June 9, 2009
Meritocracy
I, too, once bought into Fitzgerald’s idea of the personage, but growing up in Princeton meant I needed to take a different path:
I enrolled the next fall, but with no intention of staying. I’d read my Fitzgerald, and I wanted to go east; I wanted to ride the train to the last station. As a natural-born child of the meritocracy, I’d been amassing momentum my whole life, entering spelling bees, vying for forensics medals, running my mouth in mock United Nations meetings and model state governments and student congresses, and I knew only one direction: forward, onward. I lived for prizes, praise, distinctions, and I gave no thought to any goal higher or broader than my next report card. Learning was secondary; promotion was primary. No one had ever told me what the point was, except to keep on accumulating points, and this struck me as sufficient. What else was there?
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What strikes me about this narrative, true, half-true, whatever, is that I know the places. I can imagine these things happening there.
Andrew, thanks for sharing this! I have a friend who needs to read it.