16 ms·

Welcome, Freshmen. You Don't Deserve to Be Here

373 points by onedev 13y ago

webo 13y ago
"Dean Shaw announced that the freshman class included students from 49 states—"We miss you, Arkansas"—and 66 countries." From Arkansas here. Ouch.
- EricDeb 13y ago
  I've only driven through it but it was quite beautiful if that's any consolation.
- m0nty 13y ago
  Could you explain the reference? Cultural gap obscures meaning.
  - jamessb 13y ago
    The incoming class included at least one student from 49 of the 50 states - every state except Arkansas.
adamnemecek 13y ago
How delightfully nebulous and unspecific.
- hacknat 13y ago
  I know...isn't history a bitch. Sometimes being judged and accused is okay.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    But only for things you've done. I don't care what your background is, it's not easy to get into Stanford, and anyone who gets in should be congratulated.
nirmel 13y ago
It is a truth that we don't deserve anything we have, here in the upper class of the developed world. If we believe that in general believe have approximately the amount they deserve to have, then that would also mean that people who have nothing deserve nothing. For what fault of theirs? For being born somewhere poor, somewhere dirt poor. And if we don't deserve what we have, then we're obligated to help those who deserve to have more than they do.
- kansface 13y ago
  I agree with the point if not the article itself. The corollary to the dean's statement is the people who are starving in third world countries deserve it.
- icebraining 13y ago
  The poor don't deserve to be poor. And they don't deserve to not be poor. The whole concept, applied at a global level, is nothing more than yet another example of our need to wrap everything we see in pretty stories. I wish we had a more equal world, but I don't see why should I believe this to be anything more than a personal preference.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    At the very least, it's a personal preference that generally accords with other people's personal preferences when actually implemented. Highly egalitarian, highly productive societies are effective at sustaining themselves, defending themselves, and keeping their citizens happy -- in fact, more so compared to highly inegalitarian societies. So why the hell not?
hacknat 13y ago
Very, very good. I share the author's sentiments immensely, and he articulated these ideas much better than I ever could. However, the final lines bothered me: >> When you deserve it, come back to us. Share your service with your peers and your children. >>Then you'll be part of our family. Then you'll truly belong. I don't know what it would ever mean to deserve the wealth and privilege that I have now. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that the injustices that have built history are righted. To the extent that I can participate in righting wrongs rather than making them I can say to myself on my death bed, "I lead a good life", but will I ever deserve what I currently have? How would I ever know that?
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  >> I don't know what it would ever mean to deserve the wealth and privilege that I have now. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that the injustices that have built history are righted. Perhaps... to be a responsible custodian to what we've inherited, to not abuse it, to be conscious about how immensely fortunate we are, and above all, to share it with others around us.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    I think OP is possibly getting at something else - it's possible that the moment we reach the "I deserve this privilege" moment is also the moment you stop deserving it. Personally I operate under the notion that I don't deserve any of this, and that I have it by the grace of luck and those that came before me. It is the ultimate hubris for me to self-determine whether or not I deserve all of this, so I'll leave that determination up to others, and chance. Likewise, I'll do my best to ensure others who I believe are upright and good get what they deserve, do not have, and that I can provide. I view with great skepticism anyone who believes they are entitled to the immense riches and privileges we enjoy.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Believing you don't deserve anything you have or have access to can be a big hit to your self worth though, causing things like imposter syndrome or other forms of insecurities.
nyan_sandwich 13y ago
We have some, and will create more. There is no "deserve". The author seemed to teeter between inspiration and self destructive guilt. I liked the inspirational part.
allochthon 13y ago
Implicit premise of the author: he's among the deserving.
sac2171 13y ago
I just graduated from another elite institution, and I truly wish this had been a part of my convocation. If I ever do open a school, we will have a succinct version as part of the school creed/honor code.
nugget 13y ago
You don't deserve to be here, but thanks for the $50,000 tuition check we just cashed . . . Education, like religion, politics, and almost everything else in America, is first and foremost a business. Never lose sight of that.
- coffeemug 13y ago
  That's a rather cynical view. Education in America is a business, but it's so much more than that. Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government. There are plenty of great state schools where you can get education basically for free. Despite the red tape, there is plenty of great research getting done, and plenty of professors who genuinely love to teach and want to help students succeed. For people who can't quite cut it in serious academic pursuits, there are city schools and community colleges that give good, inexpensive education and offer financial aid. Sometimes it can be useful to look at the world through cynical glasses, but it shouldn't be the only pair of glasses you use. You might completely miss a lot of beauty in the world around you.
  - phaus 13y ago
    Unfortunately the industry adapted to the financial aid, and and by now the price of tuition has completely gobbled up any discount the aid may have provided. Sure, people who couldn't have gone to school in the past are able to do so, but many of them are getting saddled with a crippling amount of debt. I know that the price of tuition should increase naturally, as all prices do, but its been doubling the rate of inflation and that's fucked up. There are good aspects to the education system, but there's also a lot of good reasons to be cynical.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Scholarships and grants have also been rising, and the net price -what people actually pay -has been rising much more slowly than that. For private colleges, it has actually fallen since 2006/2007: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-pric...
Q4273j3b 13y ago
"Things happen to people by accident," she used to say. "A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just HAPPENED that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I don't know"—looking quite serious—"how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials." "Lavinia has no trials," said Ermengarde, stolidly, "and she is horrid enough." - A Little Princess (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/146/146-h/146-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/146/146-h/146-h.htm). It's a kids book from 1901 about fortune of birth. One of the most interesting things I've ever read.
dnr 13y ago
Saying "You all deserve to be here" isn't intended as a pat on the back to the privileged in the audience, it's a reassurance to the ones on full financial aid and looking around and feeling out of place among their wealthier classmates, or the minorities who are worried that they're only there at all because of affirmative action. At least that's how I read it.
- jbackus 13y ago
  They say it every year. They very explicitly state that its to combat impostor syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
  - neltnerb 13y ago
    Yeah, this. It's good to help incoming students realize two things. 1. Half of the class will be below average. Deal with it. 2. Everyone is capable of doing the work with enough effort. I had a guy in one of my first year grad classes at MIT who literally passed out during the first exam from not having slept due to stress for days. Poor guy. I was already used to failing all the time, but not everyone gets that in university =/
    - hugofirth 13y ago
      Whilst not necessarily relevant to the main thread: I absolutely agree with you on the point of understanding that you aren't going to be the best at everything, or even anything, necessarily. The earlier people have that realisation that its not necessarily about being the best, so much as it is about trying to be the best, the sooner they overcome any sense of impostor syndrome.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
No one deserves to be anywhere, it's all made up.
- onedev 13y ago
  Cynically simple, logically lazy, yet completely valid point. Though you can say "it's all made up" for anything in any argument; Don't know if I agree with it completely but I kinda get what you're trying to say in this case.
Jormundir 13y ago
I've never understood why anyone feels they have a right to say these sorts of things to anyone. Why should I listen to an old Dean of Admissions speak condescendingly about what I deserve or not? He lost all respect from me, and reverberated the silly "us older generations are wise and have made a beautiful fairy-tale world for you. We look at you youths and think you're incapable idiots who are going to destroy the world, who don't know how to work". STFU older generations! We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before. We work fucking hard for what's right, and will make the world a better place for our kids. I know when I'm old I'm not going to tell my kids they're worrisome morons who deserve nothing. They will work hard, they will be more capable than me, I will inevitable worry, but I will support them unlike these occasional airheads of my parents generation.
- wfunction 13y ago
  > We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before. I hope you're speaking for yourself because I don't believe that's true for me one bit.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    It's true, but sadly only for a subset of the generation.
    - Jormundir 13y ago
      Every generation has their successes and their masses of lackies, their good-doers and their wrong-doers, but every generation will be more powerful than the one before. If my experience with all living generations tells me anything, it's that the world is becoming a better and more accepting place. Media may grow by showing idiotic things, but the people themselves are only getting smarter and more capable, and are doing a great job of working for good things in the world and supporting good people.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        If this were actually true, then you should really be doing nothing more than reproducing hurriedly so that your kids can be better than you.
aianus 13y ago
If you believe that the unit of life is the gene and not the individual, then rich children are deserving of their privilege. Their genes, in their previous incarnations, were able not only to survive (through the survival and reproduction of their ancestors) but also to accumulate, preserve, and pass down wealth. Money and social status is the only form of evolution that's left in a society where (almost) everyone is capable of surviving and reproducing.
rawatson 13y ago
The author of this article quotes two bits from the speech: >We have made no mistakes about your admission. and >You all deserve to be here! The first statement is the more important part. Incoming freshmen meet an extremely talented group of people when they arrive on campus. It's easy to be intimidated by what others have accomplished before even getting to college. The point of this speech isn't to comment on the service undertaken by students, but rather to reassure them that they are capable of performing at the level of the peers they're so impressed by.
- abritishguy 13y ago
  This is what I think I think the author is missing, perhaps a better word than 'deserve' could have been used but the sentiment was right.
abritishguy 13y ago
I understand what the author is saying but I disagree, I'm a fresher at Cambridge University and for those of us that haven't come from the private schools it can feel a bit overwhelming and that somehow you have conned them into thinking you're good enough. I can't quite remember what the warden said at our matriculation dinner but it followed the same sentiment that basically every one of us is good enough to be here and that many of us will be feeling that they are out of place but this is normal and not to worry. A week in and I'm absolutely loving it (it's hard work though). The first week should be for getting people settled in and making new friends.
joelrunyon 13y ago
Deserve is always a scary word. Every time I hear it - I assume the person is preying on my ego in order to sell me something.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  Notice how no one ever deserves negative consequences, only positive consequences. That's what bothers me. If people deserve success from working hard, why don't people deserve failure if they don't work hard?
wellboy 13y ago
I like this, but instead of saying they don't deserve to be there, I would add that having made it into Stanford is actually "nothing". It could be like this: Stanford will probably be the most intensive and formative period in your life. However, Stanford can only prepare for the big things that are about to come. The real test comes, once you have your degree in their hands. What will you do with you life after Stanford, will they want to be a pure engineer, work at Facebook or Google, will you try to found the next billion dollar startup, will you cure cancer or become an astronaout? Stanford might seem big and overwhelming now, however it is still just a nursery and a stepping stone to the challenges to come after Stanford. So don't be overwhelmed, stay humble, stay foolish.
aaron695 13y ago
Meh, meaningless claptrap. The students worked hard to get there, which is just day one of entrance. Do they deserve to be graduates, no, they get that reward when they graduate after more hard work. Are they rich peoples children, well yes all Americans are compared to many Somalians or people who lived 500 years ago. No one today deserves anything in that meaningless sense.
telephonetemp 13y ago
The whole notion of desert or lack thereof seems pretty iffy to me. Nobody accomplishes anything without some degree of luck and help from others, which at minimum includes having been born with a brain and having been fed as a baby, and if you believe in biological and economical determinism beyond that it becomes very hard to say who deserves what. In practice most people seem to evaluate how deserving someone is of his or her accomplishments based on whether or not that person meets an arbitrary cutoff for hardship (as indicated by external signs) and where the exact cutoff level lies depends on the evaluator's own experience with hardship and the local baseline for it. This is more of a tool for establishing social status than for moral judgement per se. Actual accomplishments and the lack of pride (in the sense examined by C. S. Lewis and delightfully summarized at http://squid314.livejournal.com/339814.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/339814.html) seem to me to be a better measure of a person no matter how lucky that person's birth was.
6d0debc071 13y ago
You can't talk to adults like that. "You don't deserve to be here." "I studied hard, I did extra curricular activities. I'm smart and I suffered for this. I earned it. When I want someone to look into my soul and spout BS about worthiness, I'll find a priest. In the meantime you've just lost any moral credit you had with me by pretending to know me. Good day." Maybe it's true that other people deserve it more - I don't think too many people hold out with the idea that they're the most deserving people on the face of the planet though and wouldn't imagine that's what they mean by deserve. Indeed it's hard to see how performing community service would make you fulfil the latter definition.
epaga 13y ago
At first, this article struck a nerve and I found myself agreeing for a while. On second thought, however, I think the author falls to the other extreme of that which he is criticizing. I'm all for critiquing the vacuous "You're special! you DESERVE to be here!" But to instead turn around and say "No, you don't deserve to be here! So EARN it!" is to trade a meaningless vague happy feeling for crushing pressure which turns to either arrogance when you succeed or despair when you fail. Instead of making "earning" / "deserving" something the central point, why not focus on taking that which was given to you at birth and in your upbringing and education (much of which you did not "earn" or "deserve") and making the most of it? Not with the goal of "deserving" something but rather because otherwise the good that was given would go to waste.
1angryhacker 13y ago
SOMEONE GIVE ME MONEY TO MAKE MY PET FERRET-TUMBLR APP PLEASE seriously.
WA 13y ago
Dear Americans, let me tell you something. The good and cheerful atmosphere at freshman speeches is something you should be proud of. It gives people spirit and a wonderful first experience. The harsh truth will catch up anyways. The speech in this article, how the OP thought it should be, is utter crap and comes from a place of total arrogance and serves only himself. It doesn't act as an eye-opener, because the students won't listen anyways. They will experience reality soon enough and there's absolutely no need to tell them anything they can't understand at their current position. They are mentally not in the state to receive any "truthful speech". They are in a new chapter of their lives and the only bet is to give it a try. The experience of others is worth close to nothing, because they need to make experiences themselves. Why am I telling you this? Because I'm German. In Germany, there is not even a freshman speech. What we have can be described as a big "fuck you" from some dean or whatever arrogant professor feels entitled to speak up. "50% of you won't be here in 1 year" is something you get told on first day of university. What is this good for? I haven't seen a single student saying "Oh, this guy's right, I'll unenroll right now". They HAVE to try first, because that's the choice they made for this new chapter in life. It might even be true. 50% unenroll after a while, but it's unclear which 50%. My girlfriend is becoming a teacher. She studied for 5 years. After university follows a 1.5 traineeship at school, before she can call herself a real teacher. They have a welcome speech for the new trainee-teachers and it went like that:"Welcome, good to see you, but you won't get a job anyways." Again, a big "fuck you" to all these people who spend 5 years in this system, gave their best, are motivated and accept a lousy pay for 1.5 years with ridiculous long hours. From my limited experience and what people told me who experienced the exact same crap in Germany, I can see this only as some self-righteous bullshit from arrogant frustrated people that serves no purpose at all but only to make THEM feel a tiny little bit better. "I'm here, see, I'm the best." Fuck you! Be proud that it is a common practice in the US to have motivational speeches that give people a good feeling. There's nothing in the world you can tell freshmen to prepare them for reality. The only thing that counts is how you make them feel in this very moment at the Welcome-freshman-party.
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  Like they say about academia: The politics are so intense because the stakes are so low.
kiddz 13y ago
The round of applause from the students was likely because they were relieved to have the validation. I went to great schools and it seemed like many of us were always thinking that none of us were as smart/gifted/different as the next person (side note: doesn't take 100% audience buy-in to get the whole audience eventually applauding). But the twist is reminding students (and especially young alum) what such a prestigious degree means -- in short, not as much as you would hope. And for good reason because the tools of the "knowledge economy" are more freely available then ever before. I'm not saying that Khan Academy or Rural Broadband is equal to 4 years at Yale, but I do think that 4 years at Yale is less meaningful now. Like, wouldn't many of you rather have a Karma score of 5000 if you were applying to YC then a CS degree from Stanford?
GoofballJones 13y ago
I agree, no one deserves having to go to Stanford. Go Berkeley!
wtvanhest 13y ago
Does anyone have any opinion on this: "We live in a society increasingly defined by winner-takes-all competition." I see this sentence cropping up more and more. I do not see a true structural change in society or business. I definitely see more opportunities for winner-take-all business, but only in terms of rapid scale, not long term sustainable positions of true market dominance.
- VLM 13y ago
  "I do not see a true structural change in society or business." You need more data. Look at graphs of wealth and income distribution by percentile quartile whatever-ile, especially over last couple decades. Then re-analyze the trend of "winner takes all".
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    I think you have a good point, but I don't see any changing quartile analysis or percentile analysis of income distribution. I did find this: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into-the-upper-class/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-be... but it seems to fail to account for the fact that overtime, more and more households have become two working person households. IDK, I just haven't seen a clear and compelling analysis that says that we are heading toward winner takes all.
- lgieron 13y ago
  It's less pertinent to business than to society as a whole - meaning, nowadays, the dichotomy that you're either a highly paid expert or condemned to shitty jobs is more and more prevalent.
graycat 13y ago
Stanford's not so great. I've seen a good fraction of some of their best work, and it's not too difficult. E.g., to me, Ng is out in la-la land. Diaconis is not too difficult but much, much better than Ng. Then some of the best are Royden, Luenberger, and Chung, but none of their books should be regarded as needing some super human effort -- they are all very clear writers. For Stanford 'computer science', mostly f'get about that; maybe in 50 years it will have some significant content. The speech was insulting BS. A lot of HS students work their tails off trying to get into places such as Stanford; sad situation. E.g., they take AP calculus. Total bummer. F'get about AP calculus because the people who wrote that material didn't understand calculus very well. Instead, just get a good college calculus book and dig in, that is, study the material and examples and then work the exercises until understand them and the material well. Work from more than one famous book. There are highly polished college calculus texts going back at least 50 years and no shortages. Working through a good college calculus book is not difficult and great fun. All the angst over AP calculus is just make-work, junk-think, busy-work sadism to hurt high school students by trying to make difficult something that should be fun. High schools and that Stanford admissions guy just like to beat up on HS students. Bummer. Me? I never took freshman calculus! Instead, the college where I did my freshman year was not very good and forced me into a math course beneath what I'd done in my relatively good HS. So, a girl in the class told me when the tests were; I showed up for those; and meanwhile I got a good calculus book and dug in. For my sophomore year I went to a much better college, started on their relatively good sophomore calculus (same text then used at Harvard), did well, got "Honors in Mathematics" and 800 on my Math GRE. Yup, never took freshman calculus. Well, HS students can do the same: Just get a good, standard, popular, recognized calculus book and dig in. Then f'get about AP calculus and either just skip calculus in college or just show up for the tests and move on to, say, linear algebra (say, one of Noble, Nearing, Hoffman and Kunze, or Strang, and, finally, Halmos), theoretical advanced calculus, applied advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, elementary probability and statistics (race through it and don't take it seriously since will see it all again with much higher quality), measure theory and functional analysis, probability and stochastic processes, mathematical statistics, etc. Pick a real problem, do some research, get a Ph.D. in engineering, then write software for a startup!
Anechoic 13y ago
I get the message that Carey was trying to convey but I disagree strongly. I went to MIT in the 1990's. One kid in our dorm killed himself. A group of friends and I had to convince another student to not kill herself. The problem has been so endemic that the Boston Glove wrote a series of articles about it. From what I can tell, similar "elite" universities have their own suicide problems. A lot of this stems from the fact that these freshmen students are 15-18 year-old kids who are facing a really competitive atmosphere, mot to mention being away from home on an extended basis, for the first time. They attend with the hopes and wishes of family, friends and teachers back home and they are fully aware of the financial sacrifices that it took to get them to college. When they get that first 'C' or even a 'D' or 'F' it's very easy to look on yourself as a failure - and suicide looks like an easy way out for some. These students don't think they deserve to be there, where the opposite is true. That's why these universities try to drill in the positive message. As WA wrote, the real world will make itself known in due time, laying a guilt trip on kids as soon as they arrive is not the way to go. At graduation, sure tell them to give back. But as incoming freshmen, the priority should be helping them succeed.
mankypro 13y ago
You know how you can tell if someone went to Stanford? You don't have to, they'll tell you...
russelluresti 13y ago
Or my speech... You do not deserve to be here. You do not deserve to have to pay $60,000 a year. For those of you who graduate, because at least 20% of you will not, you do not deserve to leave here $240,000 in debt to student loans only to end up taking a job that does not require the degree you will spend the next 4-6 years pursuing. No one deserve to struggle financially for the rest of their lives because of 4 years of bullshit that your parents, educators, and soceity sold you as the only way to "get a good job" or "make a decent living." Stanford is a private "educational" institution that operates for profit. The notion that you have to "deserve" to be there while going into debt and paying them is ridiculous. That's like saying you don't deserve to eat at Olive Garden; even though you're paying them, even though you worked hard to earn the money to pay them; because eating there is a privilege that you haven't earned yet.
codex 13y ago
Children share the same genes and epigenetics as ther ancestors. Likely it's the source of their consciousness. So really, parents and children can be considered the same organism, only running with different inputs. Why shouldn't the same organism, who has worked hard, benefit from the fruits of their labor? Luck is also involved, but luck, which is random, is distributed randomly and is thus fair to all people in aggregate, even while it is unavoidably unfair up close. So, where's the unfairness? There is an inherent unfairness that comes with wealth and privilege in that it throws up barriers to newcomers. An equally qualified newcomer may be excluded from the spoils; for that reason, society is never a place where each person has an opportunity to rise to the limits of their ability. What's interesting here is that the unfairness is not only cross generational, but can occur within the same generation. Serial entrepreneurship is unfair; it makes it harder for newcomers. Wrath accumulation unfair. Having a large social network is unfair. Therefore, anyone interested in fairness should also levy a progressive tax on wealth accumulation. At the top end, it should be a lot more than 35%.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
"You will deserve to be here (and to exist as a human being) when you have learned to accept my progressive values" I haven't been to one of these speeches but I assume they are mostly meaningless platitudes. But this is better than left wing indoctrination where they are berated for their privilege and told to seek out "human things, like ethics and obligation and desire" - code for progressive thinking. There will be plenty of time in Gen Eds for that.
freshhawk 13y ago
How did a "You should all feel very lucky to be here, you have been given quite the opportunity and not everyone is so lucky. Count yourselves fortunate, work hard and try and make a real contribution to the world to make the most of where you are" get characterized as a "fuck you" speech? Did people only read the headline and get caught up on the word "deserve"? Am I crazy in that I found the hypothetical speech to be motivating and very positive overall? These people are young adults, they can handle a fair bit of truth, especially since they are young, smart and at Stanford so the truth is pretty damn great. Why on earth people think this would be demotivating is beyond me.
dgreensp 13y ago
The author has his own negative emotional agenda. If you got accepted to Stanford, great, go to Stanford. It's just a school, a place where people go to learn, and it's a rather expensive one. So learn, and focus on bigger things than moral guilt and self-doubt over the opportunity you've been given, like your career and developing yourself. That will put you in a much better position to give back to the world.

373 points by onedev 13y ago

webo 13y ago

"Dean Shaw announced that the freshman class included students from 49 states—"We miss you, Arkansas"—and 66 countries." From Arkansas here. Ouch.

EricDeb 13y ago
I've only driven through it but it was quite beautiful if that's any consolation.
m0nty 13y ago
Could you explain the reference? Cultural gap obscures meaning.
- jamessb 13y ago
  The incoming class included at least one student from 49 of the 50 states - every state except Arkansas.

adamnemecek 13y ago

How delightfully nebulous and unspecific.

hacknat 13y ago
I know...isn't history a bitch. Sometimes being judged and accused is okay.
- tsotha 13y ago
  But only for things you've done. I don't care what your background is, it's not easy to get into Stanford, and anyone who gets in should be congratulated.

nirmel 13y ago

It is a truth that we don't deserve anything we have, here in the upper class of the developed world. If we believe that in general believe have approximately the amount they deserve to have, then that would also mean that people who have nothing deserve nothing. For what fault of theirs? For being born somewhere poor, somewhere dirt poor. And if we don't deserve what we have, then we're obligated to help those who deserve to have more than they do.

kansface 13y ago
I agree with the point if not the article itself. The corollary to the dean's statement is the people who are starving in third world countries deserve it.
icebraining 13y ago
The poor don't deserve to be poor. And they don't deserve to not be poor. The whole concept, applied at a global level, is nothing more than yet another example of our need to wrap everything we see in pretty stories. I wish we had a more equal world, but I don't see why should I believe this to be anything more than a personal preference.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  At the very least, it's a personal preference that generally accords with other people's personal preferences when actually implemented. Highly egalitarian, highly productive societies are effective at sustaining themselves, defending themselves, and keeping their citizens happy -- in fact, more so compared to highly inegalitarian societies. So why the hell not?

hacknat 13y ago

Very, very good. I share the author's sentiments immensely, and he articulated these ideas much better than I ever could. However, the final lines bothered me: >> When you deserve it, come back to us. Share your service with your peers and your children. >>Then you'll be part of our family. Then you'll truly belong. I don't know what it would ever mean to deserve the wealth and privilege that I have now. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that the injustices that have built history are righted. To the extent that I can participate in righting wrongs rather than making them I can say to myself on my death bed, "I lead a good life", but will I ever deserve what I currently have? How would I ever know that?

hkmurakami 13y ago
>> I don't know what it would ever mean to deserve the wealth and privilege that I have now. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that the injustices that have built history are righted. Perhaps... to be a responsible custodian to what we've inherited, to not abuse it, to be conscious about how immensely fortunate we are, and above all, to share it with others around us.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I think OP is possibly getting at something else - it's possible that the moment we reach the "I deserve this privilege" moment is also the moment you stop deserving it. Personally I operate under the notion that I don't deserve any of this, and that I have it by the grace of luck and those that came before me. It is the ultimate hubris for me to self-determine whether or not I deserve all of this, so I'll leave that determination up to others, and chance. Likewise, I'll do my best to ensure others who I believe are upright and good get what they deserve, do not have, and that I can provide. I view with great skepticism anyone who believes they are entitled to the immense riches and privileges we enjoy.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Believing you don't deserve anything you have or have access to can be a big hit to your self worth though, causing things like imposter syndrome or other forms of insecurities.

nyan_sandwich 13y ago

We have some, and will create more. There is no "deserve". The author seemed to teeter between inspiration and self destructive guilt. I liked the inspirational part.

allochthon 13y ago

Implicit premise of the author: he's among the deserving.

sac2171 13y ago

I just graduated from another elite institution, and I truly wish this had been a part of my convocation. If I ever do open a school, we will have a succinct version as part of the school creed/honor code.

nugget 13y ago

You don't deserve to be here, but thanks for the $50,000 tuition check we just cashed . . . Education, like religion, politics, and almost everything else in America, is first and foremost a business. Never lose sight of that.

coffeemug 13y ago
That's a rather cynical view. Education in America is a business, but it's so much more than that. Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government. There are plenty of great state schools where you can get education basically for free. Despite the red tape, there is plenty of great research getting done, and plenty of professors who genuinely love to teach and want to help students succeed. For people who can't quite cut it in serious academic pursuits, there are city schools and community colleges that give good, inexpensive education and offer financial aid. Sometimes it can be useful to look at the world through cynical glasses, but it shouldn't be the only pair of glasses you use. You might completely miss a lot of beauty in the world around you.
- phaus 13y ago
  Unfortunately the industry adapted to the financial aid, and and by now the price of tuition has completely gobbled up any discount the aid may have provided. Sure, people who couldn't have gone to school in the past are able to do so, but many of them are getting saddled with a crippling amount of debt. I know that the price of tuition should increase naturally, as all prices do, but its been doubling the rate of inflation and that's fucked up. There are good aspects to the education system, but there's also a lot of good reasons to be cynical.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Scholarships and grants have also been rising, and the net price -what people actually pay -has been rising much more slowly than that. For private colleges, it has actually fallen since 2006/2007: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-pric...

Q4273j3b 13y ago

"Things happen to people by accident," she used to say. "A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just HAPPENED that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I don't know"—looking quite serious—"how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials." "Lavinia has no trials," said Ermengarde, stolidly, "and she is horrid enough." - A Little Princess (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/146/146-h/146-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/146/146-h/146-h.htm). It's a kids book from 1901 about fortune of birth. One of the most interesting things I've ever read.

dnr 13y ago

Saying "You all deserve to be here" isn't intended as a pat on the back to the privileged in the audience, it's a reassurance to the ones on full financial aid and looking around and feeling out of place among their wealthier classmates, or the minorities who are worried that they're only there at all because of affirmative action. At least that's how I read it.

jbackus 13y ago
They say it every year. They very explicitly state that its to combat impostor syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
- neltnerb 13y ago
  Yeah, this. It's good to help incoming students realize two things. 1. Half of the class will be below average. Deal with it. 2. Everyone is capable of doing the work with enough effort. I had a guy in one of my first year grad classes at MIT who literally passed out during the first exam from not having slept due to stress for days. Poor guy. I was already used to failing all the time, but not everyone gets that in university =/
  - hugofirth 13y ago
    Whilst not necessarily relevant to the main thread: I absolutely agree with you on the point of understanding that you aren't going to be the best at everything, or even anything, necessarily. The earlier people have that realisation that its not necessarily about being the best, so much as it is about trying to be the best, the sooner they overcome any sense of impostor syndrome.

zacinbusiness 13y ago

No one deserves to be anywhere, it's all made up.

onedev 13y ago
Cynically simple, logically lazy, yet completely valid point. Though you can say "it's all made up" for anything in any argument; Don't know if I agree with it completely but I kinda get what you're trying to say in this case.

Jormundir 13y ago

I've never understood why anyone feels they have a right to say these sorts of things to anyone. Why should I listen to an old Dean of Admissions speak condescendingly about what I deserve or not? He lost all respect from me, and reverberated the silly "us older generations are wise and have made a beautiful fairy-tale world for you. We look at you youths and think you're incapable idiots who are going to destroy the world, who don't know how to work". STFU older generations! We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before. We work fucking hard for what's right, and will make the world a better place for our kids. I know when I'm old I'm not going to tell my kids they're worrisome morons who deserve nothing. They will work hard, they will be more capable than me, I will inevitable worry, but I will support them unlike these occasional airheads of my parents generation.

wfunction 13y ago
> We are more capable and morally idealistic than any generation before. I hope you're speaking for yourself because I don't believe that's true for me one bit.
- dnautics 13y ago
  It's true, but sadly only for a subset of the generation.
  - Jormundir 13y ago
    Every generation has their successes and their masses of lackies, their good-doers and their wrong-doers, but every generation will be more powerful than the one before. If my experience with all living generations tells me anything, it's that the world is becoming a better and more accepting place. Media may grow by showing idiotic things, but the people themselves are only getting smarter and more capable, and are doing a great job of working for good things in the world and supporting good people.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      If this were actually true, then you should really be doing nothing more than reproducing hurriedly so that your kids can be better than you.

aianus 13y ago

If you believe that the unit of life is the gene and not the individual, then rich children are deserving of their privilege. Their genes, in their previous incarnations, were able not only to survive (through the survival and reproduction of their ancestors) but also to accumulate, preserve, and pass down wealth. Money and social status is the only form of evolution that's left in a society where (almost) everyone is capable of surviving and reproducing.

rawatson 13y ago

The author of this article quotes two bits from the speech: >We have made no mistakes about your admission. and >You all deserve to be here! The first statement is the more important part. Incoming freshmen meet an extremely talented group of people when they arrive on campus. It's easy to be intimidated by what others have accomplished before even getting to college. The point of this speech isn't to comment on the service undertaken by students, but rather to reassure them that they are capable of performing at the level of the peers they're so impressed by.

abritishguy 13y ago
This is what I think I think the author is missing, perhaps a better word than 'deserve' could have been used but the sentiment was right.

abritishguy 13y ago

I understand what the author is saying but I disagree, I'm a fresher at Cambridge University and for those of us that haven't come from the private schools it can feel a bit overwhelming and that somehow you have conned them into thinking you're good enough. I can't quite remember what the warden said at our matriculation dinner but it followed the same sentiment that basically every one of us is good enough to be here and that many of us will be feeling that they are out of place but this is normal and not to worry. A week in and I'm absolutely loving it (it's hard work though). The first week should be for getting people settled in and making new friends.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Deserve is always a scary word. Every time I hear it - I assume the person is preying on my ego in order to sell me something.

darkarmani 13y ago
Notice how no one ever deserves negative consequences, only positive consequences. That's what bothers me. If people deserve success from working hard, why don't people deserve failure if they don't work hard?

wellboy 13y ago

I like this, but instead of saying they don't deserve to be there, I would add that having made it into Stanford is actually "nothing". It could be like this: Stanford will probably be the most intensive and formative period in your life. However, Stanford can only prepare for the big things that are about to come. The real test comes, once you have your degree in their hands. What will you do with you life after Stanford, will they want to be a pure engineer, work at Facebook or Google, will you try to found the next billion dollar startup, will you cure cancer or become an astronaout? Stanford might seem big and overwhelming now, however it is still just a nursery and a stepping stone to the challenges to come after Stanford. So don't be overwhelmed, stay humble, stay foolish.

aaron695 13y ago

Meh, meaningless claptrap. The students worked hard to get there, which is just day one of entrance. Do they deserve to be graduates, no, they get that reward when they graduate after more hard work. Are they rich peoples children, well yes all Americans are compared to many Somalians or people who lived 500 years ago. No one today deserves anything in that meaningless sense.

telephonetemp 13y ago

The whole notion of desert or lack thereof seems pretty iffy to me. Nobody accomplishes anything without some degree of luck and help from others, which at minimum includes having been born with a brain and having been fed as a baby, and if you believe in biological and economical determinism beyond that it becomes very hard to say who deserves what. In practice most people seem to evaluate how deserving someone is of his or her accomplishments based on whether or not that person meets an arbitrary cutoff for hardship (as indicated by external signs) and where the exact cutoff level lies depends on the evaluator's own experience with hardship and the local baseline for it. This is more of a tool for establishing social status than for moral judgement per se. Actual accomplishments and the lack of pride (in the sense examined by C. S. Lewis and delightfully summarized at http://squid314.livejournal.com/339814.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/339814.html) seem to me to be a better measure of a person no matter how lucky that person's birth was.

6d0debc071 13y ago

You can't talk to adults like that. "You don't deserve to be here." "I studied hard, I did extra curricular activities. I'm smart and I suffered for this. I earned it. When I want someone to look into my soul and spout BS about worthiness, I'll find a priest. In the meantime you've just lost any moral credit you had with me by pretending to know me. Good day." Maybe it's true that other people deserve it more - I don't think too many people hold out with the idea that they're the most deserving people on the face of the planet though and wouldn't imagine that's what they mean by deserve. Indeed it's hard to see how performing community service would make you fulfil the latter definition.

epaga 13y ago

At first, this article struck a nerve and I found myself agreeing for a while. On second thought, however, I think the author falls to the other extreme of that which he is criticizing. I'm all for critiquing the vacuous "You're special! you DESERVE to be here!" But to instead turn around and say "No, you don't deserve to be here! So EARN it!" is to trade a meaningless vague happy feeling for crushing pressure which turns to either arrogance when you succeed or despair when you fail. Instead of making "earning" / "deserving" something the central point, why not focus on taking that which was given to you at birth and in your upbringing and education (much of which you did not "earn" or "deserve") and making the most of it? Not with the goal of "deserving" something but rather because otherwise the good that was given would go to waste.

1angryhacker 13y ago

SOMEONE GIVE ME MONEY TO MAKE MY PET FERRET-TUMBLR APP PLEASE seriously.

WA 13y ago

Dear Americans, let me tell you something. The good and cheerful atmosphere at freshman speeches is something you should be proud of. It gives people spirit and a wonderful first experience. The harsh truth will catch up anyways. The speech in this article, how the OP thought it should be, is utter crap and comes from a place of total arrogance and serves only himself. It doesn't act as an eye-opener, because the students won't listen anyways. They will experience reality soon enough and there's absolutely no need to tell them anything they can't understand at their current position. They are mentally not in the state to receive any "truthful speech". They are in a new chapter of their lives and the only bet is to give it a try. The experience of others is worth close to nothing, because they need to make experiences themselves. Why am I telling you this? Because I'm German. In Germany, there is not even a freshman speech. What we have can be described as a big "fuck you" from some dean or whatever arrogant professor feels entitled to speak up. "50% of you won't be here in 1 year" is something you get told on first day of university. What is this good for? I haven't seen a single student saying "Oh, this guy's right, I'll unenroll right now". They HAVE to try first, because that's the choice they made for this new chapter in life. It might even be true. 50% unenroll after a while, but it's unclear which 50%. My girlfriend is becoming a teacher. She studied for 5 years. After university follows a 1.5 traineeship at school, before she can call herself a real teacher. They have a welcome speech for the new trainee-teachers and it went like that:"Welcome, good to see you, but you won't get a job anyways." Again, a big "fuck you" to all these people who spend 5 years in this system, gave their best, are motivated and accept a lousy pay for 1.5 years with ridiculous long hours. From my limited experience and what people told me who experienced the exact same crap in Germany, I can see this only as some self-righteous bullshit from arrogant frustrated people that serves no purpose at all but only to make THEM feel a tiny little bit better. "I'm here, see, I'm the best." Fuck you! Be proud that it is a common practice in the US to have motivational speeches that give people a good feeling. There's nothing in the world you can tell freshmen to prepare them for reality. The only thing that counts is how you make them feel in this very moment at the Welcome-freshman-party.

peterjancelis 13y ago
Like they say about academia: The politics are so intense because the stakes are so low.

kiddz 13y ago

The round of applause from the students was likely because they were relieved to have the validation. I went to great schools and it seemed like many of us were always thinking that none of us were as smart/gifted/different as the next person (side note: doesn't take 100% audience buy-in to get the whole audience eventually applauding). But the twist is reminding students (and especially young alum) what such a prestigious degree means -- in short, not as much as you would hope. And for good reason because the tools of the "knowledge economy" are more freely available then ever before. I'm not saying that Khan Academy or Rural Broadband is equal to 4 years at Yale, but I do think that 4 years at Yale is less meaningful now. Like, wouldn't many of you rather have a Karma score of 5000 if you were applying to YC then a CS degree from Stanford?

GoofballJones 13y ago

I agree, no one deserves having to go to Stanford. Go Berkeley!

wtvanhest 13y ago

Does anyone have any opinion on this: "We live in a society increasingly defined by winner-takes-all competition." I see this sentence cropping up more and more. I do not see a true structural change in society or business. I definitely see more opportunities for winner-take-all business, but only in terms of rapid scale, not long term sustainable positions of true market dominance.

VLM 13y ago
"I do not see a true structural change in society or business." You need more data. Look at graphs of wealth and income distribution by percentile quartile whatever-ile, especially over last couple decades. Then re-analyze the trend of "winner takes all".
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  I think you have a good point, but I don't see any changing quartile analysis or percentile analysis of income distribution. I did find this: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into-the-upper-class/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-be... but it seems to fail to account for the fact that overtime, more and more households have become two working person households. IDK, I just haven't seen a clear and compelling analysis that says that we are heading toward winner takes all.
lgieron 13y ago
It's less pertinent to business than to society as a whole - meaning, nowadays, the dichotomy that you're either a highly paid expert or condemned to shitty jobs is more and more prevalent.

graycat 13y ago

Stanford's not so great. I've seen a good fraction of some of their best work, and it's not too difficult. E.g., to me, Ng is out in la-la land. Diaconis is not too difficult but much, much better than Ng. Then some of the best are Royden, Luenberger, and Chung, but none of their books should be regarded as needing some super human effort -- they are all very clear writers. For Stanford 'computer science', mostly f'get about that; maybe in 50 years it will have some significant content. The speech was insulting BS. A lot of HS students work their tails off trying to get into places such as Stanford; sad situation. E.g., they take AP calculus. Total bummer. F'get about AP calculus because the people who wrote that material didn't understand calculus very well. Instead, just get a good college calculus book and dig in, that is, study the material and examples and then work the exercises until understand them and the material well. Work from more than one famous book. There are highly polished college calculus texts going back at least 50 years and no shortages. Working through a good college calculus book is not difficult and great fun. All the angst over AP calculus is just make-work, junk-think, busy-work sadism to hurt high school students by trying to make difficult something that should be fun. High schools and that Stanford admissions guy just like to beat up on HS students. Bummer. Me? I never took freshman calculus! Instead, the college where I did my freshman year was not very good and forced me into a math course beneath what I'd done in my relatively good HS. So, a girl in the class told me when the tests were; I showed up for those; and meanwhile I got a good calculus book and dug in. For my sophomore year I went to a much better college, started on their relatively good sophomore calculus (same text then used at Harvard), did well, got "Honors in Mathematics" and 800 on my Math GRE. Yup, never took freshman calculus. Well, HS students can do the same: Just get a good, standard, popular, recognized calculus book and dig in. Then f'get about AP calculus and either just skip calculus in college or just show up for the tests and move on to, say, linear algebra (say, one of Noble, Nearing, Hoffman and Kunze, or Strang, and, finally, Halmos), theoretical advanced calculus, applied advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, elementary probability and statistics (race through it and don't take it seriously since will see it all again with much higher quality), measure theory and functional analysis, probability and stochastic processes, mathematical statistics, etc. Pick a real problem, do some research, get a Ph.D. in engineering, then write software for a startup!

Anechoic 13y ago

I get the message that Carey was trying to convey but I disagree strongly. I went to MIT in the 1990's. One kid in our dorm killed himself. A group of friends and I had to convince another student to not kill herself. The problem has been so endemic that the Boston Glove wrote a series of articles about it. From what I can tell, similar "elite" universities have their own suicide problems. A lot of this stems from the fact that these freshmen students are 15-18 year-old kids who are facing a really competitive atmosphere, mot to mention being away from home on an extended basis, for the first time. They attend with the hopes and wishes of family, friends and teachers back home and they are fully aware of the financial sacrifices that it took to get them to college. When they get that first 'C' or even a 'D' or 'F' it's very easy to look on yourself as a failure - and suicide looks like an easy way out for some. These students don't think they deserve to be there, where the opposite is true. That's why these universities try to drill in the positive message. As WA wrote, the real world will make itself known in due time, laying a guilt trip on kids as soon as they arrive is not the way to go. At graduation, sure tell them to give back. But as incoming freshmen, the priority should be helping them succeed.

mankypro 13y ago

You know how you can tell if someone went to Stanford? You don't have to, they'll tell you...

russelluresti 13y ago

Or my speech... You do not deserve to be here. You do not deserve to have to pay $60,000 a year. For those of you who graduate, because at least 20% of you will not, you do not deserve to leave here $240,000 in debt to student loans only to end up taking a job that does not require the degree you will spend the next 4-6 years pursuing. No one deserve to struggle financially for the rest of their lives because of 4 years of bullshit that your parents, educators, and soceity sold you as the only way to "get a good job" or "make a decent living." Stanford is a private "educational" institution that operates for profit. The notion that you have to "deserve" to be there while going into debt and paying them is ridiculous. That's like saying you don't deserve to eat at Olive Garden; even though you're paying them, even though you worked hard to earn the money to pay them; because eating there is a privilege that you haven't earned yet.

codex 13y ago

Children share the same genes and epigenetics as ther ancestors. Likely it's the source of their consciousness. So really, parents and children can be considered the same organism, only running with different inputs. Why shouldn't the same organism, who has worked hard, benefit from the fruits of their labor? Luck is also involved, but luck, which is random, is distributed randomly and is thus fair to all people in aggregate, even while it is unavoidably unfair up close. So, where's the unfairness? There is an inherent unfairness that comes with wealth and privilege in that it throws up barriers to newcomers. An equally qualified newcomer may be excluded from the spoils; for that reason, society is never a place where each person has an opportunity to rise to the limits of their ability. What's interesting here is that the unfairness is not only cross generational, but can occur within the same generation. Serial entrepreneurship is unfair; it makes it harder for newcomers. Wrath accumulation unfair. Having a large social network is unfair. Therefore, anyone interested in fairness should also levy a progressive tax on wealth accumulation. At the top end, it should be a lot more than 35%.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

"You will deserve to be here (and to exist as a human being) when you have learned to accept my progressive values" I haven't been to one of these speeches but I assume they are mostly meaningless platitudes. But this is better than left wing indoctrination where they are berated for their privilege and told to seek out "human things, like ethics and obligation and desire" - code for progressive thinking. There will be plenty of time in Gen Eds for that.

freshhawk 13y ago

How did a "You should all feel very lucky to be here, you have been given quite the opportunity and not everyone is so lucky. Count yourselves fortunate, work hard and try and make a real contribution to the world to make the most of where you are" get characterized as a "fuck you" speech? Did people only read the headline and get caught up on the word "deserve"? Am I crazy in that I found the hypothetical speech to be motivating and very positive overall? These people are young adults, they can handle a fair bit of truth, especially since they are young, smart and at Stanford so the truth is pretty damn great. Why on earth people think this would be demotivating is beyond me.

dgreensp 13y ago

The author has his own negative emotional agenda. If you got accepted to Stanford, great, go to Stanford. It's just a school, a place where people go to learn, and it's a rather expensive one. So learn, and focus on bigger things than moral guilt and self-doubt over the opportunity you've been given, like your career and developing yourself. That will put you in a much better position to give back to the world.