And more ugh

Disclaimer: I'm overtired, my allergies are in overdrive, I probably won't be home for any amount of time (other than maybe to inhale dinner, but that might also be a 'grab something on the way' thing) until after 8 pm tonight, so I'm already in a bad mood.

I am reading more about the admissions scandal. Apparently it was mostly getting people spots on teams (despite lack of athletic credentials) so they'd have a "lock" on admission, is that right?

I don't know. This is where one of my Inner Children, the one that is like a blend of Linus van Pelt (in the sense of believing in fairness and ethics) and Louise Belcher (who also wants fairness, but mostly in the sense of things needing to be fair to HER, but also RAGE) is stomping around and yelling.

I mean, yeah yeah yeah, I know: rich kids have always had the way smoothed for them. Kids whose parents have "influence" get extra perks. That's how it's always been, and it was that way back when I was being teased by those rich kids for wearing Sears-brand jeans instead of Jordache, and was being ostracized to eat my lunch alone. (Which may actually be why this bothers me so far out of proportion to its actual effect on me: it's pretty darn clear that I got into the several universities I applied to on my own merits (Well, I was technically a "legacy" at Michigan, given my parents were graduates, but so were thousands of other kids). And my own school, given it's comparative low-status, we won't be involved in this thing)

But yeah, it does bother me.

Early this morning, dragging myself out of bed as the thunderstorms we're now having began, I thought again of something I heard NEARLY EVERY DARN WEEK when I was in junior high, and which I hated:

"Well, actually.....you know Einstein was a C student."

This was invariably said to me by (a) a boy (the girls had other ways of "othering" me) and (b) someone who was himself earning Cs - not because he was a brilliant lateral thinker who didn't fit in, but because he just didn't do a lot of the work. But usually, he fancied himself a brilliant lateral thinker who didn't fit in. And I was, by opposition, the boring little swot who wanted to please the teachers. And so, in the mythology of the schoolyard, Mr. Imma-remind-you-about-Einstein would have some kind of glorious and brilliant career where he made a lot of money, and I would wind up AT BEST as some kind of low-level civil-servant type position. Because OF COURSE the people who earn good grades are uncreative sheep who are best suited for those kinds of jobs where the brilliant lateral thinkers get to scream at them when the "sheep" can't break the rules for them.

But yeah. That's....not something I need inhabiting my mind this morning, but it popped back up in the wake of all this.

Because I expect the meme is going to be now "Look, if getting in to college is corrupt, we can't trust anything academic; the only measure of a person's worth is how 'cool' they are or how much money they make" and of course then I fail on both counts, at least by American standards. (Yes, I know: by global standards I am incredibly wealthy and I should probably sell all I own and give the money to the poor in sub-Saharan Africa or something)

And I'm going through another bout of that feeling that literally the only thing I've ever been good at is taking tests and doing schoolwork, and if that's now called in to question....

(And from what I've read, "Einstein was  a C student" isn't even literally true).

But yeah. One thing the late 2010s has done is make me question all my life choices when it's too late to go back and change them.

And yet, weirdly, at the same time, it makes me Donald-Duck-splutter at "The World," because really? Wealth and "importance" are not the things that matter, but it seems like increasingly our culture is drifting towards them being the only things that matter. I regularly experience some kind of weird disconnect where in church and in my own devotional reading, everything is all about how everyone matters, everyone is precious, that yes, some behaviors are bad and should be rejected and repented of....and then I go out into the world and either see people being lionized and held up as "more important" for some really rather silly things, or people making small missteps that they repent of, and yet people are unwilling to forgive and I don't know. Yes, I know we never lived in a "Christian nation" regardless of what some say, but I think increasingly the world is....I won't even say post-Christian; I will say "post-eternal-belief-systems" because I think someone who is a genuine Buddhist or neo-pagan or whatever group they belong to, where there's a strong ethical core....most faith or philosophical systems seem to share the idea of "everyone has value" and also "treat the other person the way you would like to be treated" (or, "That which is abhorrent to you, do not do to your neighbor" or "Love your neighbor as yourself") but more and more it seems like the Golden Rule is really "he who has the gold makes the rules" and yes, perhaps it has always been thus, but....more and more it seems like everyone is just out for what he or she can grab, even if it means throwing an elbow in their nearest-and-dearests' guts to do so. And that money and "bling" and power are what matter, and knowledge or study is pointless, and in some cases, people who are willing to put in hard work are chumps, and....I don't know. For me, there is that conflict: the set of "eternal values" I was taught from childhood on, where the sub-lesson was "if you abide by these rules you will do okay....you may not be rich but you will be okay, and you will have the satisfaction of having dealt fairly with others" but on the other side so often we see people who just....grab what they want...getting ahead, and often the people who DID do fair-dealing wind up losing their business, or getting shut out of good things, or whatever. And while some people might say "Just wait, Karma is merely lacing up her butt-kicking boots" (which isn't even the correct interpretation of the concept of Karma), it is....well, one of those "When, Lord, when?" moments in our history, I think.

I don't know. I can only do what I can do. I can't bring myself to depart from the ethical system I was taught growing up. (partly because I KNOW, the one time I decide to break a rule, I get caught, that's just how life works: other people can get away with it but for some reason I can't). But it's still frustrating as heck, and it doesn't help to have the old specters of self-doubt from my junior-high years cropping up in my memory.


And yeah, also: I guess I have to recognize that I had an easier path than some kids did. For one thing, I'm white....and I had parents who valued education so I got the support I needed, I had things like a mom who saw to it that I was up, fed, dressed, and had a packed lunch well before the school bus was due. (Not all kids have that; I remember some years ago when a woman in my book club who was a minister was doing her stint at....I think it was a v. small Methodist congregation in town....she talked about buying *alarm clocks* for some of the kids at one of the local schools that tended to serve (because of its location) the lower-income population; she said in many of the households the parents either figured the kids were on their own to get up and get ready, or the parents didn't have parenting skills, or the parents themselves were exhausted from working the night shift and couldn't be relied upon to be awake to get the kid up at 7 am). And so, yeah, there are people who would make me feel guilty for the advantages, such as they are, that my background gave me - caring parents, library access, people willing to help when I needed it*

And I had the money to pay my way through school....money from grandparents' estate. It was earmarked for education; I could not have burned through it partying if I had wanted to. But I was also the kind of kid who was raised to take VERY seriously the admonition of "this money was left to you for...." 

(*When I struggled in college physics, the son of a friend of my dad's - who was a Naval Academy graduate home, I think, on leave for that summer - arranged to tutor me until I "got it")

Though I don't know. In a way those advantages feel different to someone arranging a water-polo career for a kid who can't even really swim all that much.  I guess part of my frustration is that come a Cultural Revolution, I'd be as much up against that wall (because of my background and such) as the people who bought their kid a slot on the tennis team or something, or who falsified a friendship with a trainer that didn't actually exist...

So not only am I frustrated when I see our students trying hard and struggling because the deck is stacked against them in a lot of ways, I feel guilty that the deck wasn't stacked *more* against me, in some kind of weird way. I mean, I'm grateful for the advantages I had, don't get me wrong - but I also feel like I can't decry this scandal as much as someone else might....because what if I DID get into Michigan mainly because I was a "legacy" and they thought my parents would give more money (They thought wrong, then, and my parents were never much in the way of donors to begin with).


But yeah, this also cements another decision I'd been leaning toward. I won't give money to political campaigns/causes because I feel like too often that money is used unwisely, and doesn't actually benefit anyone buy those who ALREADY have money. But now, I'm beginning to think: don't give money to schools. I haven't re-upped my donation to my grad school this year, partly out of frugality. But maybe I don't at all, just because. (I do still give to a group that provides scholarships to students with Native heritage, but that's not tied to a university).

But yeah, it just makes me mad. All of it. Mad at the world today.