it's a midwest thang

As St. Lunatics famously wrote, "It's a midwest thang." Yeah, I just quoted St. Lunatics in my blog.

Today in Fictions of Finance, we shared some of our financial impressions and experiences and it got me thinking a lot about some distinctions I notice when I'm out here at Bread Loaf. It makes me feel very Fitzgerald-esque minus the eventual gathering of wealth and the jumping in fountains. Mostly, it's just the strange relationship with wealth. As someone who doesn't put a whole lot of stock in acquiring wealth [see leaving your job to live in a yurt] (don't get me wrong, I worry about money and want to feel secure), it has been interesting to read the books with my Midwestern, middle class world looming behind me.

I'm just always reminded of how different my experiences as a public school kid, working in a middle class community, are from some of my peers here. A lot of the people in the room work in supremely expensive (Marshall's got nothing on these tuitions) private schools where 1%-ers kids attend school. Since I have exactly zero experience with that kind of wealth, I'm always really intrigued by the stories told here and it just sort of hit me that I'll get to spend a class hearing more of those stories that are so far from my own understanding. That's pretty great.

In unrelated news, true to my goal of taking advantage of every opportunity for free food or drink, I had a free [probably leftover] wrap that was sitting in the barn instead of paying the $12 for lunch on campus. Then we had social hour on the Adirondack chairs. Here is proof since this would be the second blog without photos if I didn't add it:

Then I went to class and sat down to kill time for a bit and then torrential downpours set in, true to Vermont form. Good news! More free stuff: Bonfire tonight by the pond with beer (thank God - this campus has had only dry events which is not how I'm used to rolling at Bread Loaf), I got more work hours for this weekend, and Bryan presumably secured himself a job in the kitchen at the aforementioned delicious Rosie's in Middlebury. It's that good midwestern work ethic. They heard my MN accent and were all about hiring him. He told me not to blog about it in case it wasn't a sure thing, but too late.