History

An ascribed status is something that no matter who you are, whether you like it or you hate, you are born with it. The ascribed status that I was born with was nothing to brag about. Nobody in my family has attended college before my sister who attended it just a couple years ago. Overall expectations in my family are not much more then high school and then straight to work. I grew in a town called Lodi in New Jersey. Lodi is positioned right next to some questionable towns that are considered poorer like Passaic, Paterson, and Garfield. My town Lodi is grouped right in with those towns, my high school was extremely diverse and had a very low college attendance post high school.

My father who also grew up in Lodi, went to the same high school I went to and fell right into this trend. He graduated high school and right after, proceeded to become a roofer. Eventually my father branched off from a roofing company he worked for and created his own roofing company called Spero Roofing. My Mother graduated high school in Clifton and also went straight to work. The cultural capital my parents faced led them both into going straight to work after college. Cultural capital has to do with the social assets somebody has such as education and style of speech. Having just a high school education, first generation parents and living in a poorer area led them to make these decisions.

Also working against them was social capital and economic capital. My grandparents all worked extremely low paying jobs and the friends of the family all worked similar jobs. My parents both worked jobs during high school in order to help pay bills and put food on the table. Economic capital is the resources you have around you such as goods, property, and money. My parents not only never were surrounded by economic capital, they were never surrounded with the social capital to push them toward a college education. Their parents did not expect them to go to college, they expected them to work after school.

The reason I bring up my parents in such detail is because they are ultimately the reason I am here studying at Rutgers University and if you understand them you will better understand me. My parents are a perfect example of achieved status. Despite being born with extremely low ascribed status, they pushed on and were extremely successful in their areas of work. Achieved status does not care what the ascribed status was that you were born with, achieved status is what you work for and my parents are a perfect example of that. My parents have worked hard to not only provide me necessary economic capital to attend college, they provided me with the proper the social and cultural capital to get here. Unlike their parents, going to work after school was never an option to them. I can still remember in high school being frustrated with going to school and mentioning perhaps not going to college. My sister and I knew that was a big no no in our household. If one of my parents heard you suggest such, let’s just say they would be very unhappy.