Living it Large

Watching the documentary “Born Rich” exposed me to another side of American lives that I never knew about. I used to think that worlds like that of Gossip Girl didn’t really exist. Who is able to have balls in the middle of the year for no reason? Who actually holds galas that only people with invitation can get into? I have never thought of myself as ever becoming that type of person, and have never met any one of those class statuses, especially before coming to Harvard.

Home is 3000 miles away in Oakland, CA. The culture here and the culture there is absolutely different. Maybe I have just been surrounded by the same type of people for too long, but I used to pride myself for having friends of every different race and thought that my social group at home was pretty much the opposite of homogenous. Coming to Harvard proved me wrong. All my friends back home listened to the same type of music, dressed pretty much the same way, and basically had the same type of favorite everything. Ranging from restaurants to stores to shop from to places to hang out. It was not that hard to relate to one another.

Our lives were definitely not as adventurous as those of the kids from “Born Rich.” At most for a friend’s birthday, there was a party at someone’s house, or if one can fork over a huge sum of money, then at a hotel room. But that was the basis of our parties. We never dressed up to go to these parties, the most dressed up we got was to go clubbing. Watching the documentary was somehow like watching a foreign alien on another planet, it was unrealistic in my head. Even my close group of friends at Harvard range from lower class, to working class, to lower middle class. My freshman roommate was from New York City and she was able to fly whenever she wanted to visit her boyfriend and went home every other weekend. Her extravagant lifestyle differed greatly from mine and we never hung out in the same crowd. It saddens me that I cannot be closer friends with people who are from a different social status as me.