snoburbia, the blog

so where are you applying to college?

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Oops – I guess I committed a faux pas. I asked a friend’s son, a senior at a snoburban high school, where he applied to college for next fall. He looked stricken, but gave me the name of a prestigious university out west.

I knew that overachiever seniors, in the late winter – if they didn’t get in somewhere early decision – were fretting until those emails arrived from the Ivy League. But I didn’t really understand the pressure they are under until I read this blog exchange, from the kids’ perspective, entitled, “sometimes-i-just-want-to-slap-people.”

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things you don't see in snoburbia

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In the snoburbs, you don’t see… white sneakers. You know, the white leather ones, à la Jerry Seinfeld? If you wear sneakers, they should be gray or maybe brownish. You must look as if you are about to jump on a hiking trail at any moment.

Larry David, in character, on curb your enthusiasm, speaking to his shrink:

David: So, I’m really happy with my new sneakers, you know, ’cause they’re gray. And – you think about it –  it’s a good color, ’cause white is really too bright, and black is almost like a pair of shoes. Gray is kinda right in the middle. They look good.

Shrink: [Pause] Maybe we should get back to [talking about David’s wife] Cheryl…

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upping the ante for overachievers

 

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Ahem! Overachievers: There is always someone better...

Being a mere honors student in the overclass suburbs of Washington, D.C. is not enough. Now 17 students from Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools have earned the rank of semi-finalist at Intel.

Intel, the computer microchip company? No, dodo. The 2009 Intel Science Talent Search, the holy grail of science nerds. And you thought you were a stud for taking 5 AP classes senior year... That is so 1990s! In 2009, you also have to be an NIH intern and win at Intel.

(There were 15 semi-finalists from nearby magnet school Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax County, (Virginia), which also ranked number one in U.S. News and World Report's America's Best Schools.)

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The Montgomery County semi-finalists are: Eric An, Christopher Bodine, Jean Fan, Anton Frolenkov, Edward Gan, Akimitsu Hogge, Ansh Johri, Sneha Kannan, Debattama Sen, Benjamin Shih, Sang Tian, Srinivas Vasudevan, Sikander Porter-Gill, Re-I Chin, Kavitha Anandalingam, Mingda Su, Philip Kong.

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the other side of the tracks

 
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A chant yelled by some football players from Bethesda, Maryland’s Walt Whitman High School, from the stands of  their overclass school’s field hockey championship game, against a school from the other side of the tracks:

C-A-R!
You don’t have a car
‘Cause you’re poor
 Yeah, yeah, you’re poor!

(From The Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins, a Whitman alum and New York Times writer.)

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we're bullish on layoffs

 

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Finally, good news about the economy! From the perspective of the overclass, the Wall Street Journal reports that despite massive layoffs, we have increased productivity in corporate America:

The contraction in the number of hours worked might have been greater than the contraction in overall economic output .... In other words, businesses appear to have squeezed more out of the workers they kept on staff, increasing business productivity.

Squeezing more work out of the remaining demoralized workers ...  There truly is a silver lining ...

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going going gone

 

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It's almost that time of year again in snoburbia – time for the annual silent auction!

Open up your titanium clip – At the annual charity basketball game at our snoburban public school, the staff played against the students and earned $10,000 in 3 hours. Wow! I was impressed.

Not so fast.

Open up your Hermes wallet – In one evening auction, Washington, D.C.'s private Maret School raised $437,000. Sidwell Friends, where the Obama children attend school, raised a mere $365,000, while Bethesda’s private Holton-Arms School raised only $260,000.

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the paradox of choice in the snoburbs

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I recently heard an ad for a new grocery chain, advertised as “a different kind of grocery store.” The announcer said, “At Bloom, we have 100 different types of olive oil.”

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In an effort to impress jaded foodies in snoburbia, stores increasingly engage in the tyranny of too much:

In The Paradox of Choice, sociology professor Barry Schwartz takes his readers on a trip to a small supermarket and finds that shoppers there must select from 285 varieties of cookies, 85 flavors and brands of juices, and 95 varieties of chips. They face 230 soup offerings, 120 different pasta sauces, 275 varieties of cereal, and 175 types of tea bags.

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overheard at an overclass private school

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Overheard at a prestigious private school in Washington, D.C. –

One Ugg-booted teen to another:

“I asked my mom this morning if she’d still love me if I failed my biology exam. She said ‘yes’ ...but then she said, ‘But how did you do on the exam?’”

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kill your conspicuous leisure

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In snoburbia, one does not watch television during the day. The day must be spent, if not in purposeful pursuit then at least doing something interesting.

I was talking with my friend Sarah, and she sheepishly admitted she had watched Ellen the afternoon before – adding hastily that she had been sick. 

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In an article in Vogue, a writer who grew up in the overclass, “wealthy and better positioned socially,” chronicles her unlikely marriage to a Maori man:

On the one hand, he was popular with my family, who admired his genial nature and easy ways. At the same time it always struck me that the differences that had to do with his being Maori (his unwillingness to leave any part of a fish uneaten, even the eyes and brains, for example) were considered extremely interesting, while anything that could be construed as a working-class mannerism (like watching TV during the daytime…) was quietly frowned upon.

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