In These United States, being poor means that one lacks Capital (money &or access to financing) and Connections (well-connected people), and the thing about These United States is that there is nobody stopping you from reaching beyond one's membership in the Poorsy Class.
The other thing about These United States is that there is really nobody helping you either.
And so, what These United States possess that other countries that aspire to be like us (or destroy us) is meritocracy. Sure, meritocracy seems like a lie, to certain people, but it's not that it's a lie so much that it's Elitist. The lie is not that meritocracy does not exist. The lie is that meritocracy is available to everyone.
Meritocracy does exist. It is within These United States where a person, someone, anyone can go to college, become educated in a field wherein earnings beyond that which are possible through hourly-wage labor is attainable. No education, no wages beyond the hourly.
Another lie is that an Undergraduate degree is enough to reach the wages that are beyond-hourly wages, because the reality is that one must attain a Graduate-level education in order to be guaranteed professional-class wages. The thing about Graduate-level education is that it's specifically reserved for those who are deemed "smart enough" to use only their brains for their job, and as we've learned, everyone isn't born with the brains to do the types of jobs that can only be attained by obtaining a Graduate-level degree.
An Undergrad degree can get some people into some "professional-level" jobs, but this is also another facet of the lie. I have lots of friends who graduated with Undergrad degrees, and they are working in corporate office spaces wherein they believe that they are of the "professional" class, but what they're really part of is the top of the wage-labor class. They are still doled out wages by an employer.
Professionals are the people whose skills are their business. Construction workers, I would argue, are part of the Professional Class. Anyone who possesses a skill that they then commercialize is part of the Professional Class. Regular Folk who show up to some job to get paid out in hourly/salaried wages are part of the Working Class. 90% of all American families are Working Class ... not Middle Class. I'd argue that the Professional Class is the Middle Class in America, today.
As a person born into a Poor Family who was adopted into a Working Class family, who has been a Working-Class citizen of These United States her entire young-adult/adult-jobbing history, I am going back to school so that I can be catapulted into the Middle Class. And school is the only option available to me as a poor member of the Working Class, meaning I have no Capital (in a wealthy sense) and no Connections (i don't know anyone, personally, who does what i want to do). So school is it.
And school it is.
Graduate School is an available option for me, right now, without anymore schooling, because I performed well in high school (auto-accepted into every state school in colorado due simply to the relationship between my GPA and SAT/ACT test scores; all i had to do was accept), and completed my Undergraduate degree. If I needed to complete my Undergraduate degree, I would not be pursuing Graduate School, I would be pursuing my Undergraduate degree. If I needed to complete high school, then I wouldn't be pursuing my Undergraduate degree either, because I would be focused on completing high school.
The thing about "completion" is that some people have it in their heads that like you're "supposed to" go to school during some specific time in one's life. This is absurd.
I graduated from Undergrad six years after I completed high school, and it only took me five years of school. I took a year off between junior and senior year, but then had to do a super-senior lap because I switched majors late into the game. According to them, you're "supposed to" graduate in four.
I was invited into the World of Art History during my last year as an undergrad, and I declined because I did not want to pursue an academic career in Art History. I very muchly enjoyed studying art and its history while I was studying it, but there was no way I was going to dedicate my life to the studying of art and its history. No way.
During my year-long break from college, I was invited into the World of Professional Ballet after completing the trainee program at the small ballet company that invited me. Even though I love to dance more than any other form of body movement, it doesn't challenge my brain in the way that satisfies me. Don't get me wrong, ballet is plenty mentally challenging, but it also isn't after a certain point of mastery, etc., and so, that's when I returned to school to finish my Undergraduate degree.
As a high schooler, I was welcomed with open arms into the World of Medicine, but medicine and I did & do not get along. I am no scientist. I am an artist. This I know with unwavering certainty. And so, as soon as I started learning about Medicine at the college level, I was out. I am no scientist.
So then, of what World do I want to be a part?
[to be continued ... cause i still have to show up to some fucking day{night}job, so i gotta stop this thing here, for the time being, so that i can quickly, loosely-edit and then post it, and then go off to my goddamn job *blech*]
*if you're here and you've been here before, then you know that i am a writer, and as a writer, i am beginning to draft my personal statement for my law school application. i am only allotted 500 words (a loose maximum, i've been informed) that being said, the task of whittling down the answer to the questions, "why law school and why this law school?" into 500 words will be an exercise in specifics. i need to be able to nail down the exact specifics of my "wanting" without any unnecessary elaboration, etc. so, naturally, the first task becomes writing down all of the things i want to say in as many words as i want/need to say it. then i can look at it and see what "the point" is ... one hopes. and they're drafts, as opposed to sketches, because for me, as an artist, drafts connote a sort of imbued notion that the thing will be edited; a sketch is a sketch, and although sketches can be edited, my idea of a sketch is for the thing to exist as it was sketched, not really to be edited but rather, to exist in its purest form as a reminder.