<p>“When you take your family on nice trips, do you instruct your kids not to tell their friends about it, because you don’t want the poorer ones to feel bad, because you feel sorry for them that they can’t go?”</p>
<p>This was me in elementary school, where I was the rich kid. Heck yes, kids in that situation should be told to zip it when it comes to their fancy trips. You don’t need to lie or hide the truth about where you were, but do not tell the other kids all the details of the resort in Maui or the day trips through the Alps.</p>
<p>Then I transferred to an expensive prep school where my family was middle-income at best. Boy, was that shoe on the other foot. But there were billionaires with good taste and good manners, and also jerks who liked to make a show of checking their stocks after class and trading phone numbers for their condos in Vail.</p>
<p>I don’t have much original thought to add to this thread, but I would like to agree with what Salve and kelsmom said earlier:</p>
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<p>I can certainly see how one could feel both grateful for the opportunitites available at HYPetc. AND tremendously out-of-place and/or uncomfortable. One does not preclude the other, and I don’t view it as “whining.”</p>
<p>Salve,
What colleges are you talking about where “many will fail?” This thread is about elite colleges, where something like 98% of students graduate. That includes the full-aid students.</p>
<p>I was a full-pay student in college, but my parents were very tight with money. A bunch of my friends were going to Mexico for Spring break, but my parents, who were from poor backgrounds, thought that was extravagant. Knowing what I know about my parents, it didn’t cross my mind to ask them to pay for such a trip, even though I knew they could afford it. It bugged me that I couldn’t go for about a week before the trip, but then I got over it and never thought about it again. I never expected people to feel sorry for me that I couldn’t go, nor did I want them to feel that way. Ick, the thought of them pitying me over some trip to Mexico gives me the creeps.</p>
<p>Hanna…I was the kid who never went on vacations (Porchville every year). I have to give my now deceased mom a LOT of credit. She made huge financial sacrifices so we could live in an affluent suburb with outstanding schools. It was a HUGE gift to me…huge. </p>
<p>My high school and college friends went on great trips…cross country, to Europe, to Asia. They went on ski trips in the winter, or to Florida or the Bahamas. My first trip abroad was to visit my son when he did his college study abroad.</p>
<p>I NEVER resented these kids or felt deprived…because my mom did NOT make us feel poor. And my friends never made themselves look rich. It was what it was. </p>
<p>I got some nice gifts from some of these friends…and I reciprocated with homemade cookies, or a pie. If they didn’t appreciate my gestures, they never indicated so. </p>
<p>Again I say…you can feel poor and sad about it…or you can be thankful for what you DO have. I know what my choice was and is.</p>
<p>So you see a difference in how they will feel about your expensive trips if you tell them you went to the Alps or Maui for break, but don’t mention any details? The devil really is in the details, I guess!</p>
<p>Why would you want to be friends with someone who would look down their nose at the mug of candy gift? I know if my kids every expressed disdain or even disappointment at such a gift they’d get a swift reality check from their parents.</p>
<p>Dealing with income disparities is complicated and it’s not a problem that ends with high school graduation. We’ve had the issue with friends we really wanted to accompany us on vacation. We’ve found that offering an arrangement other than paying directly can be a little easier on the recipient’s pride. For instance, we’ve invited friends to a house we’re renting anyway and paid for their tickets with frequent flyer miles. They brought a nice inexpensive thank-you gift and everyone was happy.</p>
<p>I think the responsibility lies on both sides. I don’t think extremely expensive gifts are appropriate among college students because they are hard to reciprocate. But I also don’t think students with less money need to be martyrs. I’m not sure why Hunt’s hypothetical student needs to be scrubbing toilets while her roommates are living it up in Aspen. How about, “I’d love to go home for Thanksgiving but airfare is so outrageous this time of year.” In my experience this almost always lead to an invitation to someone’s turkey dinner. My freshman brought two international students and one domestic kid with him. I have no idea if the third would have struggled to come up with funds to go home or whether he just wanted to hang with his new friends for the holiday. Either way it wasn’t a big deal.</p>
<p>So, why would the rich kids be keeping secrets? This stuff is very apparent to even a dumb teenager at a State U. Maybe, the problem is an embarrassment of riches and a condescending attitude toward those with less. Poor you. That’s pretty degrading to a hard-working, high-achieving student who made it to Harvard. If the issue is now gifts and trips I would hope they can blow it off and stay focused on their futures.</p>
<p>It’s a little like what kids who are admitted to elite universities face when asked where they’re going to school. If you don’t answer directly you look like a condescending jerk. If you are too openly enthusiastic you look like a elitist jerk. Either way no one’s going to feel sorry for you, so you’d better develop some tact and a strategy.</p>
<p>Yes, you answer honestly. Tact is always a good thing but there’s nothing wrong with being proud of your achievements, either. Rich, poor, or in between.</p>
<p>"“I’d love to go home for Thanksgiving but airfare is so outrageous this time of year.” "</p>
<p>I am not certain all wealthy students leave for thanksgiving. I would be surprised if everyone of TheGFG’s friends left since many of my D’s friends stayed back. She was the exception rather than the norm.</p>
<p>My full-pay D never came home for Thanksgiving, because I thought it was too expensive for what would amount to a 3-day visit. I sound like my parents. :)</p>
<p>Bay, I do realize that we are discussing elite schools, however, folks bere have been sharing their own experiences not all of which were at HYPS, thus, I am speaking generally. Nonetheless, yes, the HYPS kids will eventually figure it out but all I’m saying is that whatever your viewpoint, it doesn’t negate their expressed challenges which are pretty universal, and concurrent with their gratitude</p>
<p>I have friends who are much more affluent than I am… and much less… and call me crazy, but I have never once thought it was a power play when someone gave me or treated me to something I could not afford to reciprocate in kind, and I never, ever, ever, thought less of someone who gave me the grown up equivalent of candy in a mug.</p>
<p>I enjoy hearing about other people’s trips to a certain extent but I think people I know are somewhat tactful and try not to pile it on. I know that people who can afford to buy virtually anything, value the friends they have who can sit quietly and listen when they’ve got problems or bad stuff happens to them. A friend had cancer- she runs in a different social set than I do most of the time- and she told me how much she valued the homemade banana bread I dropped off after her chemo. Everyone else was busy emailing her to see if she needed to “borrow” their housekeeper, or if she needed someone to “pull strings” to get her in to a top oncologist at Sloan Kettering. None of them actually wanted to drop by and hold her hand while she was nauseous… but they were happy to be “supportive” in the way they knew how, i.e. spend their way out of a lousy situation.</p>
<p>GFG, like I said in my last post- you won’t believe me, and of course, you didn’t. But your D can reciprocate a lavish gift by being her own authentic self. And if that means baking, candy in a mug, or a funny soap in the shape of a frog for the friend who loves frogs- so be it. Feeling bad about the disparity is unproductive.</p>
<p>Everyone agrees they have challenges. The question seems to be one of whether or not to pity them. I think every reasonable commenter could probably agree that understanding could be increased. Pity, not so much.</p>
<p>Bay, you are trying very hard to accuse quite a few of us of playing the “pity” card. As best I can recall, you are the only one here using the word “pity”.</p>
<p>It is normal manners to avoid throwing your vacations in everyone else’s face. We travel quite a bit. If anyone asks me what I did, or where I went last summer, I’m not coy about answering. If after I say, “We went to the Bavarian Alps”, they respond with, “Oh, that’s nice.” and then go on to talk about something else, that is a social clue (at least it is to me) that for whatever reason that person isn’t interested in the details of my trip. On the other hand, if the response is, “That sounds interesting, tell me more”, or “What did you do when you were there”, or any one of the many ways a person can indicate they’d like to hear about my trip, then I talk about it. </p>
<p>“Pity” has nothing to do with it, it is manners.</p>
<p>When you run into friends, what do you do? Do you say, “Hi Ethel! Guess where I was last week? Let me tell you all about it!”?</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t, and you are correct, their expressed challenges are universal. If there is anyone living in squalor in a far-off land reading this thread on borrowed wifi, they are probably highly entertained by the idea that a poor kid living at Harvard for 4 years is someone to feel sorry about.</p>