What do professors think of rich kids?
■My daughter invited her college english professor to her very elaborate and expensive wedding. He had no idea until that day that she was a rich kid because she was very humble and she was embarrassed by it. She would not tell people where we live because it is the most expensive city in our state and she was afraid people would treat her differently if they knew.
When she was in school she was in the Marching Band and I had a personalized license plate that said MMBAND, which around here everyone knew stood for Michigan Marching Band. Someone mentioned in one of her classes that they saw that license plate on a new Ferrari in our town, which was an hour away from the school. She said nothing but somebody from her old high school knew it was me and outed her in front of the class. She sheepishly said, “Yea, that’s my Dad and he’s a little too proud of me”, which made the class laugh.
P.S. In response to a reply from another poster I have given a more detailed answer below. I apologize for not giving more details initially.
•I'm sorry and I don’t mean to be rude or offend but why in the world did people up vote this? This does not answer the question at all. The only person that can say what a professor thinks of rich kids would be a professor. Or someone that works at a university. This is post is nothing more than what I would call a humble brag. If you are not familar with the humble brag let me give an example. “Agh, man things sure are crazy right now with this corona virus, it’s been nearly impossible to get someone over to my place to wash my Bentley, I've had to drive my Porsche all week.” The person takes the subject matter and redirects it back to focus on themself and what they want to boast about. This subject of the question was the student and the professor. Not the father who is the source of wealth.
■I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want the answer to be too long and I got side tracked when reminiscing about my daughters school experience going on around that same time. There was a lot more to the story and I just didn’t want to make it too long but I should have elaborated more.
Here is the back story. I was a stay at home Dad and I volunteered A LOT at my daughters schools starting in preschool. I was always the “room mom”, even though I was a dad. When my daughter was a senior in college she asked me if I would sit in a couple of her classes just to complete the circle. I know that must sound odd but she was an only child and we are very close. I asked her to make sure it was ok with her professors first but she said the classes were small and she knew it would be ok.
Anyway that’s how I met her favorite professor, the one that came to the wedding. We became friends through my daughter and I even mentioned him when giving the father of the bride speech.
The professor was in his 80’s and needed help with paperwork after school, he especially needed help with typing on a computer. He always paid his favorite student a small stipend to assist him which he thought would help the students with school expenses. She told him she didn’t want any money and she just liked spending time with him. My daughter was also raised not to take money for helping people. He made her take the money anyway.
When the professor arrived at the wedding he sought me out to tell me how spectacular the wedding was. Previously he had told my daughter he would be be honored to even officiate the wedding ceremony which my daughter was all for but she was married in a Catholic Church so it wasn’t allowed.
Anyway he looked around the wedding reception and started laughing about the small amount of money he paid her because it was pretty obvious she didn’t really need it. Which is a very long way of saying at least some professors like some rich kids.
•Mr. Force, your story is great and like a commenter here mentioned, you and your daughter are humble. You could edit your main story and add the adjoining part to it. It's already a great read but will make it better. Enjoy your amazing life.
■Thank you Mr Urim. I have added a PS to my original answer based on your thoughtful suggestion.
•Nice. You are very much welcome.
•“Sorry, I don't mean to be rude or offensive” but nevertheless you were. Almost every thread you read veers off a little so why is such a putdown necessary. Bless your heart…..and 88 upvotes to pettiness. Makes one wonder.
•Haters gonna hate. Ain’t’ers gonna ain’t.
•That person was jealous and one whole of a pity to exist.
•Several decades ago, my dad was one of a few owners of a second-hand automobile company in Singapore that sells all brands of used cars ranging from the affordable to the elegant ones. To attract prospective buyers, the company’s used cars on sale are routinely serviced to look well-maintained, polished and immaculately new. Being an owner, he gets the privilege of driving home daily any unsold car for his own temporary use.
As a result, my dad gets to ferry my siblings and I to school and other places with his regularly-changing “fleet of used cars”. Classmates and even some teachers conjured up the “Crazy Rich Asian” image as in the 2018 rom-com that I belong to a wealthy family living in a sprawling mansion with numerous cars and affluent indulgences like overseas holidays and an entourage of domestic maids at our beck and call.
But the stark truth was that my family, together with my parents, stay in a spartanly-furnished small apartment within an ordinary, lower middle-class and run-of-the-mill neighborhood - humble, frugal and somewhat penurious but yet quite cosy with the commuting convenience of a random used car on a daily basis. My family was never really impoverished but we were not rich at all though we get by as the old adage goes.
•Just having a car at all in Singapore must have seemed like a luxury to your classmates. Cars there cost about twice what they do in the US, I believe, and I think there is a limit on the number of people who are allowed to own them. (Singapore is a rather urban city-state with some of the best public transportation in the world.)
•My parents are middle class (used to live in trailer parks before they were married & while they grew up) but bought a house in an up & coming neighborhood that clearly caters to a wealthier clientele & people thought my parents were rich lol little did they know that they just bought their house before the neighborhood blew up. When I was growing up I would tell kids we didn’t have money but they didn’t believe me. They thought I was a rich kid but I wasn’t. My parents just hit it before things got more expensive lol
•I’m a professor who has taught some of the children of the 1%. To be honest, the very wealthy students are actually quite pleasant. They have grown up with a certain standard of behavior and it shows. It was expected that they’d graduate into the family business and for the most part submitted average or above average work.
•The ones that actually cause us a significant headache are students from rich, not wealthy households. Wealth is generational, it’s established. Rich can be obtained by the right job. It’s interesting to see rich people try to imitate wealthy people. In any case, the issues that arise come from ridiculous expectations: preferential treatment, extra time, conferences with their parents so they can make their case. This isn’t solely attributed to rich kids, but it’s the group I see most often having the most demands. I have also had quite a few students from this group who are true gems.
•To answer your question: if you don’t go around talking about being a rich kid they won’t think anything pertaining to that about you. You’re a person in their class getting an education. Your money affords you a seat but your work gets you the grade. When you mix up those two it’s bound to cause some issues (this my previous statement).
•This doesn’t answer the question directly, but is related. My sister is a university professor and she noticed that she could kind of tell which kids had money and which didn’t, but at first she didn’t even know why. They all dressed in casual clothes like sweats and she doesn’t know one brand from another. Then she realized that a lot of it had to do with their skin and hair. The wealthier kids had clear skin and beautiful hair even when they crawled out of bed for an 8:00 am class, due to their ability to afford dermatologists, fine salons, and good beauty products. The less wealthy were not able to afford these luxuries on top of school expenses.
•Some of us have naturally beautiful skin and mothers who do hair professionally.
•True!
•What a great observation, one only a woman would notice. I have a beautiful daughter who I teased about having a staff to help make her look good. We live in a northern climate and the one rich kid indulgence was a long Canadian Goose coat that cost $1,000.00. I used to see so many on campus you would think it was part of a mandatory school uniform.
•Well, the sister got that one wrong. Unless I am the exception to her idea. I had clear skin and long thick hair when I was in college and never once went to a dermatologist or used beauty products (other than grocery store soap and shampoo).
•I know it's an old post, but it doesn't take a lot of money to have good skin and nice hair though. Just good hygiene.
•She was right to be humble. Flashing money creates false friends.
•I see you are as humble as your daughter
•Very true, Faye. Very true.
•I love your story.
•These are all luxuries I don’t know. My family survived and in some ways internally cannibalized itself over many forms of discrimination and genocidal action against one another. The husband I married in the military was a sadistic anti-Native American rapist and the medicine I encountered because of the Western diet I ate almost killed me until Native Choctaw historians taught me our legumes and seeds diet and how to approximate it with Western Cultivars. My Jewish mother was literally left to wander Chicago streets by her Lutheran mother with brain cancer from having been abandoned near a steel mill when she was a child. I had access to many privileges growing up, like Swimming Pools, Tennis Courts and nutritionists despite “Welfare” being involved. But because if all the horrifically traumatic things that occurred in my life, I was openly discriminated against for my conservative notions in graduate school despite growing up where Barack Obama started a prison that disappeared people and didn’t care much that they were poisoned by ongoing industry. Then they want to pretend Democrats can actually be conservationists.
•So what’s your point?
•I think my point is that all along my life I have been all over the income spectrum and Professors only ever judged me when I was deliberately poisoned by an Arab doctor for being 25% Ashkenazi while being both critical and supportive of Israel depending on the question. They thought I was “too stubborn” for not going home while struggling to perform to B level academically, but I had no home to go to when I called my parents after my divorce from a savage man. I graduated from my Master’s program with a 3.25 anyhow, as they judged me for being too interested in social justice It doesn’t matter what they think of you. It matters that you publish well-received academic articles or “stub” articles to expand and give good conference presentations. I have.
•You did not answer the question here dude. You simply told us that you have money. Oh yeah, and a Ferrari.
■Read further down where I amended and added on to the answer.
•Oh OK.
•That’s a good answer to the question itself. I would suggest you publish it on its own.
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