How It Feels to be Working Class Trying to Make It
Class is something most of us don’t talk about, but all of us engage in one way or another.
When I was in grad school, I was attending a fancy awards ceremony when the realization struck. Despite all my accomplishments, I still felt like an imposter—a working class person hiding out among elites.
I had pulled my only suit, bought at a thrift shop, from the back of my closet, and was feeling overdressed for my taste and underdressed for the occasion. Tickets were $150 a head, but I’d volunteered as an usher to earn my seat at the event. I was there to network, ostensibly, but in the moment, I was feeling more like I was there with the express purpose to wish that I wasn’t there.
As guests found their assigned seats, I found something alcoholic to drink and lingered back watching my future colleagues mingle. Since I’d been handing out nametags at the door, I knew that many of the giants of my field were there—executive directors, CEOs, department heads. In short, potential future employers.
I looked around and saw one of the catering staff standing next to me. Now here was someone I could pass the time with. I sidled over, asked him about his night, told him I used to do catering too, and we started talking about the food service business. Conversation meandered to the cost of housing, and we both joked that the only way we’d ever afford our own place in San Francisco was if we were to win it in a raffle.
I realized I’d done it again: I was chatting with the staff, and completely ignoring my colleagues. I found this happened often—at conferences, dinners, coffee hours, and now an awards ceremony. I always seek out the comfort and ease of hanging with the staff.
“So, you’re at Berkeley?”
The question came from the caterer, and I dreaded it as I always do in situations like this. An entire history seems contained in the query. One of privilege or lack of it, familial support or not, wealth and poverty. My new buddy and I were getting along fine, and the last thing I wanted was to feel out of place on both sides of the banquet hall.
I nodded sheepishly and murmured confirmation.
I struggled to get through my first two years of undergraduate education, which took place at my local community college while I lived near home and washed dishes to pay the bills. Most of my childhood friends were beginning their careers as housepainters or skilled tradesmen and it was tough to reconcile my homework load with their hard-partying habits, not to mention my late nights working at the restaurant. I got my first ever “D” grade. My father, a taxi driver, and my mother, a case worker at a non-profit, encouraged me and supported me however possible while acknowledging that paying for a four-year university was unrealistic and, besides, made little sense when the community college was free. After a few years, good enough grades earned me a slot with financial assistance at a state school, where I continued working 3 shifts a week at a restaurant to pay rent and buy books. I never lived on campus, and I spent very little time there; I was at work more than I was at school. No “Working Class Student Association” existed. And, as a transfer student, I felt like someone who’d come late to a party, and folks weren’t sure who’d invited him.
Later, in grad school at UC Berkeley, the feeling of not belonging persisted. While I took a research position to earn reduced tuition and cash for rent, most of my fellow students enjoyed the extra studying time that came with not needing to work. One of my peers mentioned being accepted with the help of a letter of recommendation from a US Senator. And some carried even more subtle badges of class identity: personal networks that verged on the nepotistic, ways of speaking that reflected private-school education, or a poise that bore proof of years of ballet lessons.
Every time I have a conversation with a fellow student who professed to have a physician, professor, or wealthy businessman for a parent, I was reminded how fraught the path to an elite institution is for those, like me, who hail from the lower classes. Many of my high school friends were just as brilliant, creative, or ambitious as those I met in grad school, but they simply could not make it over financial, cultural, or personal barriers to arrive there.
Clearly, real personal accomplishments aren’t lessened by backgrounds of privilege or access. But too often I felt like I was standing on the outside of a forbidden world, looking in.
College campuses are at the center of the class division in this country. While a college degree may mean less than ever in terms of increased opportunity and earning potential, not having a college degree also means more than ever. Those who haven’t gone to college are forsaken to a job market where the only reliably growing sector involves serving those who are better off than you. College attendance has been transformed from a laudable goal to a social imperative. And if some in the tech sector spurn a degree, it’s usually after fashionably “dropping out” of Stanford—something people like me would never dream of doing.
Back at the awards ceremony, my caterer buddy was called away to get back to work, and I was left alone, glass of white wine getting warm in my hand. I looked around at the tuxedos and evening gowns, and thought about how this is my professional world now, and about how it was time to begin acting like it. I sat down for dinner and met the big shots at my table.
I nodded along with the conversation, smiling absently, and wondered if I would ever feel as comfortable sitting at the table as I would cleaning it.
