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Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

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Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#61

Post by phd514 »

trjordan wrote: post #3

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I once heard it explained to me as this: It's easy to deride the journey of the rich college student: 80-hour internships at Goldman Sachs, unpaid positions in government, etc. But, the things that are done by successful people are hard, as hard as walking a tightrope. The difference is that rich students walk this tightrope over a bed of pillows. Poor students walk it o…

It's too easy to generalize this as a lack of money problem. Certainly lack of money is a factor, but so is attitude and character. There are plenty of examples of people from lower income backgrounds rising above their backgrounds even with setbacks along the way because they persevered through difficulties. There are also plenty of examples of people who failed and squandered lots of opportunities. There's an element of detached elitism in the idea that spreading around more money is going to solve a lot of those problems.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#62

Post by [deleted] »

googletazer wrote: post #37
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who was so aggressively proud of their success, having founded and grown a successful business. He'd talk your ear off about how people like him were the ones adding value to society and how unsuccessful people are just lazy and don't try hard enough or don't take enough risks, or are just deadbeats, and how successful, hard working people are punished with taxes--you know, the standard soapbox speech.…

I see what you're saying, but to be the devil's advocate - someone at some point in the family of "Cartoon Republican Villain" was also a poor sob with a single shot to make it. The tragedy is that he forgot, or never knew about it.

[deleted]

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#63

Post by allovera »

This article had me in tears. I grew up so poor I often didn't have shoes and wore dollar-store flip flops in the winter.

Deadbeat dad, opiate addict mother. I was shuffled constantly from relative to relative, friend's house to friend's house. I had some very supportive teachers, including one who paid for my AP tests and SATs. I got an offer to a university in the UC system. Life was looking up!

In the last semester of my senior year, my stepmom kicked me out of my dad's house. I shuffled back and forth between friends' houses, too embarrassed to explain the situation to an adult. I had to sleep rough a few times and got pneumonia from not having a whooping cough vaccination. I coughed so hard my ribs cracked. I missed a class where I had to turn in a midterm, my teacher wouldn't accept it late ("you kids always make up excuses"), I couldn't get a doctor's note because I hadn't been to the doctor. Welp, failed the class. The university rescinded my admission for the failed grade. I lost all my scholarships. I ended up bouncing around homeless shelters for a few months while I recovered my health.

Eventually, I went to community college, transferred to a top 10 university. Now I work at Amazon as an SDE and make well over six figures. Happy ending, right? Well, no -- for years, I blamed myself for "blowing" that university opportunity. I felt horrible. I felt so ashamed.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#64

Post by mixmastamyk »

ajkjk wrote: post #55
ianai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you remind her that you were only tracking financial mistakes?

I should've finished with how it hit me: that I found the statement pretty powerful because, indeed, most of everything that had gone wrong or been stressful in my life that year was in that file. It was a reminder of how fortunate I've been.

Yes, not looking for sympathy but as a note for others. Recently a loved one of mine passed away very quickly, which I missed, and it put everything in perspective. No amount of money in the world (times ten) can fix such a mistake.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#65

Post by rayiner »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #48
nostromo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is even more the case with the legal system. Regular infractions (under-age drinking, recreational drugs, shoplifting) are minor speed bumps for kids in a middle-class family. But for a poor family, they can send people on the wrong track indefinitely.

That is a travesty of our justice system (or maybe any justice system). The more money you have, the better your lawyers, the better deals can be cut. The rich & upper middle-class will probably just get off with a slap on the wrist (if that). The poor & lower-middle class with not so many means and court appointed lawyers get the harshest sentences and are basically used as statistics for your public prosecutors pro…

I think that's an overly simplistic view. Are prosecutors dropping shoplifting charges for "upper middle class" people because they brought in an $1,000/hour lawyer? Real life prosecutors aren't quite so cartoon villain-y.

The bigger issue is that (1) laws are enforced more harshly in poor areas because there is pressure on prosecutors to focus on high-crime areas; (2) poor people are much more likely to be within one degree of separation of someone the cops are interested in. In many schools in poor neighborhoods, "kids are essentially assigned a gang affiliation." http://www.npr.org/2013/02/21/172593743/chicago-kids-say-the....

In an upper class suburb, a shoplifting charge is easy to dismiss as youthful indiscretion. In a gang-infested inner city neighborhood, where the perpetrator might have friends or family with known gang affiliations, it becomes very easy (if not fair or just) to see an indiscretion as a sign of something much bigger.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#66

Post by kfe »

Having gone to a school with an extremely high barrier of entry (in the terms of admission tests not financially) I would say that bright & motivated companionship was what pushed me forward. Pooling talent helps to develop it in many ways.

At the same time some of the best/most braised education systems come from countries with a "level playing field" public school systems such as Finland.

To me the main question is if developing talent by pooling it together is in conflict with achieving high average student development. And if so, which one of those should be the goal as a society?

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#67

Post by mixmastamyk »

allovera wrote: post #63

This article had me in tears. I grew up so poor I often didn't have shoes and wore dollar-store flip flops in the winter. Deadbeat dad, opiate addict mother. I was shuffled constantly from relative to relative, friend's house to friend's house. I had some very supportive teachers, including one who paid for my AP tests and SATs. I got an offer to a university in the UC system. Life was looking up! In the last semeste…

Well, now you can forgive yourself and be proud of what you've accomplished and will continue to.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#68

Post by ritchiea »

ajkjk wrote: post #22

For a year or so I've been keeping an ad hoc record (a text file!), to the best of my ability, of all my financial losses due to personal mistakes - so, moving out of my old apartment a month late was a 1200$ mistake, and dropping and breaking my phone was a 200$ one. I'm also trying to keep track of very risky behavior that didn't become an actual financial loss: driving in NYC during the blizzard last year didn't a…

I can relate to this. Growing up poor and originally working in nonprofits out of college I experienced a lot of stress about money and about making the kind of mistakes you listed. Getting a parking ticket was a huge deal. Today I am much more financially comfortable and I don't think I'm less responsible, just less stressed about the consequences of when I eventually make a common mistake like misreading a parking sign.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#69

Post by cbhl »

zajd wrote: post #60
cbhl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I took a problem-solving class in college, they broadly categorized problems into three types (allegedly in increasing order of difficulty to solve): problems that can be solved with money, problems with processes, and problems with people.

Seems pretty weak. You need all three to do anything. Seems like a weak backdoor argument that "money doesn't matter when it comes to the hard things" (as long as your hard things don't take money)

The key takeaway I had from that course was "money can solve more problems than you think, so it should be the first problem-solving strategy that you consider".

This was pretty counter-intuitive in college, when I always felt like I didn't have enough money, but just knowing that this was a possible way of solving many classes of problems changed the way I approached decision-making in my later life (e.g. when picking my first job out of college).

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#70

Post by mixmastamyk »

pnathan wrote: post #59
mixmastamyk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what they need is some sort of advocate to show them the ropes. Sounds doable, if approached respectfully. Vaguely reminds me of the book "Rich dad, poor dad."

> what they need is some sort of advocate In brief, because I'm at my day job: no. That is not the right approach. That is the approach that gets one labeled an elitist and a snob. It's not appreciated by the little people you're trying to help. The correct approach is one which maximizes agency. This will have a wider variance of success, but will be received far better.

That's why I wrote "respectfully".
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