The original authors of this exercise are Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright. (via imani)
Bold the true statements. You can explain further if you wish.
1. Father went to college2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
I had gymnastics when I was tiny, and then ballet when I was still tiny, and then I decided I'd rather do choir, so that happened instead. And I had violin lessons at school (briefly because I was awful at it), and then when I was a bit older I had piano lessons. Wow. That is many. (But serial!)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
I guess?
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
Not necessarily by my parents, but pretty much yes.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
For a brief period as a toddler, and then one year after my older sister left home. I don't know if that really counts.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
Now this I actually don't remember. There is currently a TV in Robyn's and my bedroom – the old living room TV after our neighbor gave us her larger TV when she moved – but I don't actually remember when it got there. I think it was before I left high school. Maybe? Anyway it's a piece of crap and the sound's always going out and we're always having to get up from the bed and flick the headphone jack, for some reason, to make the sound come back.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
....I don't even know what those things are. Probably shouldn't confess to that.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Yes. When we moved, and then one California vacation.
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
Damn, that's a lot of bolding.
I like the books question the best. When my sisters and I were little, we would sometimes ask my parents if we were rich. My father used to say we were rich in love, and my mother used to say we were rich in books. Come to think of it, those two responses sum up my parents perfectly.
Also, we are rich in books. We have something like, I don't know, sixteen bookshelves in my house, of which six are really massive floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Part of me started laughing at that fifty books question (we have more than fifty books in the living room), and part of me discovered that my brain could not even comprehend owning fewer than fifty books.
11 comments:
Interesting quizzy thing. Does it give you some quantified conclusion, or is it just meant to make you think about how privileged you've been?
*nitpicky, but also genuinely curious* On #11 - dance and choir are more than two?
You silly twit! Does Ms. G. know you've forgotten PIANO LESSONS?
And owning a house doesn't mean you don't have a mortgage! We do own it!
Amd we've gone to more than one museum...*bangs head*
come to think of it, we probably have more than fifty books in every room of the house except the bathrooms and the playroom.
Oh. I know a few people who had more than two kinds of lessons, even concurrently. Some people's parents make driving-around-to-lessons a very high priority because that helps your kids be 'well rounded' so they can get into Harvard.
(That sounds rather nastier than I mean it to be. Anyway, more than two kinds of lessons in series isn't unimaginable. I myself had piano in Michigan and some Indian classical singing in high school that I was a miserable failure at; I can imagine having taken something else in the five-year gap between those if I hadn't been spending my free time doing math contests instead.) (Hey, I just remembered, perhaps I had three kinds of lessons after all. There is video evidence of my having had 'ballet' classes when I was - two? three? At any rate, very small and clueless. We marched around in a circle to 'The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round'.)
And then there were those poor kids I tutored in Princeton - they had at least three or four private tutors: math (me), Arabic, possibly French, 'science'. And soccer and violin/piano lessons on their off days.
I've just remembered I had tons of lessons. But not all at once. So I have fixed that. And didn't you have ice-skating when you were young, tim darling?
Mumsy - I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Anna - And the kitchen, because I don't think cookbooks count. Otherwise, yes. Definitely more than fifty in each bedroom, more than fifty in the living room, more than fifty in the dining room, and more than fifty in the hall. Which doesn't even count as a room. Hm.
Why wouldn't cookbooks count? If they were magazines I could see not counting them, but they are books, bound, glued and sold in the bookstore, in a book section.
Definitely don't count.
Is this to make us feel guilty about our class privilege and stuff, or mopey about our lack thereof, or is there another point to this?
Also, I tried to calculate how many books I have and I think I only have about 350. This is bad.
oh and no way do cookbooks count.
you are still rich in books and love :)
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