That’s what we call the phenomenon of stuck-up rich private school students too soaked up with their own petty lives to connect and immerse themselves in the outside world. Constantly complaining about how stressed we are and how many deadlines we have, all the while trying to squeeze sympathy from our classmates; we know this sympathy to be false, but still allow ourselves to feel satisfied at the reception of this acknowledgment of our superiority.

Why do I call it superiority? I’m sure we are familiar with the correct response to a girl who asks if she is fat when she clearly is not. And I’m sure we all know that this girl is just a low-level attention whore who wants to draw attention to her body while gaining affirmation of her physique. In the same way, the stressed out student who complains is really saying: look, I am so much cooler than you because I can handle all these classes, run to so many club meetings, and aww, don’t you pity me for being such an overachiever?

When everyone does it, the effect multiplies. The lunch conversation becomes a competition to see who has more exams this week. Does the following conversation sound familiar to you?

“I have two exams back to back on the same day”
“I have three exams on one day”
“I have three exams and a ten page paper due the same day”

I will be the first to admit that I am not innocent of the severe castigation I have brought upon my fellow students. Just last night, I had the following facebook wall chat with a dorm-mate:

Me: This night sucks balls.
Him: I stayed up till 4 writing a paper
Me: I think I win, I stayed up till 7

Yay! Do I get a small badge to pin proudly on my chest that says “only slept 3 hours last night” so everyone can drop some change in the sympathy jar?

Would. Everyone. Just. Stop. Complaining.

I get it. You’re stressed. You’re over-committed. You haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep for one year. Here’s some news for you: no one actually cares, and those who pretend to care only want your sympathy back – you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. Hey, it’s all well and good if the shallow exchange of falsehood is mutual, but soon you’ll realize that when you’ve surrounded yourself with relationships based on smoke, in the end when you reach through the smoke, your hand will fall through and all you’ll grasp is thin air.

Every morning, the first rays of sunlight to reach Stanford land on Hoover Tower, the iconographic concrete imposed on the middle of campus. Two hundred research fellows distributed over thirty flights of stairs, yet I never see a single one coming in or out. As I look back on my school from a distance, all I can see is a huge Ivory Tower.

How do we break free from this bubble? I’m not exactly sure myself. When one has lived inside the bubble for so long, it becomes hard to imagine life outside. Yet in the meantime, we are all suffocating on our own foul breath. I can only offer two strategies I have found to help, but if you have any good suggestions please leave them in the comments!

- Read the news everyday both domestic and international. When you learn about the lives of others in your own country, you realize that people out there are just trying to make a living and raise your kids, and your dreams of saving the world don’t matter to any of them. Keeping up to date with international events reminds you that our lifestyle is not the only way of life. And sometimes, the catastrophes of the world give you some perspective to realize that your B+ on that midterm is not the worst thing that could happen.

I started reading the news obsessively to prepare for a scholarship interview. Although I didn’t receive the scholarship, the habit of reading the news was one valuable asset I gained from the experience. I make CNN my homepage, so even if I don’t have time to read the news carefully, I at least glance at the headlines. However, I’ve gotten so addicted to the news that now I surf CNN instead of facebook to procrastinate.

- Talk to people outside of school. Especially those who are from a different socioeconomic background than you. As upper middle class well educated Americans, we often only interact with people from the same class. The social ability to interact with others was simply never developed.

I once went on a blind date with someone from a less elite school. Try as I might, it was impossible for me to talk to him without sounding condescending. I would either dumb the conversation down, or if we talked about more intellectual topics, I didn’t expect him to give a very coherent response. Another time, I had entered a beauty pageant (just for kicks) and was the only Asian contestant in a pool full of blondes. During the on-stage spontaneous question, they were asked about affirmative action, to which they responded “I think it is always best to act in a positive and assertive manner”. So yes, I know it can be hard for us UMCWEA (Upper Middle Class Well Educated Americans – pronounced Um-Kwee–Yah) to connect with others.

The most important thing is to throw away all your predispositions. List them right now so that you recognize them and can thus reject them: they aren’t as smart as you are, they are only interested in drinking and drugs, they will end up in a menial job, etc. After you’ve written them down, crumple them into a ball and throw it away. Now allow your blank slate of a mind (tabula rasa) to inquire into their life.

Practice talking wherever you go. Talk to the homeless guys that you usually step over in front of the high end restaurants, the barber as he/she cuts your hair, even the delivery boy who smiles awkwardly and says to you in broken English, “Hello! Annie’s Delivery!”. People ask me all the time how it is that I have such interesting adventures, and I think it originates from fact that I do not shy away from talking to those outside of my normal social sphere.

Every person is a fascinating story, and you want to fill in the details.