By Anna Prouty
I entered the elite at age five.
From kindergarten to sixth grade, I attended The Rhoades School, a prestigious, private elementary school. In seventh grade, I started at The Bishop’s School, a prestigious, private middle and high school. In 2010, I began college at Barnard College of Columbia University, a prestigious, private college with the double bonus of being both a Seven Sisters and a de-facto college of the Ivy League university. This past winter, I graduated from college with an offer of admission to the London School of Economics (LSE), one of the “most elite” universities in the world.
On the ladder of prestige, I’ve climbed about as far as a 21-year-old can. My classmates have gone on to medical schools and law schools, finance jobs and consulting jobs at the most influential companies in the country. The more globally minded are Fulbright Scholars, the more socially minded are Teaching for America.
Me? I’m living in a trailer on my uncle’s farm in Washington. But like my classmates who WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and backpack through Chile and work in Sierra Leone, I’m only doing it temporarily. This is a gap year, a brief stint of regular life bookended by glittering prestige.
All in all, I have 21 months: December 2013 until September 2015, when I start at LSE. 21 months in 21 years when my life doesn’t have to look good on a résumé. I’m reminded of that line from Fight Club – “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time” – but I think, No. Not for me. Because next fall, I’m going to graduate school. I’m not really living in a trailer, I’m sojourning here. I’m not really living on minimum wage, I’m vacationing on it. This has an end-date.
This isn’t real life. My real life comes with a gold sticker stamped Ivy League, stamped Accomplished, stamped Elite.
When we pass through an elite institution, we come to inhabit the elite. Our self-worth becomes tied to our diplomas. I can live in a trailer all I want, but that piece of paper marked Columbia University proves I’m still “better than that.” It proves I am one of the Best and Brightest.
Actually, it proves that I am one of the Richest and Best-Connected.
My high school had this tagline, “The Bishop’s Difference.” A catch-all phrase used to highlight how an education from The Bishop’s School sets you apart from the rest.
We the Prestigious are not truly the brightest. We are not even the best-educated. Calling what I got an “elite education” is only a half-truth. Yes, it got me a spot in the elite. No, I did not receive an education.
The Bishop’s Difference
My high school had this tagline, “The Bishop’s Difference.” A catch-all phrase used to highlight how an education from The Bishop’s School sets you apart from the rest. We are the seventeen-year-olds who quote Kierkegaard. We balance three sports, two performing arts groups and a hundred community service projects, speak three languages and still get straight A’s and 2400s on the SAT. We never confuse “your” and “you’re” and we know how to use an Oxford comma. We are a college admissions officer’s wet dream.
We are also some of the most elitist, privileged, “entitled little shits” (to use William Deresiewicz’ term) that the world has ever known.
I’m told I received an incredible education at Bishop’s and I should be grateful. I am not. If I could go back and do it again, I never would have gone to school there. Yes, I met some inspiring teachers, the kind most schools don’t have. I wrote essays on Moby-Dick and learned to speak French and traveled to India.
I also got instilled with a disgusting sense of entitlement and an extremely narrow and warped view of the world. I didn’t meet anyone whose parent wasn’t a doctor, lawyer, banker or business executive. I didn’t meet anyone who wasn’t guaranteed success. I didn’t meet anyone poor, and I hardly met anyone black or Latino.
The “Bishop’s Difference” doesn’t mean you’re qualified or intelligent. It means you inhabit a world narrowly sliced from the top tier of the socioeconomic spectrum. You’re surrounded by future world leaders, not because they’re brilliant, but because they were born into the class that keeps recycling itself as the top of the pyramid.
My best friend from college and I both graduated a semester early. I remember her looking at me in our last week of finals and saying, “How the hell did we get here?”
We go to Princeton and Stanford and Williams, we go to UCLA Business School and Harvard Law. We grow up and marry other Princeton and Stanford and Williams graduates, we make six-figure salaries and move into big houses with ocean views just like the ones we grew up in. And the weirdest part of it is that none of us had to learn anything to get there. Our future was set because of our families and our upbringings. Our place in the elite was a birthright, not an achievement.
Pomp and Circumstance
My best friend from college and I both graduated a semester early. I remember her looking at me in our last week of finals and saying, “How the hell did we get here?”
And all I could think was, “Because time passed and we kept breathing.”
Everyone talks about graduating college like an accomplishment, and for some people, it is. For those who had to work their way through it, or pay for their own education. For those whose parents weren’t college-educated, or who had to face insurmountable adversity during their time on campus. For all kinds of people whose stories I don’t know and can’t list, it is a huge accomplishment.
But the percentage of students for whom graduating isn’t really an accomplishment is large, and it’s growing. For me and for people like me, a Columbia University degree was just the next step. An accomplishment like walking is an accomplishment for a baby. Yes, you did it, but you were biologically guaranteed to do it. Your getting here was a matter of when, never if.
It’s four years later. Here’s your diploma.
The only thing you had to do to get here was nothing.
Time passed.
Congratulations.
In the spring of my junior year of college, I first flirted with suicide. I was in a period of intense depression, and for the first time I truly wanted to be dead. I wanted to stop existing. I didn’t get so far as to attempt suicide, but oh how I wanted to. I knew there was something skewed in my brain, and I was on the verge of dropping out of school to figure it out and try to heal.
Looking back, though it felt like a battle, I did not stay out of strength. I stayed out of fear. I stayed because I was supposed to.
But I never did. I stayed in school, miserable, depressed, and at times suicidal. I graduated eight months later. Congratulations.
Was I strong? Was I able to pull it together? Was it the Bishop’s Difference in me that kept me in school?
Absolutely not.
Looking back, though it felt like a battle, I did not stay out of strength. I stayed out of fear. I stayed because I was supposed to. I stayed because the possibility of not being prestigious terrified me too much, because this was my born role in the Circle of Class and Privilege. I stayed because I would rather die in the elite than live outside of it.
A Farmer with a Harvard Degree
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I had my first corporate internship. I sat at my desk in my Nordstrom’s pencil skirt and thought, What the hell happened to me?
When I was fifteen and first started looking at colleges, I wanted to study film and philosophy. I wanted to spend my summers at an ashram in India or volunteering for an avant garde theater or working on a farm. I wanted to be all Eat, Pray, Love spiritual, all Moulin Rouge bohemian.
But I found myself in a cubicle, staring at an Excel spreadsheet every day to pad my résumé and make connections. I cried myself to sleep every night that summer, but I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. This was what everyone around me did. This was what you were supposed to do. This was the whole point of every hoop I’d jumped through from age five to now.
What I didn’t realize was that my internship was just another hoop. The more time you spend in elite institutions, the more blind you get to the hoops around you.
Now you can be a lawyer and an investment banker, but God forbid you be a mechanic. You can’t be a masseuse. You can’t be a farmer. … Above all, you can’t be poor.
And they keep shrinking the hoops on you.
First it’s get good grades, then it’s get good grades in all the right APs, then it’s get into only one of the most selective schools, then it’s get only one of the most selective internships, the best graduate or professional school, the highest-paying job. The list keeps going on. Your idea of success doesn’t just grow up with you. It gets smaller as you get older. You’re on a sidewalk through a field and the path keeps getting narrower, but you’re terrified of stepping on the grass.
An education is supposed to open doors. It’s supposed to give you opportunities. But for every new door opened to us, We the Prestigious force another one shut. Now you can be a lawyer and an investment banker, but God forbid you be a mechanic. You can’t be a masseuse. You can’t be a farmer.
Above all, you can’t be poor.
Of course, you still could, but those things are out in the grass where you don’t dare to tread. You’re conditioned not to want them, to disdain them, to associate with those people only when necessary and never as people. You get your car fixed. You get a massage. You forget where your food comes from. You donate to the poor, you don’t hang out with them.
Why? Because you’re afraid. You’re so cripplingly afraid of stepping off the narrow path to success, of missing a hoop and falling… into what?
Into the rest of the world. Into the void below the Bishop’s Difference, below the Ivy League, below the top of the pyramid. You’re terrified of seeing how skewed your worldview is. You’re terrified of seeing the faces of every person below you and realizing how tenuous your position at the top actually is.
You’re terrified of realizing how much of your life you didn’t actually earn.
I Majored in Unafraid!
When I started college, they had this admissions pamphlet that read, “I Majored in Unafraid!” It was supposed to make you feel empowered, like you were free to explore your education and take new risks. This could not be further from the truth. Everyone I met in college was afraid. Ivy League schools are the most terrified places in the world.
In the months since I graduated from college, I’ve had the task of unlearning my education. … In unlearning my education, I’m relearning myself.
I’m scared too. I’m scared of my life, ending one minute at a time in the void between prestigious commencement and prestigious orientation. I’m scared of drifting, but I’m not sure what it means to be grounded. For as long as I can remember, being grounded was simple: You were either working on your degree or on your résumé. Being grounded meant being tied to a piece of paper.
In the months since I graduated from college, I’ve had the task of unlearning my education. I’m picking apart the priorities I grew into that aren’t mine, the dreams that would actually make me miserable, and the measures of self-worth that value the kinds of people I can’t stand.
In unlearning my education, I’m relearning myself. I’ve had to rediscover the soul that got lost, and the results have been surprising. Namely, that all I did in college was get further away from myself. I want all the same things for my life that I did when I was fifteen. I want to be a writer and an activist because these are the things I love to do. They matter to me even if they don’t get me anywhere else.
But even more surprising, I’ve found that the most important things I want are not things you can put on a résumé. They’re not things you can answer with when someone asks what you’re doing after college. Things like, I want to be a friend and a lover. I want to be good to my parents. I want to be close to my sister. I want to be close to God. I want to love, and grow, and heal, and feel, and be happy.
What I want is to be human, radically and wholly human. The kind of rough-edged humanity that prestigious institutions sand off of you. The kind of humanity I see lost from the faces of the brilliant people I grew up with.
I’ve learned so much more of value from six months of living life than I did in sixteen years of so-called education. And not just about myself. I’ve learned more political science since graduating college than I did getting my political science degree, simply because I have the time now to read widely and think broadly and talk to people. I’ve had the time for all the things you’re supposed to do in college, but never get around to.
But I worry that all of this still reeks of transience. I’m talking the way privileged kids talk after a two-week “community service” trip to Guatemala. In just over a year, I’ll still be going to graduate school at the top of the prestige ladder.
Actual Education
I’m not sure if I’m going to graduate school more out of a genuine desire to study or a crippling fear of losing my status. When asked why I chose LSE, I joke that it was just cheaper than Harvard. This isn’t entirely untrue. I can’t pretend that the elite name wasn’t a huge factor in my choice.
When asked why I chose LSE, I joke that it was just cheaper than Harvard. This isn’t entirely untrue.
But then again, my decision to go to graduate school was wholly different from my non-decision to go to college. I know exactly what I want to study now and why. I picked the school for its social science focus, for the specificity of the department I could study in, and for professors like Richard Sennett and David Graeber. I also know now to learn outside the walls of the institution. I know to learn not only from my professors and classmates, but from my butchers and baristas. I know not to surround myself with rich people. I know how to value other things.
The elitist impulse is still there, but I think (I hope) this time it’s tempered by an actual desire to learn. I want the thing itself, not the sparkly promises on the other side of the hoop. I want to get an education.
I didn’t get an education before. I got straight A’s and a college degree, but ask me what I learned in college and I’d be hard pressed to tell you anything. I regret that. The only thing I don’t regret was the professor who introduced me to the writings of James C. Scott. Everything else I could have done without.
Now I have the uphill task of unlearning my elitist upbringing in the hopes that I can figure out how to live a life that won’t make me want to kill myself.
Call me ungrateful. I am ungrateful.
Tell me there are thousands of kids who would kill for the opportunities I’ve had. That’s exactly my point. Those are the kids who should be getting these opportunities, not me and the people like me.
But those kids didn’t have SAT tutors and parents with six-figure incomes and the Bishop’s Difference. I did, so now I have a Columbia degree. Congratulations.
Now I have the uphill task of unlearning my elitist upbringing in the hopes that I can figure out how to live a life that won’t make me want to kill myself. I have to figure out how to be happy.
In all my years trying to be the smartest and the most accomplished, I almost never thought about happiness. I certainly never thought of it as something to be devoted to, to take time for, to strive for. I never thought about building my soul the way I built my résumé. I think differently now.
I remember crying to my mom one night in college that I was worried about never getting a job. What if I don’t make it? What if I’m a failure?
She said, “You can’t be a failure if you’re happy.”
We the Elite have been conditioned to define success in such narrow terms, but it’s just that: conditioning. We can unlearn it. We can learn something else, a whole new set of values. Education can be an opportunity, but we must stop attaching it to the promise of an elite.
On a systemic level, we must stop charging so much for tuition that school only serves to buy your way into the elite. We have to stop setting standards for merit that can only be met through money. On a personal level, we have to stop being so addicted to status. We have to stop defining success and failure in terms of income and start defining it in terms of happiness. We have to remember that money is a tool, not a goal; a means, not an end, and a means that never directly causes us to be happy. But most of all, we have to stop looking at education as a way to get somewhere, and try the radical task of actually learning.
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You tell the truth about your peers and seem pretty ok. Someone should tell Madame Defarge to go easy on you.
An amazing piece. Originally/exclusively published here?
Yes!
“I’ve learned so much more of value from six months of living life than I did in sixteen years of so-called education. And not just about myself. I’ve learned more political science since graduating college than I did getting my political science degree, simply because I have the time now to read widely and think broadly and talk to people.”
And to think that a person could have a great life being a mechanic or a plumber or a nurse or an electrician, never having gone to college, but having read books on the side and come out knowing more than most college graduates while having as rich a social life talking to people in the above mentioned occupations as he or she would have had talking to college graduates.
At least you don’t have the burden of student loan debt, and you can pretty much do what you want to with your life. You don’t have to stay on the prestige merry-go-round if you don’t want to. I think you’ve almost figured that out for yourself.
And you will be happy when you figure out what you really want to do with your life as opposed to doing what society and your parents expect you to do.
“And to think that a person could have a great life being a mechanic or a plumber or a nurse or an electrician, never having gone to college, but having read books on the side and come out knowing more than most college graduates while having as rich a social life talking to people in the above mentioned occupations as he or she would have had talking to college graduates.”
Damn. I actually found something you said profound and insightful.
I guess it would have been too much to ask to not have the irony of starting a sentance with a conjunction. Haha.
“I want to be a writer and an activist because these are the things I love to do.”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to graduate school more out of a genuine desire to study or a crippling fear of losing my status.”
My $0.02 worth of unsolicited advice:
Delay your LSE start date by a year. In the interim get a part-time minimum wage job as a waitress, cashier, janitor, or something of a similar menial nature. During your time off, write, write, write, engage with other writers (writers workshops for example) and volunteer as an activist in a cause of your choice.
At the end of this year, review the education you’ve received from working, writing and volunteering, then re-evaluate your interest in attending LSE. At the worst, you will have learned much about yourself/others and delayed your graduation from LSE by one year. At the best, you may realize that attending LSE is a questionable delay standing between you and being fully engaged in the things you are truly passionate about.
Be strong. You will figure it out. Finance your graduate education on your own. Refer to your degree as one from Barnard College, not Columbia University. We Barnard women are scrappy, and made of stern stuff. And you’re right–we need to make higher education more affordable for everyone.
Molly, La Jolla High ’81, Barnard ’85
Some irony in a follow up comment – A phrase used to highlight how graduation from The Barnard School sets you apart from the rest. Unlearning a elitist upbringing must indeed be a uphill task – working at a menial minimum wage job will accelerate the unlearning process.
C. Jones, Barnard College (a 4-year college in NYC) and The Bishops School (a private high school in San Diego) are different entities…perhaps you were confused about the two. There’s no elitism in saying that Barnard women are “scrappy”–hardly an elitist description, quite the opposite. I worked 5 menial jobs before I went to Barnard College, starting in Burger King when I was 14 (I faked my work permit). I also worked throughout college, and every summer. I finally paid off my student loans when I was 40. So please save your accusations of “elitist” for a better-reasoned reply.
I would agree it’s past time to stop looking at education as a way to get somewhere rather than a chance to begin to learn something. But since you took advantage of your parents really large large$$e, maybe you will be able to refund some of your their hard-earned bread. From the sound of things, they deserve it. Then you will be on your way, having understood something about “giving back,” as they say, and principles and values. Also, you will feel better once you expunge the words “privileged, elite and status” from your vocabulary. Try thanking the Sky God for your lucky stars and don’t over-think your good fortune. Good luck.
Nice, Fran Zimmerman, very.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people who ought to know better, even college presidents, talking bullshit about numbers of dollars and years of education in direct correlation with each other. As if reading a good (or bad) book ought to be evaluated in terms of the number of dollars gained by doing it.
It’s getting tougher and tougher to point out that understanding and good judgement carries its own reward. More and more people will respond, “Yeah, but what are you going to do with your education?” Maybe the response to that ought to be, “Avoid being dumb.”
Molly, no confusion. Elite, per yourdictionary.com, noun – the group or part of a group selected or regarded as the finest, best, most distinguished, most powerful, etc. – I concluded from your comment “We Barnard women are scrappy, and made of stern stuff” that you regarded Barnard women as being more, perhaps most powerful in terms of being scrappy or possessing stern stuff, at least with respect to non Barnard women, Barnard is a private womens college with a 20.5% acceptance rate, correct? If I misinterpreted your comment, what were you implying? Regarding your experience working menial jobs, good for you, your experience seems a stark contrast to that described by Miss Prouty. Nevertheless, you seem rather proud of your Barnard education/experience and your related scrappy/stern attributes. If you choose to not see this as projecting elitism, so be it.
Then your issue is that I am “rather proud” of my accomplishments and my college? Why yes, I am rather proud. Are you cleaving to a biblical definition (misplaced here), where pride is one of seven deadly sins? I worked my butt off–both in and out of school–to get into a selective college and to live in one of the greatest cities in the world (without the benefit of SAT prep courses, special tutors, or rich parents). I was surrounded by others who did likewise. Others who shared an intellectual curiosity that sustains them to this day, whatever their chosen path. We try to pass on this curiosity to our children, to the benefit of all society. Some of my classmates are stay at home mothers, some are lawyers, some are finding the cure for cancer, and some work at banal administrative jobs (like me) but 30 years later are still learning new languages, writing poetry, devoting their talents to volunteering, and reaping the benefits of their education: being taught how to think critically by world-class scholars and artists back in college. Every institution of higher education has excellence as part of its mission, and seeks to develop pride in its student body. Some even do this through their football teams.
An interesting piece – Prouty seems to be making a declaration of mixed feelings about her education. She brings up important issues that a lot of us have thought about, and it is interesting to see her views on it. She seems to be asking: What is the true value of my education?
I would say it has a couple of values, and they are very different. One is the value to the world. What have you learned that you can no bring into the marketplace and get paid for? The other is the value to yourself – what did it do for you personally? I think that when Prouty has had time to reflect, she will ultimately see that it did have a personal value regardless of whatever kind of work or career she will be able to use it to get into.
Prouty also seems to feel some guilt over the elitist, exclusive nature of the education she received. But is there another way to do it? How would we give everybody the same educational opportunities? Would Ms. Prouty want to attend schools that accepted all applicants? And there already are such schools, many of them – they are called K-12 public schools, and anyone go to them, even people who are not US citizens.
Just my off the cuff opinion here, but it does seem to me that Miss Prouty is not ready for a postgrad education in business/economics. Or at least she should use it as a way to find work at a nonprofit. You have to be hungry for success in the business world to do well there. And there are other ways to make a living, but as Ms. Prouty is well aware, big business is where the money and mainstream success is for people with a background in the humanities. A lot of us want to do creative work and be activists – the hard part is getting paid for these things.
Just for the record, I also went to good schools, and currently earn an unimpressive salary at a nonprofit organization. So I’ve thought about these issues as well.
Molly, I have no issue (nice deflection attempt). My second response simply pointed out the irony of you implying the “Barnard Difference” as an implied source of strength for Miss Prouty. Did you read Miss Prouty’s article, do you see the irony?
Your response to Miss Proust raises interesting questions: does one need to have a Barnard experience/education in order to be scrappy/stern? How do scrappy/stern characteristics, derived from the Barnard experience/education, compare, quantitatively, with those derived from a non Barnard experience/education? Are students selected to attend Barnard inherently more scrappy/stern than those, say, who are selected to attend other colleges/universities? Are women more scrappy/stern than men? How does the scrappy/stern Barnard graduate compare in terms of scrappy/stern with someone who never attended a college/university? Etc…..
Regardless, Miss Prouty is an educated/intelligent woman, she can read your comments and reach her own conclusions.
Pardon me, Mr. Jones. I stated my opinion, in an attempt to buck up an obviously intelligent and conflicted young woman (who is a good writer, a skill that will take her far!). Scrappy, stern, whatever, your fixation on those two words in your reply above is amusing. I might say this: if you knew the history of Barnard College, you’d see that it was started because there was no place for women to matriculate in the 1890s in NYC. To reach for higher education at that time, you had to be determined and serious. Women in this country were not allowed to VOTE until almost three decades later (and two years after communist Russia gave women that right). But I will say this: someone who has the tenacity, privilege and good fortune to attend and graduate from any top liberal arts college is fortunate indeed.
I think Ms Proust should not pay her parents back. She should pass her “refund” on to those living in far less directed families, where women are not valued, where becoming a mechanic is elite. And they should provide good educations in public schools, not private schools (Bishop)? or charter schools, who skim and take money from public schools.
Get real: millions of people are not even in good schools, are not led to believe they can go to college, and then, if they are decent, but not terrific students, learn they cannot afford to go to college. And, they are also not savvy consumers of education so get some for profit flea bag institution talking them into taking out enormous loans to attend their not even accredited schools, knowing it is a joke and for profit only. In the end, far too many wind up with no useful educaiton, not even a certificate, and huge loans they cannot repay. And, thanks to the elite legislators in this country, they cannot even get the education loans dismissed because they outlawed getting rid of education loans in one of their wonderful pieces of legislation.
Learning how to be an accountant or an administrator may not change the entire world, but it may change the world of someone who had nothing as a child.
Being in a group with early support, parents who value education and who provide the means to attain it is a good thing. I wish everyone had it, but to moan and groan andit was worthless, but yet (not stated) feel superior because they have it? Really.
Very insightful article!
I like The Wizard of Oz analogy. A certain amount of education and intelligence is a Necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT condition for living a high quality life. After that, it’s about gaining heart, courage and a home inside oneself. The journey moves on!
Ana (or should I say Ms.Prouty), well said and well written.
I’m ‘poor’, and I loved this. It’s actually funny how right you are about many things you’ve mentioned.
I could literally comment for days but I would really like to have an actual conversation with you.
If that’s okay.
Courtney
Ms. Prouty, the situation is even worse than you may realize, in that things were a good deal better within recent memory. For example, I grew up lower middle class and was sent to lousy schools run by religious fanatics, but I got into and graduated from the University of California, with neither financial aid nor student loans – I worked part-time on campus – a few years before you were born. I didn’t have to come from a rich family, graduate from an “elite” high school, or “balance three sports, two performing arts groups and a hundred community service projects”. Of course, the USA even then wasn’t very egalitarian or meritocratic, but make no mistake, it has become much less so.
And make no mistake, the decline is far from accidental. It’s the predictable result of tax and budget priorities that have been ascendant since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in which practically all Republicans and all too many Democrats are complicit. Maintaining and extending privilege is the basic goal of “movement conservatism”, however obfuscated. As historian Corey Robin puts it, “[T]he priority of conservative political argument has been the maintenance of private regimes of power.” For the donors, demagogues, and politicos who control the machinery, the entrenchment of a de facto aristocracy – of which, naturally, they’re members – is a feature, not a bug.
“But most of all, we have to stop looking at education as a way to get somewhere, and try the radical task of actually learning.”: As a society, it would be a good thing if we stopped looking at education as primarily a private good – “a way to get somewhere” – rather than a public good – a means of cultivating a populace capable of participating constructively in self-government and contributing effectively to economic productivity and cultural enrichment. The sociopathic notion that education is mainly a means of “getting ahead” is epidemic in the USA, such that even supposed liberals typically speak of education in terms such as “the single best investment that you can make in yourselves and your future” (Barack Obama).
You’ve already made great strides toward sanity, greater than many people make in a lifetime, let alone by your age. So, congratulations, and keep paying attention. And to hell with status games! Life isn’t worth living in the tiny, windowless universes of the status-obsessed.
I know little about the LSE, but I do find it intriguing they hired notorious rabble-rouser David Graeber, whose work I find consistently interesting even when I don’t entirely agree with it. I’d guess there are other outstanding thinkers there too. You could do a lot worse than joining them for a couple of years. And after all, you’re not obliged to become a bankster or the like just because you go to the LSE.
Anyhow, whatever you decide, I wish you good luck.