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You and I are playing a subtle game. It congenitally dictates the friends you make, the partner you choose, the major you declare, and the job you apply for. This masked motivation decides both your behaviors and thoughts. It is the secret to understanding human existence. We call it the social status game, and the prize for mastering it is colossal.
I remember running at Pottruck Health and Fitness Center once in the snowy winter and turning my head slightly to the left to admire an ordered line of beautiful runners. Amid athletes, newcomers, adults, men, and women, I noticed a common denominator: Everyone was wearing AirPods while glued to a screen. Everyone but me. Why do we maximize every valuable moment of downtime for mindless entertainment, leaving no space for mind wandering? Why do we value overstimulating distractions over contemplative introspections?
“What do your parents do?” someone seriously asked me during Wharton orientation. Fighting my brain's battle between an unforced desire to share and an aversion to the anticipated awkward look, I recognized that I would face a long, interminable moment of apnea trying to explain to the world that I do not have two parents because my dad died. Grief exists, and at Penn, it isolates.
“Welcome to Penn! You are the most diverse class we ever admitted!” The convocation rhetoric makes you feel so special. Penn is diverse because a student comes from Wisconsin and another from Kazakhstan. One plays the flute, one plays squash. Never mind that all of them want to be bankers or consultants. I wish someone had told me that nearly every other person sitting at Convocation with me would end up in the funnel. That however diverse my first-year class was, my senior class would simply not be.