My undergrad alma mater is full of psychotic people

So, the home of the lavender bovine sent me a press release announcing the award of various fellowships the school offers for post-graduate study at Cambridge and Oxford. Here's a sampling of the people who won:

- art history major who studied at Oxford hir junior year.
- Named Scholarship holder.
- has interned at the X College Museum of Art, a major news channel, and a national magazine.
- a member of the varsity track and field team, the varsity cross country team, the varsity tennis team, the concert and chamber choirs, and the -------, an a capella group.

- physics major
- Phi Beta Kappa
- winner of a scholarship for contributions of music.
- a member of the X College Symphony, the [Local] Symphony Orchestra, and the X College Symphonic Winds.
- interned at the Argonne National Laboratory and studied at the U.S. Particle Accelerator School
- is writing an honors thesis on [scary quantum physics topic].
- captain of the fencing team.

- history major
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Named Scholarship holder.
- studied at Oxford hir junior year
- took part in X College program in X studies (residential off-campus program in cool stuff).
- winner of Named Travel Fellowship and spent last summer in food research and interning with a number of premier pastry chefs in France.
- member of the X College Brass Ensemble, Oxford crew team, and the X College Bhangra dance troupe.

- political science major
- co-founder of [Organization], an organization that aims to reclaim childhood for Iraqi refugees in Jordan by organizing sports camps for young girls.
- awarded a Really Cool Grant to fund [Organization].
- op-ed columnist for the X College Newspaper.
- has interned for a national news channel.
- serves as the co-head of an X College tutoring program and is a member of the X College Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. 
- co-author (with Professor --------) of "Cool Article Title Here."
- awarded a [Emeritus Professor's Name] Fellowship to fund a research project about the Olympics and national identity. 
- a member of the X College varsity ski team, captain of the X College cycling team, and a member of the X College varsity crew team.

Now, I realize that college-sponsored press releases are like Lake Woebegon on steroids - everyone is WAY above average. But still. Are these students not insane? How do they accomplish such things??

Well, actually, I take that back - one of the ways they "accomplish" such things is by getting into a school that has the money to hand out named fellowships/scholarships left and right and create opportunities for students. Not that these students haven't done impressive things to get those fellowships/scholarships. But my alma mater has a LOT of money and a LOT of connections. That helps undergrads do things like intern at the Argonne National Laboratory (which may not be all that big a deal, I am not a scientist, but hell, it sounds really prestigious to me).

Nonetheless, these are crazy impressive people. Granted, these scholarship winners are 8 people out of a class of about 500. Still scary, though. I look at these students and think, dang, they're all WAY more impressive than I was when I was there! (Of course, I don't know if today I'd even get IN to my alma mater.)

But I also look at this and see the intense professionalization that has pervaded graduate education trickling down to undergraduates. Sure, these kids are going to Oxford and Cambridge, so are (theoretically) the cream of the crop. But I swear that when I graduated, you didn't have to have saved the world and played a varsity sport while doing so in order to go to grad school. There were students in the sciences (and maybe psychology) who were named authors on articles, but not nearly as many as you see now. It wasn't quite such a necessity to intern at really cool places in order to do something when you graduated (and boy, is that a practice that depends on having money - of your own, or your college's. If you have to work to put yourself through school, you literally can't afford to do unpaid internships at national news channels, no matter how much you want to get into that business).

I forget, sometimes, how unusual and downright bizarre the small, elite (rich!) liberal arts colleges really are - until I encounter people who've never spent any time at one. It really is an attitude you have to experience to understand. They're amazing sites of opportunity - people attend this college (and others like it) precisely because they can set you up with amazing internships, give you the chance to do cool research, and put you at the head of the pack. (Which isn't to say that other kinds of institutions can't do this - of course they can. But you have to be much more willing to take the initiative at a huge research university, and I think there's a lot more specialization; I don't think there's as many students who, say, do lots of cool internships AND play in a musical ensemble AND play a varsity sport, while doing independent research in their major field. Feel free to rebut that assumption in the comments.)

And at the same time, these colleges are incredible bastions of privilege. They would, I know, HATE that characterization, and they do extend opportunities to many students from underprivileged backgrounds (they have so much money, they can afford to do so). And I know that many of their alumni go on to do amazing social justice-y kinds of things. But they also, by virtue of their wealth and connections (and incredibly strong alumni network, which fuels both those things), continue to raise standards for undergraduate success. The more students graduating from these schools rack up the nifty accomplishments, the harder it is for students at schools that don't make such accomplishments possible to distinguish themselves. (It's not impossible, of course. But harder.) And there's something about that that makes me a little uncomfortable. (Though it could just be my inferiority complex talking.)

Comments

[philosopherP]

I coached debate at a semi-elite SLAC. I had a few debaters with similar CVs... and the thing about those debaters is that they seemed to do nothing well, because they were seriously over committed. They had a long list of activities, but --even assuming they never sleep -- they didn't have enough time to do their activities, go to class sometimes and make a reasonable attempt at their homework.

Also, several of them seemed to peak at about their junior year in college and now are pretty much average folks working in corportations and praying they won't lose their jobs.

[Thoroughly Educated]

NK: Without disputing your excellent observations about the privlege both assumed and conferred by SuperSLACs (I went to a similar college), I just want to observe that students at this level of college and university have to have started the professionalization and hyperaccomplishment a lot earlier. I'm reading admissions files at a very, very highly selective institution right now, and I'm telling you, the applicants have already saved the world and played a varsity sport before their senior year in high school, usually several times over. It strikes me anew every admissions season: you and I would not have gotten into the colleges we went to if we were applying nowadays (and I consider us solidly above average). Hurray for the bottom of the baby bust!

[dance]

I tend to put all that mail aside and take a year to read it (last summer I caught up on two years worth of class notes).

So I am really curious to learn that our alma mater has a *Bhangra* dance troup. I thought I knew what Bhangra was, but maybe not.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

TE - yes, you're right, it starts earlier and earlier; which is disheartening in itself, because it shuts out people who should attend SuperSLAC - they won't ever get in! I tend to think trying to get in to the SuperSLACs drives all the horrid high school stuff, too (even when I was applying, though I was kind of an exception to that). Urgh.

dance - I will freely admit that I have no idea what Bhangra is, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the X College Bhangra Dance Troup consists of 4 people. Still, looks impressive, doesn't it??

[S. Worthen]

The running joke among my fellow graduates of a small private liberal arts college, especially right after we've just received the quarterly alum magazine, is "So why haven't you won the Nobel prize yet?" The magazine, perhaps needless to add, is one of those things that make most of us feel vaguely depressed, as if we're just frittering our lives away, thanks to the extraordinary accomplishments of many of our fellow graduates.

[squadratomagico]

Bhangra is a hybrid of Indian pop music and DJed rhythm and bass tracks, originally pioneered in British dance clubs in the 90s. It's never been all that popular in the US, though I kinda like it. I assume Bhangra dance is based upon Bollywood dance moves.

As for your observations about the new SLAC generation: I'm also in that boat. I don't think I'd get into my SLAC today, but even when I WAS there, I was quite jealous of other students who could apply for internships and travel abroad during their summers, while such opportunities were out of the question for me. The vast majority of students there came from wealthy, professionalized, and very well-traveled backgrounds that were quite different from my own (I was first-generation to college; blue- and pink-collar parents). Though I loved my SLAC, I also often felt ... I guess the word is "outclassed" there.

[ceresina]

I knew it! We're fellow alums! I even think we might've overlapped. But I'm pretty sure you didn't know me; no one did.
Addressing your main point, yes, it is very scary how much they've accomplished, and it is somewhat distressing to think that I wouldn't get it nowadays -- I just wasn't accomplished enough. I daydream of a time when kids can be kids again, and don't have to be professionalizing themselves in high school.

[the rebel lettriste]

For reals! This sort of thing drove me batty at my own (less elite than X college, but so is EVERYONE IN THE TOP 15!) fancy SLAC. I think my alma mater is at #12 on the US News listing.

A few years ago, I caught up with my SLAC friends, a lot of whom are ... drifting. They're depressed, have dropped out of prestigious grad. programs, can't seem to get through med school without shit piles of sleeping pills, or are working for ill-paid non-profity places that suck the life out of them. And they were all SO FANCY and WELL-ROUNDED, back in the day. Devoted to high grades, and running marathons, and obtaining bitchin' grants to go to China and stuff, and rejecting the Peace Corps as "too bourgeois" and instead going off themselves to join the SHining Path in Peru (I ain't lying.)

WHen I last saw them all, I was in the midst of dissertating, and complained about how it was just the suck. And the med school/sleeping pills friend explained to me that "sometimes doing what our parents think is best for us isn't what we want to do." Which made me laugh, because the PhD was SO not about my parents. My struggle was that it was about ME.

That intense pressure on 20 year olds doesn't always mean a life of eternal success. I am the only one in this SLAC group who actually completed grad school, and got a cool job, and now has any kind of "authority." Despite being a mediocre SLAC student, I seem to have a kind of moxie that they lack.

Thank god for one's own initiative, which is really the only thing that sustains. What do you do when you have to live your own life, and on your own terms, instead of fitting yourself into what everyone else thinks is impressive?

Bhangra is a hybrid of Indian pop music and DJed rhythm and bass tracks, originally pioneered in British dance clubs in the 90s.

*Groan*. Bhangra is a music/dance form originally from a part of India and Pakistan (the Punjab). It is easily hybridized, though, and intercollegegiate/intramural Bhangra competitions are typically not about traditional/classical Bhangra.

Those are some pretty impressive resumes! (Just for the record, though, I don't think it's that hard to intern at Argonne National Lab.; I'm not a physicist, but I know several undergrads in science and engineering who've interned at several national labs, including Argonne.)

[Lisa]

As a recent alum of a school I've seen referred to as Oligarch, I have to say a lot of these resumes give a bit of a false impression. You look at them and think, "How on earth can someone be on three sports teams and intern in a prestigious field and be in a dance troupe and be involved in student government??"

And the people who do these things work DAMN hard. They are doing something all the time, it's true. But it isn't actually impossible.

The trick is, these things aren't all at the same time, and many of them lead into each other. The scholarships, for example, come out of everything else, since they're just a sign that someone else looked at the student and was also impressed. Similarly with prestigious internships (which only last one summer), and the honors thesis on "scary quantum physics topic" quite likely comes out of research done and skills learned interning at the physics lab. The three sports are usually different seasons, and the Bhangra troupe practices 1-2 hours a week and puts on one annual performance for the international fair.

Of course, I spent my four years at Oligarch steadily scaling back my activities, and was never even in the running for any named scholarships. I was getting the feeling that I didn't want to spend my entire life running quite that hard.

the rebel lettriste got it in one: What do you do when you have to live your own life, and on your own terms, instead of fitting yourself into what everyone else thinks is impressive?

[RednBlack]

As a former college debater at a pretty-elite SLAC, let me tell you about the road less traveled. Yeah, in a way, I was overcommitted...worked 8-10 hours a week (whoop dee doo....food and housing was free...65 bucks a week? what to do with it? buys some books, some pot, coupla casino trips...), did some volunteering and threw my heart into my debate team. At some point, did I care about my schoolwork? Yeah...the ideas (I studied race and sociology) but the putting in the hours, reading all the books? I think I'm brilliant at what I'm brilliant at, which is not much. I get discourse on people...but what does that even mean? You're alums you feel are mediocre...try this, I worked for "SPAM" producers for a while, talked my way into an ivy leauge graduate program (at an education school people, were not talking about something hard like philosophy or physics), dropped out because I thought it was BS, worked as a reporter to get a foot in the door in local politics, went to work for a pol with great ideas and a scathing personality that made me hate myself, and now im working in real estate...in this market. And went to tried to run for president of my local politcal organization yesterday, and was chastised for coming prepared with "ideas" and "a bio" and was given 20 seconds to speak, after a fight erupted between local politicians. Yeah, my SLAC told me I'd change the world...and I figured, go the road less traveled. Screw law school. So, yeah, I think my undergrad alma mater is nuts too...buts there many brands of nuts. Change the world nuts is much worse than overachiever nuts, especially when you sprinkle in all that icky 'privledge' everyone here is talking about. (I love how everyones not mentioning what school they went to.
-

[OurCommencementSpeakrKicksUrsNeDayOfTheWeek(ItwasMr.President)]

PS WTF is an EPH!!! lol. (except a funny way to playfully curse out a rival school member in print...) We had these tee-shirts that..anyway...no need to talk about anatomy here.

[?]

Um where did my previous posts go?

[New Kid on the Hallway]

ceresina - wow! I'm super curious who you are now. I didn't know anyone either - whenever I meet an alum we have to do the "did you know X" game, and I never, ever know them. ;-)

Lisa, I totally get your point, and actually, I was thinking about that when I wrote this - that in fact, at this particular SLAC, it's not as hard as it looks to amass such a resume. I suspect that school has become very good at turning lots of things that people do into resume units. And you and the rebel lettriste are absolutely right about the need for one's own initiative. Most of my classmates have very much settled down by now, but it's weird living up to the college expectations - a dear friend of mine suffered quite a lot of angst when she realized she "only" wanted to do an M.A. because she really didn't like the research and academia-focus of a Ph.D. program, because she was convinced she "should" be doing a Ph.D. and would be an underachiever if she didn't.

And RednBlack, you definitely beat my own commencement speaker! (former dean of Yale Law and not someone I think I quite agree with.) And at least we're not a wussy bird. :-P