Dear Prudence,
My girlfriend is brilliant, both in her grasp of new skills or ideas generally, but also professionally. She is a researcher in a complex technical field and received her undergraduate and PhD degrees from Harvard and MIT, respectively. She’s really proud of her work but also has complicated feelings about her alma maters. She grew up in a blue-collar household, and her parents pushed her not to go to college, but she made it anyway. Once there, she had mixed experiences—she was successful and happy academically but felt the class and money differences incredibly strongly, and believes that most people she went to school with are “entitled idiots with too much money” (in her words).
She felt very alone and was frustrated by cliquey behavior. In her current job, most of her colleagues went to Ivy Leagues, but she feels very welcome and at home because everyone is obsessively focused on the work. My parents are middle class and very invested in signifiers like the right college, a prestigious job, or a name drop. Whenever they introduce her to family or friends, or when we visit, they always describe her as “Harvard educated” and emphasize her prestigious accomplishments. I’m glad they’re proud of how smart and hardworking she is—I’m proud too! But it makes her really uncomfortable, especially because she wants to basically reject the exact class signifiers they’re aspiring to for her, and I’d like to ask them to tone it down. How do I do that?
—Trying to Make It Easier