Being Rich

Matt Gibson

If you are not rich, then you do not go to Cardinal Newman, and subsequently are asking what stuck up rich kid wrote this blog? We all at Cardinal Newman do not think of ourselves as stuck up. In fact, we like to think of ourselves as very typical and average. However, whether Cardinal Newman students are actually rich or not, they work hard to be seen as wealthy. They are not ashamed of flaunting their iPhones, expensive sport equipment, cars, and well-funded college savings account, without having to earn a dime to pay for any of it.

Appearing rich is part of the Cardinal Newman culture. It goes without saying that if one can afford to go to Newman, then they are rich, or at least well off. Many students from public high schools assume that we are all stuck up because we have money. Newman students often deflect by saying, “well I do have lots of money, but at least we don’t go to $30,000 Sonoma Academy!” Paying tuition at Cardinal Newman says, I am rich but don’t spend all my money on school so as to save money for more important things, such as trips to Hawaii and gas for the Escalade.

Cardinal Newman students enjoy appearing rich, but sometimes acting poor. Many students pull up to school in their new $25,000 car, and whip out $300 worth of lacrosse equipment out of the trunk. An hour and a half later however, most kids beg their friend for fifty-cents to buy a snack. As students sit down for class, a common phrase whispered to an adjacent student might be, “hey can I borrow a pencil?” Parents are paying $12,000 to send their kid to Cardinal Newman, but can’t seem to supply their kids with a $4 pack of pencils. Later in the day, the average CN student might take a trip to the mall, and pay $150 for a pair of designer jeans that are purposefully torn.

One of the ways that CN students try to appear wealthy is by acting like they don’t care about getting more money, or even losing small amounts of what they already have. At the average public middle school, or high school, you might find some money on the ground once in a while. Back in middle school, I might have found four dollars a year on the ground. The most I would ever find is a one-dollar bill, if I was lucky. Not at Newman. At Newman, if you see a bill on the ground, there’s a good chance it’s a twenty. In my first semester at CN, I found forty-five dollars on the ground. The real irony lies in how that twenty may have ended up on the ground. The kid who dropped the money may have known, as well as his friends, but not one of the students will pick it up. Picking up the money from the ground might make a student seem poor. So the mob of guys will just walk on by, and the twenty lies there to be picked up by me.

Being rich is a luxury that the greater part of the CN student body is able to enjoy in a day-to-day basis. CN students like the idea of being rich, but don’t like the idea of working. With a full college fund, a wallet full of hundreds, and a social image to maintain, a summer job is out of the question. CN students spend their entire summer in three places: the gym, a sports camp, and their best friend’s house. Students of Cardinal Newman like being admired by others. If a student gets a summer job at Taco Bell, all that respect is lost. The student body at Newman likes to know that they can buy their way into college. This means that they don’t really have to put in as much work into their high school education if they don’t want to. Newman students unanimously agree that being rich is great or at least appearing to be rich is just as good.