or playing some sport obsessively, we don’t really know how to, well, get along in the real world.
Most of us can’t change a tire, balance a checkbook, buy health insurance, or even iron a shirt properly. We take our laundry home for the parents to do whenever possible, and we hold off getting our hair cut until we can get home too. We’re good at buying the stuff we need online, but don’t ask us to pick out the right screws from a hardware store or a good cut of meat from the butcher. We’re learned and ridiculously mature in some ways, and yet so unaware in many others.
I know the Ivy League is all about giving students a top-notch liberal arts education, but it would be great if they could give us a little practical knowledge as well; the stuff we didn’t have time to learn from our parents because we were too busy studying for the SAT’s. I say, if we’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow, we ought to know how the world really works on the micro level.
We should be able to take a class on real world knowledge, whether it’s fixing a leaky faucet, cooking, or tying a full Windsor knot in a tie. Because the college life may involve memorizing the events that led up to the Civil War, or surfing the internet for some answers, but one day we’ll suddenly be expected to know about Grown-Up Stuff, and who’s going to teach us that?
10 Comments
Yes, because those of us college students classified as “non-ivy leaguers” spend our college years taking classes on buying hardware and ironing.
Agreed, but most of this stuff could and should be taught in high school. The only thing I learned in high school was how to get ready for college schoolwork. There was a lot of room for learning absolutely anything else.
What’s the point of this article? To defend Ivy League schools? In your attempt to make yourself and your peers look “real” you actually alienate yourselves MORE. What, you’re trying to get us to feel sorry for you because you DON’T have tons of money at your disposal AND you can’t pick out the right type of screw or cut of meat?
NEWS FLASH neither can most college students who don’t go to Ivies. And don’t you DARE make it sound like the rest of us didn’t spend lots of time studying or playing sports.
Your article is extremely condescending. If you’re going for learning “life skills” then remember that people don’t like it when you point out that your school is better and then try to make them feel bad for you.
The article doesn’t sound condescending to me. It just sounds like Ivy Leaguers are just as unprepared for REAL life as the rest of us.
The only difference is that they get better sweatshirts.
i think it also has to do with the fact that ivy leaguers are not prepared socially. spending all that time with their noses in books takes away from time spend socializing elsewhere…
exiting college, how does one who never had much social interaction survive in the work place or in a bar or any other social scene? poor kids
Oy, some people are such haters. She is merely explaining her frustration with her Ivy League school that she definitely pays out of the ass for and ends up unprepared for the real world. But, I can tell you… I too was totally unprepared for hte real world. It was a GIANT slap in the face whenI graduated but you learn REALLY quickly. Mostly by trial and lots of error.
I don’t think that this article was meant to be condescending but I can see why someone might think that certain lines were a bit much. Saying that they were all too busy playing sports or studying in high school could be taken as saying the rest of us didn’t.
College isn’t really there to teach you how to deal with the real world. You either have family that helps you figure it out or you figure it out for yourself. I’ve been paying all of my own bills since I can remember, doing my own laundry, balancing my own checkbooks, etc…as have most of my friends. It has nothing to do with where you go to college.
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html
Wow, some hostile commenters… I’ve learned that any time you even mention “Ivy League,” people jump all over you for being elitist and condescending. It doesn’t matter who you are or what topic you’re discussing. I actually go out of my way to avoid mentioning my alma mater most of the time!
I tend to find that the real lack is often in social skills, even more so than in mundane practical matters. I mean, they can probably get along well enough with each other, but interacting with “real” people, whose priorities may be completely foreign to theirs (ok, well at this point I may as well admit that a more appropriate term is “ours”) is sometimes a culture shock. I saw this manifest itself in the strangest ways when I got my first job, senior year of high school. Real people don’t measure their value by an SAT score, or grades, or by the number of honor societies they are in. Sad as it is, this perspective is a bit of a shock to an ivy-leaguer. It can be somewhat unexpected to find that people who didn’t go to college (or a good college) are not degenerates, and are not all doomed to despair. I am perfectly comfortable making this generalization about ivy-leaguers because it truly does take the devotion of an entire childhood, or at least adolescence, to get into one of these schools and there is inevitable compromise in the social skill department. Now if anybody says “smart kids can be cool and party,” or something as asinine as that…I might lose some faith in humanity.
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