What's this op-ed missing?

YGBFKM · Apr 7, 2013

The Big Ragu said:

Ya'll are right about it being a lame piece of writing -- whether it was meant to be satire or it was meant to be serious. And it's understandable why most reasonable adults read that and had the immediate "boo fucking hoo" reaction.

The only difference with me is that I see the kid who wrote it. It's hard for me to get all that indignant over something just because it is lame.

The why did the WSJ publish it question is legit. I can't really say why, other than that I think right now the feeling is kind of split between "Why did this get published?," and "Look at how many eyeballs that thing drew."

I know a couple of kids her age and were applying to colleges this year, and as mature as they seem for their age, it's mature in the sense of, "Look at how precocious that kid is!". ... they really are kids and clueless. Especially kids like her (I am guessing her background), who grew up in relatively sheltered environments, even as they were being encouraged to achieve.

She gets a pass from me. If anything, she was a kid who found a way to get her letter published in the WSJ as an op ed. Read it and roll your eyes, but she's still a 17 or 18 year old kid who has a lot of growing up to do.
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TINMHITTMAL

Starman · Apr 7, 2013

britwrit said:

The thing about the Ivy League (or at least it used to be, before the Great Funk) is that most any degree from them was worth something in the job market. My sister worked at a hedge fund in New York and she'd see Yalies who majored in Geology or Romance Languages start out in high-paying analyst positions. And the publishing world is littered with folk whose four years in the Harvard English department actually paid off (as opposed to it being their time before law school.)

So, as entitled and (let's be frank) race-baiting as her essay was, she had something of a point. She ground out four years in high school. Now she's got to grind out four more in college and hope those pay off?
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Yep. Life's tough.

YankeeFan · Apr 7, 2013

britwrit said:

The thing about the Ivy League (or at least it used to be, before the Great Funk) is that most any degree from them was worth something in the job market. My sister worked at a hedge fund in New York and she'd see Yalies who majored in Geology or Romance Languages start out in high-paying analyst positions. And the publishing world is littered with folk whose four years in the Harvard English department actually paid off (as opposed to it being their time before law school.)

So, as entitled and (let's be frank) race-baiting as her essay was, she had something of a point. She ground out four years in high school. Now she's got to grind out four more in college and hope those pay off?
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Membership has its advantages:

Every elite seeks its own perpetuation, of course, but that project is uniquely difficult in a society that’s formally democratic and egalitarian and colorblind. And it’s even more difficult for an elite that prides itself on its progressive politics, its social conscience, its enlightened distance from hierarchies of blood and birth and breeding.

Thus the importance, in the modern meritocratic culture, of the unacknowledged mechanisms that preserve privilege, reward the inside game, and ensure that the advantages enjoyed in one generation can be passed safely onward to the next.

The intermarriage of elite collegians is only one of these mechanisms — but it’s an enormously important one. The outraged reaction to her comments notwithstanding, Patton wasn’t telling Princetonians anything they didn’t already understand. Of course Ivy League schools double as dating services. Of course members of elites — yes, gender egalitarians, the males as well as the females — have strong incentives to marry one another, or at the very least find a spouse from within the wider meritocratic circle. What better way to double down on our pre-existing advantages? What better way to minimize, in our descendants, the chances of the dread phenomenon known as “regression to the mean”?

That this “assortative mating,” in which the best-educated Americans increasingly marry one another, also ends up perpetuating existing inequalities seems blindingly obvious, which is no doubt why it’s considered embarrassing and reactionary to talk about it too overtly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-secrets-of-princeton.html?smid=tw-share
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LongTimeListener · Apr 7, 2013

Starman said:

britwrit said:

The thing about the Ivy League (or at least it used to be, before the Great Funk) is that most any degree from them was worth something in the job market. My sister worked at a hedge fund in New York and she'd see Yalies who majored in Geology or Romance Languages start out in high-paying analyst positions. And the publishing world is littered with folk whose four years in the Harvard English department actually paid off (as opposed to it being their time before law school.)

So, as entitled and (let's be frank) race-baiting as her essay was, she had something of a point. She ground out four years in high school. Now she's got to grind out four more in college and hope those pay off?
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Yep. Life's tough.
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University of Michigan graduates (as she will eventually be) know this all too well.

Regarding the "grinding out": Who told her an Ivy League spot was guaranteed to be at the end of the rainbow? I think I know the answer.

britwrit · Apr 7, 2013

I don't know. I think I'm unhelpfully comparing my experience to hers. Kids have had it rough in the past (Spanish Flu anyone?) but I got blah grades in high school, little-better-than-blah in college and walked into a job in my field. And I sure wasn't studying three or four hours a night.

Starman · Apr 7, 2013

britwrit said:

I don't know. I think I'm unhelpfully comparing my experience to hers. Kids have had it rough in the past (Spanish Flu anyone?) but I got blah grades in high school, little-better-than-blah in college and walked into a job in my field. And I sure wasn't studying three or four hours a night.
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YMMV.

You may have just come along at a fortunate time in history when jobs were easy to find. We don't live in that time anymore.

So, as entitled and (let's be frank) race-baiting as her essay was, she had something of a point. She ground out four years in high school. Now she's got to grind out four more in college and hope those pay off?
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Let's just say the inherent sympathy factor for entitled race-baiter preppy princesses is generally not too high.

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