@Anonymous Coming from the other end, I’ve always wondered why my classmates never seemed to realize their outstanding privilege to have made it here…

I don’t know Gac Filipaj personally, but I have always made conversation with the Columbia staff. I often find much more in common with them – stressing about money, temporary jobs and one-time hires – rather than with other undergraduate students, who stress about getting non-shameful grades, having good-enough friends, and finding a resume-building internship position. I’m glad to hear that a custodian, the type of person most people on this campus generally ignores, pursued his academic studies with the kind of perseverance and patience that is nothing short of intellectually inspiring and exemplary.

But while it might be easier to humbly ‘ask [yourself], “What’s your excuse?” (if you were born with more resources and feel ‘ashamed’ by your turn-out), I think Gac Filipaj’s success story should motivate you to see yourself in the great position of power, upon which you sit, as a student of Columbia University. CNN ran his story all day because a custodian graduating from an elite prestigious world-class university after 20 years of school DOES NOT happen everyday. But it does happen when real people pursue such high-aimed goals, following the paths that their real desires, and not just available resources, want to take them.

Unfortunately most of us are still very young, and most of us have been taught to perceive the world in a particular way, following particular desires that will not necessarily contribute to our well-being (i.e. from GOING to college in the first place [which only became a nation-wide, middle-class, American rite of passage in the past century!] to developing the habit of ‘drunken college black-outs’ just cause everyone’s doin’ it –> “gotta impress my friends with my cool life on FB!”). If everyone on this campus could just STOP joining the rat race (or pretending they are too cool for the rat race but still feel bad because their grades are ‘mediocore’), and actually accept the fact that they are already sitting in a seat of power by being involved in this institution, I think THAT could actually be more productive than just feeling bad for yourself.

You are probably very smart. You can probably hold a lot more concepts in your mind than the majority of fifth-graders in F-grade NYC public schools will ever master, given their lack of resources at home and school to fully stimulate and develop their intellectual faculties in the hegemonic values of mere verbal and math skills. You can probably grasp, grapple with, and articulate concepts as complex as critical theory to thermodynamic physics, ideas which you’ve either encountered in your [private?] secondary school education or ideas for which you’ve always had an interest. You’ve probably had people who picked up on your smarts, like your parents, or teachers, or tutors who spent one-on-one time for your intellectual development. And yes, you got all of this without ‘suffering’ too much (and probably with health insurance, too! what a treasure for the working-class, always afraid to get sick and accrue hospital bills/miss work). OK WHATEVER. Go use your privilege to do something good! Do it for all the people who have helped you! Do it for the people who need help! Need your smarts – you are a resource!

/end of rant