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October 12, 2011
99er
So this image is floating around FB. This image is in reference to a post from a college graduate with significant debt about the Wall Street protests.
I have to admire a student who did work throughout college and watched his finances carefully. However, as a person who also worked in high school and college (at times, three jobs, 30+ hrs) and watched their finances like a hawk during college and afterwards, I feel that his attitude is also self-righteous. I argued to a friend that this student didn't provide the family stability or public (or private) education he got to get the good education so that he could get scholarships into college. He did not provide the state subsidies that the state and federal government gave to his education so that a moderately-priced state school could be affordable or the scholarships.
I was recently talking to a college Sophomore who was the valedictorian of his school and ended up at a local college studying engineering. As a Sophomore, he was already in Calculus III. What was amazing about his story is that he came out a low-income and low-quality educational system in a community rife with social problems. I could tell from just a short conversation that this man should have gone to a top 20 engineering school yet he was a humble Christian man. I worry about students like him. I know that I could not have finished college without the provisions that this great country has given me and currently slowly reducing. For every person who "use" the system, there is a kid like him who is just trying to provide a better life for himself and his family. I hope that when this man starts his career, he is happy and content and not resentful of others. For I see in both the hurt and self-righteousness, resentment toward others.
Instead, I hope he pays it forward like my 3rd grade teacher who noticed something in a non-communicative student or my eleventh grade English teacher who saw the best in her students or my current adviser who feels personally my successes and failures. It is easy for me to pay it forward.
There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others.
George Matthew Adams
Posted by azileretsis at October 12, 2011 04:22 PM
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