How To Respond When Your Professor Asks What You Did Over Break Without Sounding Privileged
By Sam Sliman and Fluke Baller
Quick! There’s no time to waste! You have to move the conversation to a different topic as quickly as possible. Try mentioning how excited you are for this class, or how nice it was to have some time off. Avoid talking about any aspects of your vacation directly, and let the attention stay on any of your other classmates who might also have the horrible misfortune of needing to hide their wealth.
If that doesn’t work, don’t panic. Your gut instinct at this point might be to confess that you were “wintering” in Tahoe, but sadly, this is unrelatable to the common folk. Instead, try saying that you were “visiting family” or that your “dad actually worked very hard for his money, and he deserves it more than other people do.” Make sure to leave out that you spent the break at a second house that goes unused for 90 percent of the year. It may not seem like it, but this is an easy way to accidentally tip people off that your family is incredibly rich.
Speaking of that, make sure to explain how your parents are “well off” but not “rich.” This will certainly save you the embarrassment of coming from money. You might have been “comfortable” growing up, but you certainly weren’t rich, were you? I mean what is rich really? It’s probably just whoever has slightly more than you do. Your parents don’t even own a sports team! How privileged could you really be? With all of these celebrities’ kids running around, it’s pretty clear that you’re not even that well off. Continue to focus on those who have more than you in order to justify your endless pursuit of wealth. Remember that it’s never enough, and that the next million will be the one that makes you happy.
If all else fails, you’ll have no choice but to own up to your wealth and acknowledge the privilege that you have. Be frank with yourself and others about all of the money that you were born into. Recognize that you have been given extraordinary opportunities in this life, and that no matter how skilled and deserving you are, nobody achieves that on their own. Reflect on your ability to give back to the communities upon which your success is built. Become self aware, not shying away from your wealth, but instead acknowledging its existence and working to see what good you can do with it… Then you can call it a day. Whew. That amount of self reflection was exhausting. Thank god you don’t have to actually do anything about it! Hopefully you can forget all about this until the next break rolls along. Good luck!
