I go to a high school where ~80% of the teachers and administrators are female. For every extracurricular I’m involved with, the teacher sponsor is female, except lacrosse. This presents an issue for me, which I have a feeling will anger many people, seeing as how I’m a white boy. I’m at an unfair disadvantage. A disadvantage that hasn’t really destroyed my dreams until now, as a sophomore. Here’s the situation: For Student Government, we elect 5 officers, then after elected, we send letters to the class sponsors (both young-ish women) who then decide positions for us. We do get to choose which positions we’d prefer. So I chose president for my first choice and VP for my second choice. Here’s some background of my freshman year and first two months of sophomore year, which was used to make the decisions:
-All honors and AP classes with A’s
-VP of fundraising for my DECA chapter
-co-captain of JV lacrosse
-officer and co-founder of school’s best buddies club (we don’t have names for the positions bc we all do the same work and we decided it would anger people)
-month-long volunteer at a summer camp for disabled children
-guitar and piano player
-Biology and French academic award winner
-Highest scorer of all people taking French 2 students at my school on national French exam
On my letter, I wrote about many specific events where I learned leadership skills, like leading 90 students for an hour and a half each month in skill-building activities (literally just me, teachers just answer emails and most students are older than me), running lacrosse practices and helping newbies (one JV coach in college who frequently missed practices), running best buddies meeting and managing the club, throwing fundraisers for DECA and managing money, competing at states for DECA, etc. I talked about my personality, like my ambition but also my sociability, curiosity, activeness (best buddies), love for music, personal philosophy, etc. One thing I didn’t mention, because I wanted to win it without having to jerk any tears, is living in a home where my parents are alcoholics who divorced when I was five, dealing with my mother’s drug-induced anxiety and depression while battling my own. Essentially parenting my own parents since I was 5, especially after my grandparents died and my mother went off the deep end. Financial issues, etc. I didn’t want to mention that because I thought they would read through it and know I was trying to make them pity me, but boy was I wrong.
I lost to a middle-eastern girl. She is wealthier than me and had a very happy family, but her letter (which she showed me) wouldn’t lead you to know that. She had much worse grades than me, and only one extracurricular, a club that was “devoted” to getting girls in third-world countries a proper education. But that was false. She had created the club about 2 weeks before we wrote the letters and had done NOTHING to help any girls, except make shirts for her and her members. Instead, her letter focused on her parents, who were refugees (they were very wealthy in their old country and she was born in America), and how she wanted to fulfill her parents dreams of success for her in America. So she made a club (with no plan other than a bakesale every other month, which at the end of the day are going to have little to no impact on these girls) for other girls to have the same opportunities she had. It’s a good thought and I agree it’s a serious issue, but you can’t just make a club and say that helps them, you actually have to do stuff. Also, I watched videos from admissions officers who talked about the fact that mentioning the “perseverance” of your parents/grandparents is ill-advised because its YOUR application, not theirs. But apparently, these sponsors never got the memo and fell for the ploy. After giving us our positions, they told us why we were chosen by naming our best quality. Guess what hers was: Advocate. I suppose volunteering for 6 hours a day for a month over summer and making a club that has actually helped kids at our school doesn’t make me an advocate, right? I got Co-Vice President, by the way.
And no, she didn’t write it in some profound way, it was rather insincere. And no, mine wasn’t poorly written (my English teacher looked it over, in case you think I’m being biased) but possibly wasn’t personal enough, as I didn’t feel comfortable saying those familial issues I mentioned to some public high school teacher who I see every day. I’m not mean or unlikable, but I also wasn’t a suck-up to the sponsors. And no, I’m not altering the truth or withholding or exaggerating anything. And I know I sound angry and that might give you an image of some white boy who’s angry because he lost to a women POC and didn’t get what he wanted, but I’m only upset because I try my best at all times, and it’s all for nothing. If I lost to a girl who doesn’t even care, what’s the point in trying at all? It really makes me feel like no matter how much effort I put, I can’t achieve my goals and dreams.
It’s ironic, I know, that being a white guy didn’t help me here, but it’s the truth. They read the letters and classified me as some preppy white boy who’s used to getting whatever he wants so, I imagine they thought, “Let’s let the girls win for once!” When, at my school, the girls always win. No teachers care to think about who I really am, about how I ALWAYS have to work hard for what I want and have never expected anything to be given to me. It makes it easier to picture me as some date-rapey, douchey white boy than to get to know me. Some might say that now I know what it was like to be black, or female, or whatever back when white men were oppressive. But why should I have to experience that? I never oppressed anyone. Even if my ancestors did, why should I have to pay for it? Any sort of vengeance or karma or whatever just tips the scales the other way and is just another step away from equality. So I hope you see how this is unfair and can advise me in any way. I’m not preaching that white men are being oppressed, or making any socio-political statement, just saying, in this case, it was unfair. Please don’t say “Now you know what it’s like” or “life is unfair, deal with it” because I know that, but I’m not just going to let myself get screwed over.