Wealth is Not Defining – SS#3

It was a bright sunny September morning at Campbell Collegiate High School. I go to my Pre-Calculus 20 class and sit at one of the desks along the wall. I look around to see if any of my friends were in the class but I see no one. Eventually, my friend James walks into the bright classroom and throws his backpack on the floor and slams his head down on the desk. ‘He must be tired’ I think to myself, so I decide not to bother him. After a few minutes, the bell jolts him awake. I listen to the teacher ramble on about the syllabus so I decide to take out my notebook and my multiple coloured pens. I see that my friend James has nothing on his desk. No notebooks, no pencils, no pens, nothing. So I decided to lean over and ask him where his notebooks and pens are and he tells me that his parents haven’t boughten him any. I can see that he doesn’t seem bothered by this but I decide to give him some of my pens and a notebook so he can manage throughout the first week of school. I could tell he was embarrassed but thankful. This wasn’t the first time I have loaned my friends a pen but this time I realized something. After the class was over, I thought more about what James had told me about him and his family. I knew his family was happy but his parents had been struggling with their jobs. This, in turn, made me think about how my family was able to afford school supplies whereas his family couldn’t. There were no thoughts afterwards that were malicious, rather I gained an understanding of what other people may be going through in regards to their financial situation. 

This was one of the more recent times where I was able to understand that my socioeconomic status did impact my schooling. It didn’t really occur to me that someone in my high school (A generally wealthy school) wasn’t able to afford some of the basic school supplies. Now I know it may be ignorant of me to think that but up until then, I was blind to other people’s socioeconomic status and what it meant to me. After this experience, I have definitely been more aware of other people’s socioeconomic status and how it may impact others. Someone’s socioeconomic status has never really impacted me before as I didn’t care if someone was wealthy, poor or middle-class. Now I understand that someone’s socioeconomic status can reflect on what they can, or cannot do. This was the first time in a long time where I noticed the difference in our socioeconomic status.