as Someone Who Came from a Low Socioeconomic Class?

As someone who came from a low socioeconomic class, what harsh truth did you learn your first year at an elite U.S. university?

Upper-middle class and upper class kids just don’t think about money. T just don’t have to. Not in a malicious way, not in a wasting-unnecessary-money way, just in the fact that t have never been required by circumstance to do so. T didn’t work in high school. Why would t? T were busy with school — maybe t would have liked more money, but their phone and car and clothes were paid for, so what was really the point? The time investment just didn’t make sense. Better to study hard and go to a good college. T don’t pay their own bills. What good would that do? The car’s paid off, the family has a family plan for their phones and it’s just easier for Dad to hand them a gas card and not have to worry about them running out somewhere. T don’t have money as a factor when t’re picking out a college. T worked hard in high school, so t should go anywhere that will take them! Their parents have been saving for their whole lives, so t can afford it. Education is important, after all. It’s an investment. That’s why t don’t need to fill out the FAFSA or have financial aid. What even really is the FAFSA, anyway? Waste of time, t won’t qualify. Of course you need a new fifteen-hundred-dollar MacBook for college. You can’t have a laptop that fails on you! It just makes sense. Of course you need a new car to get you around when your parents are far away, and an eight-hundred-dollar parking pass. It’s just what you do. Of course you need an unlimited meal plan. Better just to have it taken care of. Of course you need lots of spending money — you’re away from home. I’ll just put some more in your checking account. Of course you need new, good clothes. Buy the Birkenstocks, the Hunter rain boots, the Vineyard Vines fleece, the nine-hundred-dollar Canada Goose coat — the brand-name stuff will last longer. Money isn’t a consideration. It isn’t a factor. It’s just a card swipe, a quick signature at the bottom of a restraint receipt, maybe a half-second jolt in your stomach if you really spend too much, the cash you plunk down for your full-price textbooks at the store. It’s just a tool. These kids have never worked a job because t sure as hell weren’t getting an allowance and there were things that had to be paid for. T never paid for their own phone, gas, clothes, expenses, because t saw that pained smile in their mom’s eye and promised themselves t would find a way to stop asking. T never made lists of colleges based on their financial aid calculators, painstakingly copied off last year’s tax returns, figuring out what was a maybe, possibly, and what was a no, never. T never spent hours poring over their FAFSA, praying the government would give them their max totals, or scholarship after scholarship application. T didn’t see their dad’s face light up when he snuck them aside and told them that he had been saving up money for all of the college shopping that t had to do. T didn’t see his face fall when it still went over budget. T didn’t spend hours on the phone with the administration, negotiating refunded expenses, a covered laptop, lower meal plans, and what was and was not covered. T didn’t buy rain boots from the clearance section and a coat on last-chance sale. A car on campus? That parking fee? The math just isn’t there. Used textbooks, rented textbooks, thrifted online, bought with employee discounts, found in pdf form on some sketchy website, uploaded by another kid just sharing the wealth. Can’t go home this weekend, can’t go home this break. Too expensive. Want to check in at home? Well, do you remember Miley from AP Biology? Turns out she had to drop out because she couldn’t make tuition. Remember that nice boy John who used to help you with math? He’ll graduate, but he’ll be in debt for the next twenty years. There are a thousand, thousand other things that when you didn’t come from money, or even didn’t come from that much money, that you just have to think about. That just have a place in your head while you’re trying to fit into a crazy life a world away from what you know. Things that you didn’t even know that not everyone had to notice and consider and remember, because money is only a tool if you have it and it takes on a thousand other lives if you don’t.