The College Query

As my junior year of high school is coming to a close, there is a constant buzz at my high school about what people will do after high school, because senior year is the time to prepare for whichever path you will end up taking. At my high school, the norm it seems is to go to a university after high school. So it seems most adults who I have had conversations with recently and even most other students have asked where I am looking, in terms of colleges. I just can't seem to escape that question, and even as I was browsing Facebook earlier today the question was posed for me to update my profile with that very information.

I have thought about the fact that this question is always asked many times but the fact that people focus on that so much in this area I something I did not consider until we studied social classes in my American Studies class. But one of the topics we learned about that is a source of social class is group of origin and group of aspiration, or the group that you are taught to want to be when you are older. Here in the North Shore we are raised by parents who mostly all went to college and have high paying business jobs, so that is the standard that has been set by our group of origin. Also, the group we are taught to aspire to be nowadays are high paying business men with degrees maybe even past what we the degree of our parents were so greater than a 4-year degree. I do not believe the group of origin and group of aspiration are always so similar however. For example, in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we learn that Gatsby's parents were, "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people," yet instead of aspiring to be just like them when he grew up he, "never really accepted them as his parents at all." (98) This shows that Gatsby did not have any desire to be like his parents, instead he joined the army and got as far away from home as possible, even being sent across the world, in order to pave his own path to his version of success, as an East Egger. 

It is just very interesting to think, after exploring the origins of my class, how in my area it can be so normal to hear the query about college multiple times a day, but in other neighborhoods it may not be even on the table and so therefore never mentioned. That is the difference between class in America, and it is sad because if someone does not have the option of college on the table, how are they supposed to secure a position from the ever decreasing number of jobs if they are competing against college-educated people. It would seem to me that the American dream value of mobility between classes is not nearly as simple as people would want it to be.