9 ms·

The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life (2014)

91 points by randomname2 11y ago

rl3 11y ago
>These are kids who have no ability to measure their own worth in any realistic way—either you are on top of the world, or you are worthless. And that kind of all-or-nothing mentality really pervades the whole system. Replace kids with founders and it's still just as true. Coincidentally, many Ivy League grads end up starting startups.
- gok2 11y ago
  Completely agree. ivy league grad, started startup, failed ofc and felt worthless for a while. But it passed away after I got out of the building and talked to other founders, they are in a worse situation :P
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    My feelings are mixed: I find it both funny and sad that what made you feel better was seeing that others are worse off. Perhaps a reflection of our culture in general?
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      In engineering we call that calibration. From what I understood he did not felt schadenfreude.
    - randycupertino 11y ago
      They've done studies about this, basically your happiness is calibrated against whether or not you are better or worse off status wise compared to your immediate peer group.
- hammock 11y ago
  Applies to kids from the hood as well
  - thex10 11y ago
    Either you've made it out the hood or you haven't.
paulsutter 11y ago
Reminds me of this Louis CK video on the meaning of being white: http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg
rodionos 11y ago
> Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League I will consider this option in earnest once our own kids get acceptance letters.
irremediable 11y ago
Am I right in thinking the most sensible option (for most college-going people) in the US is to go to a state college for the first year or so, then transfer to somewhere more prestigious? (I'm British, and I don't have any firsthand experience of the American higher education system.)
- atomical 11y ago
  The most sensible option is community college for two years and then transferring to a state school.
  - jrkatz 11y ago
    Unfortunately there are a lot of places in the states where that's not practical. Many, many students from my high school tried this route. The local CC has an arrangement with UCLA, so if the student gets good grades in a specific curriculum, they are guaranteed admission to UCLA for their final two years of college. In theory, that's great, but in practice the CC is underfunded and there aren't enough classes offered, so it takes 3, or even 4 years, to get into all the classes required for the transfer. Upon getting into UCLA they find their department won't accept some of their CC classes for credit because they weren't rigorous enough, or that they need some prereqs that weren't offered at the CC, and it will actually take 3 years at the UC campus to graduate. They enter the workforce 2 years after their peers who went straight to 4 year universities and the 3 years of CC is easily more expensive than the 1 year of UC tuition saved, especially considering they fed and housed themselves for 2 extra years. Their lifetime earnings drop or they have to retire later. None of this is their fault, either: The CC eagerly offers the few students who successfully (and luckily) navigated the class scheduling and credit transferring bureaucracy as the mode, and a 17 year old kid -- likely the first in their family to attend college -- isn't equipped to evaluate those claims. After all, why would they distrust the CC? They're told they'll save money and graduate at the same time, with the same degree, as their friends who went straight to UCLA and there's no reason for them to doubt that. While I'm sure many CCs are perfectly good places to spend the first 2 years of college, there are at least some tar pits out there. It's a real shame, too.
  - 11y ago
JFlash 11y ago
Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so do I push my theoretical children into this race or do I let them eat into precious time to figure things out?
- x5n1 11y ago
  The funny part is you could easily accelerate the figuring out part by doing some life stories. You could help kids figure out what they want out of life by giving them case stories about other people's lives as accurately as possible. Instead none of that knowledge or relationship skills are taught in schools. Instead they teach mostly useless technical skills, harass kids in physical education, allow a small percentage participation in sports, give a little information about having sex... and send them on their merry way to trial and error. Society priories are as screwed as they were in religious-based ideologies. Instead of it being about God it is now all about production and consumption. Not how to know what you want out of life and how to get it. Many people who are on the accelerated path end up losers in the game of life just as many who get their own their own time.
  - lumpypua 11y ago
    Studs Terkel - Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_What_They_Do_All_Day_and_How_They_Feel_About_What_They_Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_Wha...
- zappo2938 11y ago
  Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't teach people how to be good parents. The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class. My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career closet. The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are going to start this again?
littletimmy 11y ago
The problem is that in the United States, a college is not a place to learn but rather a finishing school to define to what social class you belong. If you go to the Ivy League, you're a member of the elite. What to do to get there? Curate your entire life to be appealing to a bunch of humanities majors who couldn't get a job other than reading admissions apps. I completely agree with Mr Deresiewicz's characterization of that as "excellent sheep". As a person from the third-world who went to the Ivy League, I am also scornful of America's culture of self-congratulation. When I went to Dartmouth, I remember one of the first things during our orientation was a senior faculty member giving a speech to us telling us all great we all were to be here, how selectively we've been chosen, and all that. I went there to learn, not to learn how cool I am. What rubbish.
- brandnewlow 11y ago
  Former humanities major who couldn't get a job other than reading admission apps reporting in! There's a veneer of truth in your dig, but ultimately I had very little actual decision making power. Folks fitting your description were there to review applications and summarize them for higher-ups in the org, the deans. When I was there, their main skill was in identifying applicants who fit the admission criteria defined and redefined annually by the Trustees and Faculty of the University. You can make an argument that those people might be looking for the wrong things, but it does sort of upend your point.
- walshemj 11y ago
  And your point is? in both the USA and the UK (even more so) STEM majors are considered as greasy engineers. Ivy's and Oxbridge are more about forming networks for later life - just as public(UK)/Private(USA) school is. And cultures that fetishize STEM careers have just as many problems - how many kids have been destroyed by tiger parenting or pushed into careers they don't like or have aptitude for.
  - epalmer 11y ago
    As a parent my wife and I saw our role with my two girls of exposing them to as much variety and diversity in the early years as I could. Arts, music, robotics, programming, puzzles and so much more. The goal was to help my kids find something to be passionate about. My oldest just graduated with a degree in sociology which is not one of the most employable degrees for an undergraduate. She is working part time in a library and living at home. She was meant to be a librarian and all that know her, know that about her. She has to be get a Masters of Library Science to be a librarian. She will have to put in two or so years at the library she works at to go full time without the MLS. So she stays with us and puts in the time. The good news is that she knows what she wants to do the rest of her life and to be severely dyslexic and be in a library is just awesome. Her mom and I are fine with her living at home till she can be full time since she is a saver and is responsible. And as a person that has had mostly STEM related careers that I have loved, my youngest seems to be moving towards mechanical engineering next year. I love this about her as it warms my STEM heart. Most important is that both seem to have found their passions. If you love your work you will likely be in the flow some and who can ask for more than that out of a career. After building several businesses my current employment gives me the opportunity to do what I love (programming and systems integration) and be in the flow. I could not be happier at work and I want that for my kids. Passion alignment is a great thing. EDIT: And my youngest has some graphic design and art talent which I am sure will help her be a better design engineer. She was in doubt in high school if she should juggle the art and design classes along with her tech speciality center IT classes. We supported the extra work simply for the benefit of her love for creating art and design.
japhyceo 11y ago
I was hoping to goto MIT before I entered my freshman year. But none of my friends were in honors and this created one of the worst times of my life. The previous year had been one of the best. In that dark year, at 14, I became focused on hacking and social engineering. I had lost my best friend and girlfriend, and the dynamics of it all isolated me from my other friends. Being 13 and somehow in love with the prettiest girl and then losing it all was devastating. I barely graduated but had a fun and worked on cool side projects. At 18, I met a hardware engineer and went on to work on various projects. I have had a lot of interesting job offers or deals just by meeting people. I had a major investment bank recruit me but I never even had a real job and probably couldn't get hired at Burger King. The deal I was offered was absurd. In the end, I declined it and somewhat regret it. But my point is, had I dated that girl throughout high school, I probably would had went to a great University. And today would be some strange diminished version of myself.
aaronem 11y ago
> And I think we see that in the last 50 years, the meritocracy has created a world that’s getting better and better for the meritocracy and worse and worse for everyone else. But weren't you saying just the opposite? That being part of the elite, which here you call "meritocracy" because you're playing a card trick, drives people crazy? Here's what I think: You're talking to the elite (if you weren't, you wouldn't be in the Atlantic), and you know said elite are more comfortable thinking of themselves in terms of "meritocracy" (even though one of your theses is that there's no meaningful merit involved), and you also know that pretending to care about unequal distribution of social benefits is currently in fashion among your audience (hence the preference for "meritocracy", because it implies that your audience's unequal share is earned). Keeping all three of these plates spinning at once is difficult; the sentence I quoted is them all hitting the ground at once. >Davis: Some criticize this kind of self-reflection as narcissistic[...] >Deresiewicz: [...]the main point is to know yourself so you know what you want in the world. You can decide, what is the best work for me, what is the best career for me, what are the rewards that I really want. And maybe you’ll end up saying that I do need a certain level of wealth, but you will know it because you will have come to know yourself. Nope. Nothing narcissistic here. You know, in ages past when countries had explicit aristocracies rather than the implicit ones which deposed and replaced them, "the main point" as you put it was to serve others, rather than oneself. Can't imagine what brought that to mind just now, though. Totally unrelated to anything, no doubt. >Gaining self-knowledge isn’t a simple or predictable process. Are there certain things that can only be learned outside the classroom? Could there possibly be any wronger question to ask? >Aside from the classes themselves, the fact that we’ve created a system where kids are constantly busy, and have no time for solitude or reflection, is going to take its toll. We need to create a situation where kids feel like they don’t have to be “on” all the time. Are you sure? What it sounds like you're saying is that "we" have been doing the best "we" can for decades, and the result is barely tolerable. Are you sure it wouldn't help more if you just stopped creating situations? If the problem is that you're raising your kids inside a Skinner box, why would you think the solution is to make the walls less opaque? Are these the only terms in which you can think? You don't need to answer that one. >When I taught humanities classes, I never talked about self-reflection, and I never invited students to talk about their feelings or their backgrounds or their experiences. Well, you got that right, at least, if only by accident. And it has to have been by accident, because you think you got it wrong. The context couches this as a failure on your part, but why would it be? Why would you think that someone else's self-reflection should have anything to do with you? You don't need to answer that one, either. So how does this amazing article finish? With its subject telling us about his own college experience, in the course of which comes this marvel, which I've emphasized so you don't miss it: >I drifted for two or three years after college until I reached a cinematic moment in my life[...] Why cinematic? Because we've all seen this movie. To call it "transformative" would be erroneous, because a plot twist doesn't change the shape of the plot, it's part of the story all along; to call it an "epiphany" would be the same, plus stupid, because we all know God is dead. Indeed, part of the interview describes how academia has tried to fill the former social role of religion and failed at it. But this possibly quite significant point is glossed over entirely because it's not important to Deresiewicz's movie and therefore not important to the article or the audience, who are (presumed to be) in much the same state as the subject: their problem isn't that they've failed to live the movie plot they thought they wanted, it's that they've succeeded at it and found themselves nonetheless unfulfilled. Which is fine as far as it goes, what a shame for them but who cares, right? Except they've managed to inflict the same disaster on the next generation, because they are not only narcissistic but incredibly stupid besides. And, having recognized the existence and nature of this error, what do they feel really matters? Is it that their descendants, their students, their supposed protegees, are going to have to find their way out of this clusterfuck on their own because everyone who might be expected to help them is too self-absorbed to bother and too stupid to succeed at it anyway? Of course not. No, what matters is who gets the blame, specifically that it be anyone but they themselves: >But the take home message is that everyone has to liberate themselves from this system. Education should be an act of liberation. We need to make a better system but ultimately everybody has to claim their freedom for themselves. These are literally the last words in the article. Do you think that's an accident? Because it's not an accident.
JDiculous 11y ago
I witnessed this firsthand getting a B.S. at a state school and a Masters at an Ivy. The Ivy kids were differentiated more by their sheep/robot like work ethic and dedication. Naturally the far majority of them pursued careers in investment banking and management consulting, careers that are essentially an extension of this hoop jumping. I've decided that I'm not going to raise my kids in the U.S. This absurd hoop jumping isn't the optimum way to raise a successful kid, and it sure as hell doesn't create happy childhoods.
mwhuang2 11y ago
I'm from a Chinese family. Many of my friends and I were raised with this mindset. They went off to attend elite colleges, but I couldn't stomach the endless hoop jumping and toxic achievement culture, so I just did my own thing and went off to my local state school. While I've had some ups and downs, my life experiences were unique and I prefer not to form regrets about the past.

91 points by randomname2 11y ago

rl3 11y ago

>These are kids who have no ability to measure their own worth in any realistic way—either you are on top of the world, or you are worthless. And that kind of all-or-nothing mentality really pervades the whole system. Replace kids with founders and it's still just as true. Coincidentally, many Ivy League grads end up starting startups.

gok2 11y ago
Completely agree. ivy league grad, started startup, failed ofc and felt worthless for a while. But it passed away after I got out of the building and talked to other founders, they are in a worse situation :P
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  My feelings are mixed: I find it both funny and sad that what made you feel better was seeing that others are worse off. Perhaps a reflection of our culture in general?
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    In engineering we call that calibration. From what I understood he did not felt schadenfreude.
  - randycupertino 11y ago
    They've done studies about this, basically your happiness is calibrated against whether or not you are better or worse off status wise compared to your immediate peer group.
hammock 11y ago
Applies to kids from the hood as well
- thex10 11y ago
  Either you've made it out the hood or you haven't.

paulsutter 11y ago

Reminds me of this Louis CK video on the meaning of being white: http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg

rodionos 11y ago

> Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League I will consider this option in earnest once our own kids get acceptance letters.

irremediable 11y ago

Am I right in thinking the most sensible option (for most college-going people) in the US is to go to a state college for the first year or so, then transfer to somewhere more prestigious? (I'm British, and I don't have any firsthand experience of the American higher education system.)

atomical 11y ago
The most sensible option is community college for two years and then transferring to a state school.
- jrkatz 11y ago
  Unfortunately there are a lot of places in the states where that's not practical. Many, many students from my high school tried this route. The local CC has an arrangement with UCLA, so if the student gets good grades in a specific curriculum, they are guaranteed admission to UCLA for their final two years of college. In theory, that's great, but in practice the CC is underfunded and there aren't enough classes offered, so it takes 3, or even 4 years, to get into all the classes required for the transfer. Upon getting into UCLA they find their department won't accept some of their CC classes for credit because they weren't rigorous enough, or that they need some prereqs that weren't offered at the CC, and it will actually take 3 years at the UC campus to graduate. They enter the workforce 2 years after their peers who went straight to 4 year universities and the 3 years of CC is easily more expensive than the 1 year of UC tuition saved, especially considering they fed and housed themselves for 2 extra years. Their lifetime earnings drop or they have to retire later. None of this is their fault, either: The CC eagerly offers the few students who successfully (and luckily) navigated the class scheduling and credit transferring bureaucracy as the mode, and a 17 year old kid -- likely the first in their family to attend college -- isn't equipped to evaluate those claims. After all, why would they distrust the CC? They're told they'll save money and graduate at the same time, with the same degree, as their friends who went straight to UCLA and there's no reason for them to doubt that. While I'm sure many CCs are perfectly good places to spend the first 2 years of college, there are at least some tar pits out there. It's a real shame, too.
- 11y ago

JFlash 11y ago

Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so do I push my theoretical children into this race or do I let them eat into precious time to figure things out?

x5n1 11y ago
The funny part is you could easily accelerate the figuring out part by doing some life stories. You could help kids figure out what they want out of life by giving them case stories about other people's lives as accurately as possible. Instead none of that knowledge or relationship skills are taught in schools. Instead they teach mostly useless technical skills, harass kids in physical education, allow a small percentage participation in sports, give a little information about having sex... and send them on their merry way to trial and error. Society priories are as screwed as they were in religious-based ideologies. Instead of it being about God it is now all about production and consumption. Not how to know what you want out of life and how to get it. Many people who are on the accelerated path end up losers in the game of life just as many who get their own their own time.
- lumpypua 11y ago
  Studs Terkel - Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_What_They_Do_All_Day_and_How_They_Feel_About_What_They_Do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working:_People_Talk_About_Wha...
zappo2938 11y ago
Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't teach people how to be good parents. The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class. My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career closet. The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are going to start this again?

littletimmy 11y ago

The problem is that in the United States, a college is not a place to learn but rather a finishing school to define to what social class you belong. If you go to the Ivy League, you're a member of the elite. What to do to get there? Curate your entire life to be appealing to a bunch of humanities majors who couldn't get a job other than reading admissions apps. I completely agree with Mr Deresiewicz's characterization of that as "excellent sheep". As a person from the third-world who went to the Ivy League, I am also scornful of America's culture of self-congratulation. When I went to Dartmouth, I remember one of the first things during our orientation was a senior faculty member giving a speech to us telling us all great we all were to be here, how selectively we've been chosen, and all that. I went there to learn, not to learn how cool I am. What rubbish.

brandnewlow 11y ago
Former humanities major who couldn't get a job other than reading admission apps reporting in! There's a veneer of truth in your dig, but ultimately I had very little actual decision making power. Folks fitting your description were there to review applications and summarize them for higher-ups in the org, the deans. When I was there, their main skill was in identifying applicants who fit the admission criteria defined and redefined annually by the Trustees and Faculty of the University. You can make an argument that those people might be looking for the wrong things, but it does sort of upend your point.
walshemj 11y ago
And your point is? in both the USA and the UK (even more so) STEM majors are considered as greasy engineers. Ivy's and Oxbridge are more about forming networks for later life - just as public(UK)/Private(USA) school is. And cultures that fetishize STEM careers have just as many problems - how many kids have been destroyed by tiger parenting or pushed into careers they don't like or have aptitude for.
- epalmer 11y ago
  As a parent my wife and I saw our role with my two girls of exposing them to as much variety and diversity in the early years as I could. Arts, music, robotics, programming, puzzles and so much more. The goal was to help my kids find something to be passionate about. My oldest just graduated with a degree in sociology which is not one of the most employable degrees for an undergraduate. She is working part time in a library and living at home. She was meant to be a librarian and all that know her, know that about her. She has to be get a Masters of Library Science to be a librarian. She will have to put in two or so years at the library she works at to go full time without the MLS. So she stays with us and puts in the time. The good news is that she knows what she wants to do the rest of her life and to be severely dyslexic and be in a library is just awesome. Her mom and I are fine with her living at home till she can be full time since she is a saver and is responsible. And as a person that has had mostly STEM related careers that I have loved, my youngest seems to be moving towards mechanical engineering next year. I love this about her as it warms my STEM heart. Most important is that both seem to have found their passions. If you love your work you will likely be in the flow some and who can ask for more than that out of a career. After building several businesses my current employment gives me the opportunity to do what I love (programming and systems integration) and be in the flow. I could not be happier at work and I want that for my kids. Passion alignment is a great thing. EDIT: And my youngest has some graphic design and art talent which I am sure will help her be a better design engineer. She was in doubt in high school if she should juggle the art and design classes along with her tech speciality center IT classes. We supported the extra work simply for the benefit of her love for creating art and design.

japhyceo 11y ago

I was hoping to goto MIT before I entered my freshman year. But none of my friends were in honors and this created one of the worst times of my life. The previous year had been one of the best. In that dark year, at 14, I became focused on hacking and social engineering. I had lost my best friend and girlfriend, and the dynamics of it all isolated me from my other friends. Being 13 and somehow in love with the prettiest girl and then losing it all was devastating. I barely graduated but had a fun and worked on cool side projects. At 18, I met a hardware engineer and went on to work on various projects. I have had a lot of interesting job offers or deals just by meeting people. I had a major investment bank recruit me but I never even had a real job and probably couldn't get hired at Burger King. The deal I was offered was absurd. In the end, I declined it and somewhat regret it. But my point is, had I dated that girl throughout high school, I probably would had went to a great University. And today would be some strange diminished version of myself.

aaronem 11y ago

> And I think we see that in the last 50 years, the meritocracy has created a world that’s getting better and better for the meritocracy and worse and worse for everyone else. But weren't you saying just the opposite? That being part of the elite, which here you call "meritocracy" because you're playing a card trick, drives people crazy? Here's what I think: You're talking to the elite (if you weren't, you wouldn't be in the Atlantic), and you know said elite are more comfortable thinking of themselves in terms of "meritocracy" (even though one of your theses is that there's no meaningful merit involved), and you also know that pretending to care about unequal distribution of social benefits is currently in fashion among your audience (hence the preference for "meritocracy", because it implies that your audience's unequal share is earned). Keeping all three of these plates spinning at once is difficult; the sentence I quoted is them all hitting the ground at once. >Davis: Some criticize this kind of self-reflection as narcissistic[...] >Deresiewicz: [...]the main point is to know yourself so you know what you want in the world. You can decide, what is the best work for me, what is the best career for me, what are the rewards that I really want. And maybe you’ll end up saying that I do need a certain level of wealth, but you will know it because you will have come to know yourself. Nope. Nothing narcissistic here. You know, in ages past when countries had explicit aristocracies rather than the implicit ones which deposed and replaced them, "the main point" as you put it was to serve others, rather than oneself. Can't imagine what brought that to mind just now, though. Totally unrelated to anything, no doubt. >Gaining self-knowledge isn’t a simple or predictable process. Are there certain things that can only be learned outside the classroom? Could there possibly be any wronger question to ask? >Aside from the classes themselves, the fact that we’ve created a system where kids are constantly busy, and have no time for solitude or reflection, is going to take its toll. We need to create a situation where kids feel like they don’t have to be “on” all the time. Are you sure? What it sounds like you're saying is that "we" have been doing the best "we" can for decades, and the result is barely tolerable. Are you sure it wouldn't help more if you just stopped creating situations? If the problem is that you're raising your kids inside a Skinner box, why would you think the solution is to make the walls less opaque? Are these the only terms in which you can think? You don't need to answer that one. >When I taught humanities classes, I never talked about self-reflection, and I never invited students to talk about their feelings or their backgrounds or their experiences. Well, you got that right, at least, if only by accident. And it has to have been by accident, because you think you got it wrong. The context couches this as a failure on your part, but why would it be? Why would you think that someone else's self-reflection should have anything to do with you? You don't need to answer that one, either. So how does this amazing article finish? With its subject telling us about his own college experience, in the course of which comes this marvel, which I've emphasized so you don't miss it: >I drifted for two or three years after college until I reached a cinematic moment in my life[...] Why cinematic? Because we've all seen this movie. To call it "transformative" would be erroneous, because a plot twist doesn't change the shape of the plot, it's part of the story all along; to call it an "epiphany" would be the same, plus stupid, because we all know God is dead. Indeed, part of the interview describes how academia has tried to fill the former social role of religion and failed at it. But this possibly quite significant point is glossed over entirely because it's not important to Deresiewicz's movie and therefore not important to the article or the audience, who are (presumed to be) in much the same state as the subject: their problem isn't that they've failed to live the movie plot they thought they wanted, it's that they've succeeded at it and found themselves nonetheless unfulfilled. Which is fine as far as it goes, what a shame for them but who cares, right? Except they've managed to inflict the same disaster on the next generation, because they are not only narcissistic but incredibly stupid besides. And, having recognized the existence and nature of this error, what do they feel really matters? Is it that their descendants, their students, their supposed protegees, are going to have to find their way out of this clusterfuck on their own because everyone who might be expected to help them is too self-absorbed to bother and too stupid to succeed at it anyway? Of course not. No, what matters is who gets the blame, specifically that it be anyone but they themselves: >But the take home message is that everyone has to liberate themselves from this system. Education should be an act of liberation. We need to make a better system but ultimately everybody has to claim their freedom for themselves. These are literally the last words in the article. Do you think that's an accident? Because it's not an accident.

JDiculous 11y ago

I witnessed this firsthand getting a B.S. at a state school and a Masters at an Ivy. The Ivy kids were differentiated more by their sheep/robot like work ethic and dedication. Naturally the far majority of them pursued careers in investment banking and management consulting, careers that are essentially an extension of this hoop jumping. I've decided that I'm not going to raise my kids in the U.S. This absurd hoop jumping isn't the optimum way to raise a successful kid, and it sure as hell doesn't create happy childhoods.

mwhuang2 11y ago

I'm from a Chinese family. Many of my friends and I were raised with this mindset. They went off to attend elite colleges, but I couldn't stomach the endless hoop jumping and toxic achievement culture, so I just did my own thing and went off to my local state school. While I've had some ups and downs, my life experiences were unique and I prefer not to form regrets about the past.