I’d rather read a book.

At university, Y found her community. After growing up in the California state, where she spent most of her early education in her school’s magnet program, this university was where she felt amongst her “academic peers,” she said. It was where she was comfortable to express all aspects of her personality. 

Y also discovered that some of her peers embodied the quintessential American Dream. One friend she met at the university had come from being “flat broke” to graduating from the university with a very “saleable” set of engineering skills, Y said. Those skills helped her compensate for a miscommunication within her family with her student loans, which cost her thousands of dollars extra for late payments. Still, Y knows those obstacles would be insurmountable for many others. 

Y now works remotely for her company from her home in another city, where she lives with her husband. She added that while there are many different ways to achieve one’s American Dream, pointing to another person she met at grad school from Nebraska who found success without a college degree, it is important not to get caught up with anecdotal evidence. 

“People love to point to it, they say, ‘Hey, that one person from that poor area made it out, therefore, poverty is not a problem,’” Y said. “Which doesn’t prove that statement at all.” 

Y breaks with the American Dream on its hard work and “bootstraps” concept too. She happily admits she is not the hardest worker. That’s not to say Y believes she has not earned the success she’s achieved, but rather, she admits the role the circumstances she was born into, such as her upbringing in California and being able to attend college and grad school, played in that success. 

“I’m not an internally highly driven person, I would often rather sit down and read a book,” Y said. “…So if I had not had some of these other benefits would I have done as well? Probably not.” 

Y is…

• 40 Years-Old
• Female, Cisgender
• White
• Ashkenazi Jewish
• Upper Middle Class
• Bisexual