I recently had an encounter with someone on a completely different level from myself, just from a different world. I was out east visiting my grandfather in Massachusetts, and I met with one of my his former students that was in town and went to visit him. As she speaks about her life, it seems as though it is just so cultured and beyond what I can imagine to be someone’s actual daily life. She is Indian and she lives in Oslo and has also spent time in Singapore, she knows how to speak French Norwegian, and Hindi, besides English, she has had a successful career in finance working on Wall Street, she was educated in Ivy League schools, she lived in Paris when she was younger and then New York, she is married to a Norwegian, and she has three kids with very bright futures ahead of them. She also just built a nice modern house in MA with custom touches throughout. While in MA she plays golf everyday and enjoys summer plays. As I listened to her speak, I found her very cultured and interesting, but also privileged, critical, and pretentious. It’s great that she has had the background that she has and is able to live the way she can, but not everyone has the same opportunities. Not everyone has a multicultural, worldly family, not everyone can go to an Ivy League school, either because of prior education and grades or financial means, and not everyone can have a successful career in stocks. So while I was very interested in her and inspired by her as a model to aspire to, I was also discouraged because it seems unattainable for most people, including myself.