What is this thing you call weekends?
I feel a really weird combination of elitist and country bumpkin. It's quite a strong emotional response on both ends and I am having trouble processing it.
After a short, fretful, interrupted sleep last night I got up at 5 am to head to Boston for a four day cram course designed to yank me through the CFP exam. Mapquest and Google say it is a two hour drive. I left myself two and a half hours. It took three. I had trouble finding the entrance to the massive skyscraper I could see from a mile away, and got to circle around the Charles River a few times until I managed the right exit. My GPS went beyond unhelpful all the way to actively being evil.
The day was pretty much what I expected. It is a really intense intellectual load and I was really tired, but we covered my strongest subject today so I at least wasn't as overwhelmed and drowning as some of my classmates.
My classmates surprised me with their 1%ness. They were Beautiful People, graduates of elite prep schools and private colleges. The instructions said to dress for comfort, so no one wore suits, but the women were all perfectly sized with gorgeous hair and beautiful clothes. 80% of the 20 or so classmates were under 30, and appeared to have been sent by employers paying their way. (They worked in "private wealth management" firms, mostly.) Even one of the over-forty men appeared to be an employee. I would guess that only three of us (plus the instructor) were self-employed (and hence, paying the for ourselves to be there.) Only two of us were overweight. None of us appeared to be non-white.
The money and privilege and power and comfort they exude intimidated me. I found myself working my bona fides into conversation. (I went to an elite private college myself, I have a decent MBA, I own my own firm.) I don't understand why they rattled me. It's just that the urban life is so different than mine. All those people! All those cars! $16 sandwiches at lunch!
Somehow they managed to find a venue that was a full one mile away from a T station, so I am stuck having to drive. I actively dislike it. But at least this time I had my trusty ancient minivan to give me heft and presence (and a certain lack of concern for my paint job.) Always before I took the little Honda Civic Coupe into the city. But it is a stick shift and annoying to drive in stop and go traffic, and is tiny and invisible. The Previa makes me much happier. However, as I drove
to my B&B in the elite suburb of Newton I noticed that I was surrounded on the road by Mercedes and Porcshe(spelling?). I looked down at my dashboard and noticed my odometer had just rolled over to 206000 miles in my seventeen year old van.
I felt embarrassed, suddenly, to be driving such a junker. But at the same time I was horrified that people NEED better cars. Do people really structure their lives to include nine mile drives that take 45 minutes? So many cars! All at the same time! And people seem to subject themselves to this twice a day five times a week! Walking to work is so much more civilized!
And now I feel like Lady Grantham, so elite that I don't have to commute. Or maybe so out of touch that I live in another century.
After a short, fretful, interrupted sleep last night I got up at 5 am to head to Boston for a four day cram course designed to yank me through the CFP exam. Mapquest and Google say it is a two hour drive. I left myself two and a half hours. It took three. I had trouble finding the entrance to the massive skyscraper I could see from a mile away, and got to circle around the Charles River a few times until I managed the right exit. My GPS went beyond unhelpful all the way to actively being evil.
The day was pretty much what I expected. It is a really intense intellectual load and I was really tired, but we covered my strongest subject today so I at least wasn't as overwhelmed and drowning as some of my classmates.
My classmates surprised me with their 1%ness. They were Beautiful People, graduates of elite prep schools and private colleges. The instructions said to dress for comfort, so no one wore suits, but the women were all perfectly sized with gorgeous hair and beautiful clothes. 80% of the 20 or so classmates were under 30, and appeared to have been sent by employers paying their way. (They worked in "private wealth management" firms, mostly.) Even one of the over-forty men appeared to be an employee. I would guess that only three of us (plus the instructor) were self-employed (and hence, paying the for ourselves to be there.) Only two of us were overweight. None of us appeared to be non-white.
The money and privilege and power and comfort they exude intimidated me. I found myself working my bona fides into conversation. (I went to an elite private college myself, I have a decent MBA, I own my own firm.) I don't understand why they rattled me. It's just that the urban life is so different than mine. All those people! All those cars! $16 sandwiches at lunch!
Somehow they managed to find a venue that was a full one mile away from a T station, so I am stuck having to drive. I actively dislike it. But at least this time I had my trusty ancient minivan to give me heft and presence (and a certain lack of concern for my paint job.) Always before I took the little Honda Civic Coupe into the city. But it is a stick shift and annoying to drive in stop and go traffic, and is tiny and invisible. The Previa makes me much happier. However, as I drove
to my B&B in the elite suburb of Newton I noticed that I was surrounded on the road by Mercedes and Porcshe(spelling?). I looked down at my dashboard and noticed my odometer had just rolled over to 206000 miles in my seventeen year old van.
I felt embarrassed, suddenly, to be driving such a junker. But at the same time I was horrified that people NEED better cars. Do people really structure their lives to include nine mile drives that take 45 minutes? So many cars! All at the same time! And people seem to subject themselves to this twice a day five times a week! Walking to work is so much more civilized!
And now I feel like Lady Grantham, so elite that I don't have to commute. Or maybe so out of touch that I live in another century.