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Mid-term Exam Questions
ED POL/SOC 648
Spring 2024
Due: Start of class on March 7th
This take-home writing assignment consists of a short essay (700 words max, 12 point
font).
The essay should draw from relevant material from course readings, lectures, and class
discussions. You should draw from and refer to at least three required course texts in
your response to the question (please do not just pull quotes from the lecture slides).
You can use resources (e.g. Grammarly, Writing Center) for assistance with the
organization of your ideas and grammar. Your essay should be written by you, however,
and reflect your own arguments, examples, and analysis (see syllabus for course policies
around AI and academic integrity, and feel free to contact Dr. Posey-Maddox with any
questions). Please see this link for more information about all of the services provided by
the Writing Center: https://writing.wisc.edu/aboutus/doforyou/
Here’s a link to a helpful guide for how to do in-text citations in APA
formatting: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_g
uide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html
This is also in the writing resources section of our “Helpful Resources for your Success” module in
canvas. Please note that you are not required to include a title page or a reference list for your
essay (if you only cite course readings). If you draw on any readings that do not appear on our
syllabus, please do list them in a reference list.
Please do remember to review the rubric before submitting. While I won’t take points off for being
over the 700 word limit, I’ll stop reading after 700 words so please do try to keep the text within those
limits so that all of your important ideas can be counted.
I look forward to reading your essays!
Essay Question
Gamoran et al. (2007) point out that over 80% of variation in student learning
occurs within schools, not between schools. They also note that the relationship between
resources (e.g. “inputs”) and student outcomes (“outputs”) is inconsistent. Drawing from
the course readings, write an essay in which you:
Explain how two public schools that receive the same amount of funding and have the
same teacher-to-student ratios may have very different student outcomes (as measured
by test scores and student graduation rates). Describe at least three aspects of the
organizational context of schooling that influence the relationship between resources
and student academic outcomes. Be sure to use specific examples/evidence from the
assigned course readings to support your points (and use APA formatting for in-text
citations).
You do not need a separate title page or reference list for this assignment, but please do
remember to include your name.
Rubric
Midterm Essay Rubric-Spring 2024
Midterm Essay Rubric-Spring 2024
Criteria
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcomestrength of analysis
-the essay describes at least three aspects of the organizational context of schooling that influence the relationsh
resources and student academic outcomes.
-the essay goes beyond a simple summary or synthesis of the texts and includes the author’s own analysis, supp
use of specific examples from the readings
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcomeuse of course readings
-the essay cites at least three course texts
-direct quotes are used sparingly so that the author’s voice and analysis is prominent
-linkages made to texts convey an understanding of the authors’ main ideas and findings
Midterm Essay Rubric-Spring 2024
Criteria
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcomeuse of APA formatting
-see APA style guide in Midterm Exam Module
-no title page is needed
Example for citation when using direct quotes : (Posey-Maddox, 2017, p. 32).
Example when giving an author credit for ideas (but no direct quotes): As Posey-Maddox (2017) argues, [summ
point].
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeClarity and coherence of essays and length
-clear thesis statement and topic sentences; essay is free from errors that affect the clarity of ideas
-essay stays within the 700-word limit (not including any references for non-course readings, if included)
Total Points: 15
NOTICE: This Material may be protected
by Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code)
Privilege
Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology
Paul J. DiMaggio, Michèle Lamont,
Robert J. Wuthnow, Viviana A. Zelizer, series editors
a list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book
Privilege
the making of an adolescent elite
at st. paul’s school
Shamus Rahman Khan
Princeton University Press
Princeton & Oxford
Copyright © 2011 by Shamus Rahman Khan
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be
sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Khan, Shamus Rahman.
Privilege : the making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul’s School / Shamus Rahman Khan.
p. cm. — (Princeton studies in cultural sociology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14528-0 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. St. Paul’s School (Concord, N.H.)—History. 2. Boarding schools—
New Hampshire—Concord—History. 3. Boarding schools—Social
aspects—New Hampshire—Concord. I. Title.
LD7501.C822K53 2011
373.742´72—dc22 2010021520
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
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For my parents, whose enduring love and support I have had
the privilege of enjoying all of my life
The barrier has changed shape rather than place
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Contents
Introduction: Democratic Inequality
1
1. The New Elite
18
2. Finding One’s Place
41
3. The Ease of Privilege
77
4. Gender and the Performance of Privilege
114
5. Learning Beowulf and Jaws
151
Conclusion
193
Methodological and Theoretical Reflections
201
Acknowledgments
207
Notes
211
Works Cited
223
Index
229
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Privilege
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Introduction: Democratic Inequality
The direction in which education starts a man will determine
his future in life.
—Plato
My story is part of the larger American story.
—Barack Obama
I am surrounded by black and Latino boys.
As I looked around the common room of my new dorm this was all
I could think about. It was September 1993, and I was a rather young
fourteen-year-old leaving home for the first time. My parents, who had
helped me unpack my room and were about to say good-bye, noticed
as well. We didn’t say anything to one another. But the surprise on their
faces was mirrored on my own. This was not what I expected, enrolling at
a place like St. Paul’s School. I thought I would be unlike everyone else.
I thought my name and just-darker-than-olive skin would make me the
most extreme outlier among the students. But though my parents grew up
in small rural villages in Pakistan and Ireland and my father was not white,
they had become wealthy. My father was a successful surgeon; my mother
was a nurse. I had been at private school since seventh grade, and being
partly from the Indian subcontinent hardly afforded one oppressed minority status. For the other boys around me, those from poor neighborhoods
in America’s urban centers, St. Paul’s was a much more jarring experience.
I quickly realized that St. Paul’s was far from racially diverse. That sea of
dark skin only existed because we all lived in the same place: the minority
student dorm. There was one for girls and one for boys. The other eighteen houses on campus were overwhelmingly filled with those whom you
would expect to be at a school that educates families like the Rockefellers
and Vanderbilts. This sequestering was not an intentionally racist practice
2
introduction
of the school. In fact the school was very self-conscious about it and a few
years prior tried to distribute students of color across all houses on campus.
But the non-white students complained. Though their neighborhoods of
Harlem and the Upper East Side might border each other, a fairly large
chasm separated the non-elite and elite students. They had difficulty living with one another. Within a year the minority student dorm returned.
Non-white students were sequestered in their own space, just like most of
them were in their ethnic neighborhoods back home.
I grew up in a variety of neighborhoods, but like most Americans, none
of them was particularly diverse.1 My parents’ lives had not been much different until they met one another. In no small part this was because they
grew up in rural towns in poor nations. My father’s village consisted of
subsistence farmers; things like electricity and plumbing arrived during my
own childhood visits. My mother grew up on a small farm on the weatherbeaten west coast of Ireland. At the time she was born, her family pumped
their own water, had no electricity, and cooked on an open hearth. Modern comforts arrived during her childhood.
My parents’ story is a familiar one. Their ambitions drove them to
the promise of America. Early in life I lived in New York’s rural Allegany
County. But seeking to make the most of American opportunities, my
parents moved to the suburbs of Boston where the schools were better
and the chances for me and my brother were greater. There was more to
this move than just new schools. The Pontiac that was standard in the
driveways of rural America was replaced by a European luxury car. The
trips to visit family in Ireland and Pakistan were augmented by tours of
Europe, South America, and Asia. My parents did what many immigrants
do: they played cultural catch-up. I spent my Saturdays attending the New
England Conservatory of Music. Public school education was abandoned
for private academies. There was no more time for my religious education.
We became cosmopolitan.
For all these changes, my father never lost some of the cultural marks
of a rural Pakistani villager, and many in Boston did not let him forget his
roots. He was happiest working with his hands, whether doing surgery
or toiling in the earth. As he spent his free time sculpting the garden of
our home into a place that would soon be put on garden tours, he was
mistaken for a hired hand by visitors. During a visit to our home, one
of my father’s colleagues exclaimed, “Where are your books!?” Never in
d e m o c r at i c i n e qua l i t y
3
my life have I seen my father read a novel; his favorite music is still from
the Indian movies of his childhood or the songs that greeted him when
he arrived in Detroit in the early 1970s. He would not know Bach from
Schoenberg. My father’s reply to this cultural scolding by a New England
blue blood was prescient: “Someday, my kids can have all the books they
want.” My parents were justifiably proud of what they had achieved, and
the cultural tastes they would never develop they would instill in their children. We ate at fine restaurants. At one of these restaurants I saw my father,
raised a Muslim, take his first sip of wine. The snobbery that always stung
me—waiters handing me or my brother a wine list instead of my parents,
who were clearly paying for the meal—seemed not to bother them. Compared to their achievements, these slights were trivial.
Attending an elite high school was the ultimate mark of success in our
bourgeois suburban world, and I was determined to do so. My parents were
not enthusiastic about my leaving home, but they knew the advantages of
boarding school. Perhaps thinking of their own lives, they respected my
desire to head out on my own. St. Paul’s was on my tour of New England
boarding schools. I didn’t know anything about the place, but during my
visit I was seduced. The school is a truly stunning physical place—one of
the most beautiful campuses in the world. Luckily, I was accepted.
I was unprepared for my new life. The shock of moving from poor rural
New York to rich suburban Boston was repeated during my first days at
St. Paul’s. This school had long been home to the social elite of the nation.
Here were members of a national upper class that went well beyond the
professional circles of my suburban home. Children with multiple homes
who chartered planes for weekend international trips, came from family
dynasties, and inherited unimaginable advantages met me on the school’s
brick paths. My parents’ newfound wealth was miniscule compared to
many at the school. And in my first days, all the European tours, violin
lessons, and private schooling could not buy me a place among many of
my classmates. I was not comfortable around this new group of people. I
instead found a home by recessing into my dorm, away from the entitlements of most of my classmates.
For my entire time at St. Paul’s I lived in the same minority student
dorm. But as I became more at ease at the school, as I began to understand the place and my classmates, I also began to find ways to fit in.
Upon graduating I was elected by my classmates to represent them on the
4
introduction
board of managers of the alumni. While this respect of my peers made me
proud, I was not sad to be moving on. I had purposefully not applied to
the Ivy League schools that my classmates would be attending. St. Paul’s
was a world I had learned to fit into but one that I was not particularly
happy in.
The source of my discontent was my increasing awareness of inequality.
I kept returning to my first days: both my surprise at my minority student
dorm and my discomfort among my elite classmates. The experience remained an aggravating curiosity. Why was elite schooling like a birthright
for some Americans and a herculean achievement for others? Why did
students from certain backgrounds seem to have such an easy time feeling
comfortable and doing well at the school while others seemed to relentlessly struggle? And, most important, while students were repeatedly told
that we were among the best of the best,2 why was it that so many of the
best came from among the rich? These were all questions about inequality,
and they drove me away from the world of St. Paul’s. But learning more
about inequality also brought me back.
Democratic Inequality, Elite Education,
and the Rise of the Meritocracy
No society will ever be equal. Questions about inequality are not “Is there
inequality?” but instead “How much inequality is there, and what is its
character?” Inequality is more tolerable if its character is perceived as “fair.”
Systematic, durable inequalities3—those where advantages and disadvantages are transferred from generation to generation—are largely unacceptable to our contemporary sensibility. We are unhappy if our poor always
remain poor or our rich seem to have a stranglehold on wealth. We are
similarly uncomfortable with the notion that ascribed characteristics like
race help determine our life chances. Levels of inequality are slightly more
contentious. Some of us do not mind large gaps between rich and poor
if the poor receive a livable income and the rich are given the capacity to
innovate to create more wealth. Others feel that larger and larger gaps generate social problems. The evidence seems to show that inequality is bad
for societies.4 Following these data, I am among those who believe that too
much inequality is both immoral and inefficient.
d e m o c r at i c i n e qua l i t y
5
One of the curiosities in recent years is how our social institutions have
opened to those they previously excluded, yet at the same time inequality has increased. We live in a world of democratic inequality, by which I
mean that our nation embraces the democratic principle of openness and
access, yet as that embrace has increased so too have our levels of inequality. We often think of openness and equality as going hand in hand. And
yet if we look at our experiences over the last fifty years we can see that that
is simply not the case. This is most notable in elite colleges, where student
bodies are increasingly racially diverse but simultaneously richer.
In 1951 blacks made up approximately 0.8 percent of the students at
elite colleges.5 Today blacks make up about 8 percent of Ivy League students; the Columbia class of 2014 is 13 percent black—representative of
the black population in our nation as a whole. A similar change could be
shown for other races, and women today are outperforming men, creating
a gender gap in college attendance in favor of women.6 Without question
our elite educational institutions have become far more open racially and
to women. This is a tremendous transformation, nothing short of a revolution. And it has happened not only in our schools but also in our political
and economic life.
Yet at the same time the overall level of inequality has increased dramatically. When we think of inequality we often think of poverty. And
when social scientists study inequality they tend to focus on the conditions
of disadvantage. There are good reasons for this—understanding the lives
of the poor should help us alleviate some of the difficulties of poverty. But
if we want to understand the recent increases in American inequality we
must know more about the wealthy, as well as the institutions that are
important for their production and maintenance. This becomes clear if we
look at what has happened to the incomes of American households over
the last forty years. From 1967 to 2008 average American households saw
their earnings increase about 25 percent. This is respectable but hardly
laudatory. But as we move up the income ladder, we see something quite
dramatic. The incomes of the richest 5 percent of households increased
68 percent. And the higher we go, the greater the increase in income. The
top 1 percent of American households saw their incomes increase by 323
percent, and the richest 0.1 percent of Americans received a staggering 492
percent increase in earnings.7 Why has inequality increased over the past
forty years? Mostly because of the exploding incomes of the rich.
6
introduction
These dual tranformations of increasing openness and inequality run
against many of our intuitions about how social processes work. How is it
that some of our most elite and august institutions—those that are central
pathways to reaching the highest levels of economic success—have transformed into being more open to those they previously excluded, yet the
overall levels of inequality in our nation have increased so dramatically?
How is it that our democratic ideal of greater openness has transferred
into a much better life for the privileged few but stagnation for most of
our nation?
Part of the explanation emerges once we look at class. The “openness” I
have highlighted is racial. But if we add class to the mix, we see something
quite different. While elite private colleges send out press release after press
release proclaiming how they are helping make college affordable to the
average American, the reality of college is that it is a place dominated by
the rich. As my colleague Andrew Delbanco has noted,
Ninety percent of Harvard students come from families earning
more than the median national income of $55,000, and Harvard’s
dean of admissions . . . defined “middle-income” Harvard families as
those earning between $110,000 and $200,000. . . . Today’s students
are richer on average than their predecessors. Between the mid1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges,
the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of
national family income remained roughly steady—around 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the
top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully
half. . . . And if the sample is broadened to include the top 150 colleges, the percentage of students from the bottom quartile drops to
3 percent.8
Harvard’s “middle income” is the richest 5 percent of our nation.9 This
alone should tell us a lot about our elite educational institutions. While
they look more open to us, this is in no small part because to us openness
means diversity, and diversity means race. But class matters.
Though poor students experience a host of disadvantages—from lowerquality schools to difficult access to out-of-school enrichment programs
to the absence of support when they struggle—colleges are largely blind
d e m o c r at i c i n e qua l i t y
7
to such struggles, treating poorer students as if they were the same as
rich ones. This is in stark contrast to students who are legacies (whose
past family members attended the college), athletes, or members of a
minority group. Though students from these three groups are provided
special consideration by colleges, increasing their chances of admission,
poorer students are afforded no such luxury.10 They may claim otherwise,
but colleges are truly “need blind” in the worst possible way. They are ambivalent to the disadvantages of poverty. The result is a clear class bias in
college enrollments. College professors, looking at our classrooms, know
this sad truth quite well. Put simply, lots of rich kids go to college. Few
poor ones do.11
As I discuss inequality I keep returning to education, and elite education in particular. This is no accident. One of the best predictors of your
earnings is your level of education; attending an elite educational institution increases your wages even further.12 Schooling matters for wealth. If
the competitive nature of the college application process is any indicator,
it’s clear that most Americans know this story quite well. Given that increases in inequality over the past fifty years are in no small part explained
by the expansion of wealth, and elite schooling is central to becoming an
elite, we need to know more about how elite schools are training those who
are driving inequality.
Before casting elite schools as the villains of our story, we must pause.
For all my criticism of elite schools as bastions of wealth, we must remember that these are not simply nefarious places, committed to producing the
rich. And as far back as 1940, James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard University, declared it our national duty “to afford all an unfettered
start and a fair chance in the race of life.” Conant imagined creating a Jeffersonian ideal of a “natural aristocracy” where the elite would be selected
on the basis of talent. At his core Conant was a Tocquevillian, hoping to
strike a blow at the heart of the undeserving elite and replace it with what
he imagined made America great: equality of conditions.13 Over the past
sixty years elite schools have made attempts to shift away from being bastions of entitled rich boys toward being places for the talented members
of all of society. Many accepted black students long before they were compelled to do so by the pressures of the civil rights movement. They similarly
transformed into places that do not just “allow” women; they created the
conditions in which they could thrive. These schools’ religious foundations
8
introduction
led them to imagine that they were not simply places for the education of
the advantaged but places that lead to the betterment of society.
In no small part this leading has meant attempts to create a meritocracy
of talent. Things like the SAT—a test seeking to evaluate the “natural aptitude” of students and move away from favoring their wealth and lineage—
emerged out of the ideal.14 The test was imagined and instituted by Henry
Chauncey, a descendant of Puritan ministers who arrived in this country
in the 1630s. His family were firmly part of the American WASP establishment; they were among the very first students at the Groton School, one of
the nation’s premier boarding schools, and Chauncey himself was a graduate of and later a dean at Harvard. Through the SAT Chauncey sought
to level the playing field and in the process transform elite schools and
thereby the elite. The paradox of open inequality shows how this project
has been both a tremendous success and a tremendous failure. Who is at
elite schools seems to have shifted. But the elite seem to have a firmer and
firmer hold on our nation’s wealth and power.
One reason is that there is nothing innate about “merit.” Though we
tend to think of merit as those qualities that are abstract and ahistorical, in
fact what counts as meritorious is highly contextual. Many scholars have
pointed to the ways in which our definitions of merit change over time,
depending on cultural and institutional contexts.15 The term “meritocracy”
was coined by Michael Young. In the 1940s Young had been asked by
England’s Labour Party to help institute and evaluate a new educational
system meant to allow all young Britons the opportunity acquire the best
education, should they be able. Young soon became cynical of the kind of
technocratic approach to human character that such an education seemed
to promote. Struggling to think of a word to describe this new system, he
played off “aristocracy” and “democracy.” Rather than “rule by the best”
(aristos) or “rule by the people” (demos), this system would establish “rule
by the cleverest people.”16 Though we often think of the word as something admirable, Young invented it to damn what he saw as the cold scientization of ability and the bureaucratization of talent.
At its core, “meritocracy” is a form of social engineering, aimed at identifying the talents of members of society so that individuals can be selected
for appropriate opportunities. In the case of the SAT this means evaluating
particular mathematics, reading, writing, and vocabulary skills and using
them as indicators of academic ability.17 This move toward meritocracy has
d e m o c r at i c i n e qua l i t y
9
sought to decollectivize formerly valued attributes and instead individualize new ones that are “innate.” Rather than accept students because they
manifest a character that revealed good heritage, this new system would
look beyond the trappings of society and reward people’s inherent individual talents. When meritocracy began to make its way into college admissions, then dean of Harvard admissions, Wilbur Bender, worried, “Are
there any good ways of identifying and measuring goodness, humanity,
character, warmth, enthusiasm, responsibility, vitality, creativity, independence, heterosexuality, etc., etc., or should we care about these anyhow?”18
As Jerome Karabel has shown, many of these traits were used as proxies for
elite status.19 Bender, the child of Mennonite parents from Goshen, Indiana, was no elite WASP. But he expressed concerns that echoed throughout
the world of elite education in the 1950s and 1960s: what might happen
to the elements of character that so marked the old American elite? Would
the rise of the meritocracy mean the death of the old elite?
With “merit” we seem to have stripped individuals of the old baggage of
social ties and status and replaced it with personal attributes—hard work,
discipline, native intelligence, and other forms of human capital that can
be evaluated separate from the conditions of social life. And the impact of
the adoption of this approach has led to rather contradictory outcomes. It
has undercut nepotism. It has been used to promote the opening of schools
to talented members of society who previously were excluded. But it has
also been used to question policies like affirmative action that take into account factors other than performance on select technocratic instruments.
It has been used to justify the increased wages of the already wealthy (as
their skills are so valuable and irreplaceable). And most important for me,
it has obscured how outcomes are not simply a product of individual traits.
As I shall argue, this meritocracy of hard work and achievement has naturalized socially constituted distinctions, making differences in outcomes
appear a product of who people are rather than a product of the conditions
of their making. It is through looking at the rise of the meritocracy that we
can better understand the new elite and thereby some of the workings of
our contemporary inequality.
In exploring St. Paul’s I will show how the school produces “meritorious” traits of students. We will see how these attributes are developed
within elite settings that few have access to. What seems natural is made,
but access to that making is strictly limited. Returning to my first days at
10
introduction
St. Paul’s, we can see some of these tensions. The school had worked hard
to recruit the talented members of minority groups; more were on campus
than ever before. And these students did not represent diversity as mere
window dressing. Instead St. Paul’s hoped to take seriously its elite role
within the great American project of equality and liberty. But for all these
ambitious ideals, such a project was not a simple one. Admission was incredibly competitive; a condition of being an elite school is exclusion (or at
least exclusivity). The acceptance of talented minorities did not guarantee
integration. And openness did not always mean equality. The rich students
still seemed to dominate the school. Yet structured around the new meritocracy, it seemed these outcomes were a product of different aptitudes and
not different conditions. The promise of America was not fulfilled in my
days at St. Paul’s School.
The question is why. It is not due to a lack of commitment on the part
of elite institutions. Nor is it because of the failure of the disadvantaged
to desire mobility. In order to make sense of what is going on, this book
leaves social statistics behind and explores my return to high school as a
teacher and researcher, chronicling a year in the life of St. Paul’s School.20
Upon first imagining this project I was pretty sure I knew what I would
find. I would return to the world of my first day at the school. I would
enter a campus populated by rich, entitled students and observe a few
poor, black, and Latino kids sequestered in their own dorm. I would note
the social and cultural advantages of the students who arrived at school
already primed to be the next generation of elites. And I would see how
advantages were protected and maintained. But the St. Paul’s I returned to
was a very different place than the one I had graduated from just ten years
earlier. My ethnographic examination of St. Paul’s School surprised me.
Instead of the arrogance of entitlements I discovered at St. Paul’s an ease
of privilege. This book is a story of a new elite—a group I had to rethink
in light of my second time at St. Paul’s—and how knowing about this elite
reinforms our understanding of inequality within a meritocracy.
Returning to St. Paul’s: Privilege and the New Elite
Before us stood two enormous closed doors. Heavily carved slabs of thick
oak with large looping braided wrought-iron handles, it was clear that
d e m o c r at i c i n e qua l i t y
11
opening them would be no easy task. Standing in a hallway outside we
could look out through the arched windows upon the immaculate lawns,
ponds, buildings, and brick paths of the school that surrounded us. Behind those doors we could hear the muffled sounds of an organ and
the murmurs of hundreds. I glanced around at the faces lined up behind
me: excited, terrified, curious, tired. Some were nervously chattering,
others frozen in place; surrounding me was a group of teenagers in their
Sunday best, unsure what lay beyond. Behind those doors was our future.
We waited.
As the doors opened a quiet overcame everyone. A deep, steady voice
began announcing names. With each name another one of us stepped
into a dark silence beyond those doors. Our line shortened; our time grew
nearer. Soon I could peer into the building we were about to enter. Standing in the bright outside, I could just make out the contours of a cavernous space, softly lit with chandeliers that hung so far from the ceiling they
seemed to float. I saw vague rows of people.
My name was called, and I stepped through the enormous doors. The
Chapel was long and narrow. My eyes were slow to adjust. I told myself
I shouldn’t be nervous. After all, I had been through this before, years
earlier. But it was hard to suppress my nerves. Dressed in a black gown
with a blue and red hood and newly purchased shoes, my soles clicked too
loudly against the cold stones. Some of the new faculty members walking
in front of me looked around frantically, like rural tourists walking among
skyscrapers for the first time. Others kept their eyes fixed on the distant
altar, as th
