The Price of a Private School Education: Individualism

I did not live a normal life. I was born into a family of physicians where the cash flow was high and everyone's expectations of others were higher. I was born into a superficial world where his or her's net worth mattered more than his or her's character. I was born into a lavish lifestyle where Polo was not a brand of clothing, but a way of life. It did not matter how honest a man was or how upright a woman was, but how many boats a man owned or how young a woman looked. These standards were not just applied to the adults of the community, but the children as well. From birth to the teenage years, youths were told to maintain a certain image by their parents and peers or else they would be faced with dire social repercussions.

As an adolescent, I was constantly reminded of the importance of one's status and image. At the exclusive private elementary school I attended, every child had to be interviewed before they were granted admission to enroll. I remember squirming as my mother parted my hair to the side, cut my nails, and fixed the collar of my Polo shirt before we walked into the school. She brushed off her Ann Taylor suit as she clanked up the stairs with her Nordstrom's pumps. During the interview, I realized that my answers to the principal's question were frivolous when it came to the admissions process. The key to the interview was in what we wore and how we presented ourselves. After ten minutes of smiling, nodding, and polite chatter, the principal told my mother I was admitted to the school, and I began my next stage of branding.

As a student in elementary school, branding was widespread as children sought to one-up each other and prove their wealth to everyone. At school, the coolest kids weren't the ones with the nicest personality, but were the ones with the nicest houses and gadgets. Children would argue about whether their dad's Lexus was better than their friend's dad's Mercedes, despite only knowing the superficial elements of the cars. Others would fight about whether their lawyer parent made more money than their friend's doctor parent. On Career Day, one girl was ridiculed when it was shown that her father was a construction worker. Furthermore, students wanted to be the first one to show off their new Tamogatchi or Gameboy at show-and-tell, while the rest of the students would rush out to buy them. I remember throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of Toys'R'Us, when I didn't get a Furby like "all of the other kids in my class." Branding even made children lose their identity as they went to great lengths just to be like a Barbie or a Power Ranger, buying or demanding every single accessory that accompanied the character. Loss of identity, however, did not end in elementary school.

At the end of fifth grade, the elementary school fed into a sixth to twelfth grade private school where branding became a greater issue. Students were no longer restricted to a uniform, but had to adhere to a loose dress code. The dress, however, was not dictated by the administration, but, instead, the popular cliques set the trends of what to wear. Many girls, who had just started puberty around the beginning of middle school, hit the malls in packs searching for clothes that would make them seem older. They snubbed their nose at low-end stores, where only "losers" shopped, and headed for the higher priced Abercrombie and Express. While only around the age of twelve, girls began to experiment with shorter skirts and lower-cut shirts to show off the assets they were beginning to develop. At school, the girls started to display cattiness as they fought for the attention of boys and downgraded any girls that were not wearing the same kind of pricey clothes they were.

Because most boys stuck to a wardrobe of khakis and Polo shirts, they were less judgmental about branding their clothes and, instead, focused on sports. Socially, I struggled most in middle school. I was not very interested in sports, but I found a sports team to embrace and an athlete to admire, in order to fit in with everyone else. The Seattle Mariners became my favorite team and I wore their sports memorabilia with a superficial pride to match all the other guy's enthusiasm for their teams. As I watched these larger than life athletes tried to embody them in gym class, I became aware of how overweight I was. Being a chubby, little boy who always had to wear size "husky," I was constantly self-conscious of my weight. I would starve myself by not eating lunch all throughout sixth and seventh grade, only to binge back at home. Convinced that I did not have many friends because of my weight, I joined the junior varsity football team as a defensive linebacker and shed my weight. I realized, however, that weight was the least of my worries upon entering high school.

As teenagers continued to act more mature than they actually were, private high school was where everyone lost their innocence. They would idolize celebrities and the characters they portrayed on and off screen. Branding by clothes still occurred, but on a much larger grandiloquent scale, as girls demanded that their parents get the same Manolo Blahnik's as Carrie on Sex and the City or the same Lacoste sweater as Marissa on The O.C. Teenagers would request for the keys to a new BMW or Land Rover on their sixteenth birthday. If you didn't have the newest clothes or the hottest ride, you were out of the social loop. Yet, most disturbing of all was the rampant drug use, promiscuity, and alcohol abuse that was abound. If you didn't smoke weed, have sex or drink alcohol every weekend, you were simply not considered cool. Cliques would race to be the first ones to tell tales of the newest acid trip or the newest hook-up. Some would post pictures on MySpace for the entire world to see. It wasn't until administration began to crack down on student's behavior outside of the classroom, however, when students began to think about their actions and realize how harmful these social pressures could be.

As the students in my class begin college, they will continue to be branded by their school, sorority or fraternity, or the friends they make, but they will be shocked by the amount of diversity found in a university. Personally, it was a wake-up to walk around campus where not everyone looked the same. Slowly, however, I'm beginning to learn that the price of your shoes does not matter as much as the price of your soul. The number of expensive bottles of wine does not matter as much as the number of books you open. The amount of money your parents make does not matter as much as the amount of friends you are able to attain. I only hope that my classmates' universities embrace uniqueness in order to open the closed minds of students, myself included, who grew up in a world where individualism was put at a minimum.