How poverty changes your mindset
I grew up on welfare well into elementary school and my mom married my stepdad who was delivering oil to gas stations up driving all night on trucks.<p>Before that I spent my first years in a trailer park where my mom had my older brother and I in her teens, living in a single wide with my biological father and his mother.  My dad&#x27;s mother and both of my parents were addicts and alcoholics. I was taken out of custody and lived with family members until I was about 5 before I could live with my mom again on food stamps when she was single. She found a job as a medical transcriptionist and living in a two bedroom sharing a bunk bed with my brother. She met my stepfather at a church when he was a trucker.<p>Noone in my family including my older brother graduated high school.<p>I made straight A&#x27;s was bored as public schools in the south are notorously bad mine was no different with the exception of overcrowding, riots etc, and after my parents foreclosed on their house we moved into yet another tiny apartment but this one was closed to a bookstore. I walked to Barnes and nobles everyday after school and one day after reading the alchemist in one sitting I picked up a teen vogue (I&#x27;m a girl) in the 9th grade in highschool, and read a fashion edition on boarding school fashion ($350 Tori Birch flats) and I thought hmm boarding school sounds like it might be challenging....<p>I went home and applied to every boarding school in the northeast, got accepted into three and a scholarship to 2. I went to one and cried for three weeks when I made an unweighted 3.96gpa because I wanted a 4.0 and needed to get a good scholarship to afford college.<p>I went to an engineering school and got a degree in Electrical Engineering, I have worked my ass off and dealt with all of the nonsense of going to school with spoiled rich white boys who did engineering because their dad did engineering and spent their weekends on expensive getaway trips, binge drinking at frat houses with jobs waiting for them at their dads big engineering firm.<p>Luckily for me I met alot of great kids in college as well who were genuinely geeky and there for the experience, but it has not been fun being a girl in engineering and dealing with the nonsense with that plus all of the ignirnace associated with how easy some people have it relative to me and many people who have it way worse than me. I consider myself lucky to be curious and enjoy hard work, and grateful for all the rich people in my life who have donated literally hundreds of thousands of dollars so people like me could afford to have a good education. I am not slighted or bitter in any regard when it comes to understanding how lucky I am (I could have been a girl trying to go to school in a third world country with no rights money etc) in the grand scheme of things and I truly believe gratitude is a healthy attitude to have in life.<p>That being said, I genuinely think so many people, particularly young white males whose mother&#x27;s baby them to not end through their 20s have never struggled a day in their life and cannot understand what it&#x27;s like to have to budget for a vacation, or food for that matter, buy their own first car and not be able to afford.to fly home on the holidays in college.<p>When I interned in Manhattan in college I actually met guys who tried to impress me by saying they came from nothing because their dad &quot;only gave me $10,000 to invest when they were 18 and wouldn&#x27;t  give me anything else after that&quot; (accept.of course all the luxuries in their life up to that point, including a good education, summer camps at ivy leagues, a brand new car and a fully paid for $200k tuition with no loans, but I digress...). I sat next to a kid at orientation at the company I was working for complaining about his stock options being limited for 10 weeks due to conflict of interest for the company we were working for. Stock? Wow, I was excited to get my first paycheck so I could pay rent. But these kids swear they &quot;came from nothing&quot;.<p>And many girls I went out with I ended up not being able to hang out with because they would go shopping for Jimmy choose ($600 heels) and to clubs where shots are $50 a pop. I couldn&#x27;t afford to socialize with them and it never occurred to any of them an $80 sushimi dinner with cocktails could be an affordability issue. They were living in Soho, I was in the Bronx living paycheck to paycheck. It was the first income I had ever had.<p>I genuinely think there is a level of non intentional ignorance about what it really means to come from nothing and it&#x27;s a big deal considering politics plays into inner city education, taxes etc.<p>I&#x27;d honestly love to see some of these guys I worked with walk a day in my shoes and try to show up in Manhattan at the age of 21 with $300k to liquidate, no debt and a sports car with my background, and try to lecture me about how I&#x27;m not &quot;confident&quot; enough and that&#x27;s my issue when it comes to advocating for myself in the business world.....<p>I will cry them a river