Culture Shock: From Chattooga County to the Ivy League

The first three times I ever stepped onto Yale’s campus it was pouring rain. The first time, we were driving through Connecticut to get to Boston in the winter of my junior year. It was the week before Christmas, so the campus was quiet and cool, and the early winter rain had set in. We only saw one street—Hillhouse Avenue—but I instantly fell in love. The second time was for my first official visit, which was actually after I accepted their offer of attendance. It was in early April of my senior year, and the campus was suffering from its last leg of winter, which is exactly how winter in New England starts: cold and rainy. My mom cried when we finished the tour, and I knew I had chosen the perfect place for me. The third time I saw the campus was the day I moved in. It was August 18th– my dad’s 41st birthday– and the heat of the summer brought in some unfortunately timed rainstorms. With so much rain, I felt right at home, and the thought of leaving Georgia behind was washed out of my mind by the sticky, humid showers. In fact, my dad and I joke that Summerville must actually be a town in Washington, considering the amount of rain we’ve gotten over the last few years, especially since the summer drought of 2016. So while the rain provided for a soggy, slightly depressing move-in day, it was also a comforting reminder of home, which made the first few days a little easier.

In reality, I had seen so little of Yale’s campus, met so few of Yale’s characters, and been exposed to basically none of New Haven or daily life in the Northeast, which I quickly found to be crucial in realizing the difference between life at Yale and life in rural Georgia. When the honeymoon period–and the summer showers–ended, thus began an intense case of culture shock combined with a crippling dose of imposter syndrome that truly made me wonder “What in the world have I done?”

There are a number of things that make a place like Yale vastly different from a place like Summerville. Firstly, and arguably most importantly, there is no sweet tea. Or Coke. Or Dr. Pepper. It is the land of the Pepsi Products. In all seriousness, there are several facets of rural, southern life that simply do not transfer to the Northeast. One of the first things I noticed about New Haven is the abundance of car horns. This might sound silly at first, but it points to a fundamental part of southern life that I took for granted the 18 years I spent in Georgia: the slow pace. I had heard it said my whole life that life is slower down south, but until you experience the rush of a New England city, it’s hard to perceive the pace of daily life in a small town. In Summerville, the only time there’s any need to hurry is when Ingles closes in 10 minutes and you’ve run out of milk. People stop and talk in Walmart, they linger a little longer in the local Mexican restaurant, they pull up a chair, and they rarely seem to have somewhere to be, even if they do. In New Haven, if the light has been green for .2 seconds, the driver 3 cars from the front is laying on the horn. You eat at a restaurant and leave as soon as you pay the check. You never stop moving on the sidewalk. If you stop to speak to someone you know, don’t expect more than a few short words, then move along. Everyone always seems to have somewhere to be, even if they really don’t.

That isn’t to say that the people of Yale are unfriendly; aside from a few entitled individuals who are too full of themselves to realize other people exist, a large portion of students are full of joy and gratitude and are very genuine. Unfortunately, the interactions I have had with the former of these types of people stick with me the most, as they mark the first and only times I’ve ever asked myself “These people really exist?” They also mark the beginning of the unconscious divide between life at Yale and life at home in my mind, providing to me the biggest culture shock of them all: the shock of true class divide.

One interaction, in particular, illustrates exactly what I want to communicate to you in a way that I wish I could say I made up. It all starts with an evening of nice weather and my good friend, Grace, and I sitting on a bench outside our residence hall. We were chatting and minding our own when a certain aforementioned kind of individual helps himself to the bench adjacent to us and begins to join in on our conversation. For the sake of confidentiality, let’s call him Matt. Grace and I knew Matt before this interaction, so we knew that he came from generational wealth and was a legacy to at least three Ivy League Institutions. I also happened to know that he was from Vermont, which is where my parents had moved a few weeks prior. I asked Matt where in Vermont he was from, to which he replied that he was from Southern Vermont but attended boarding school in the Northern part of the state. I told him that my parents had just moved to the Northeast Kingdom, to which he made a face resembling a mix of confusion and the face one makes when biting into a stale cracker previously believed to be in-date. For context, the Northeast Kingdom is home to some of the poorest areas in the state of Vermont, with counties having poverty rates as high as 12-13%. I noticed his expression and joked that that area must be a bit different from the area in which he went to boarding school. The conversation limped awkwardly along when Matt announced that he would never date a girl from a public high school. My jaw must’ve come unhinged, and I’m surprised I didn’t break my neck from how fast I turned to Grace to be sure I heard him correctly. Her reaction was identical to mine, save for a chuckle of pure disbelief that she was able to muster in my stunned silence. The following conversation includes quotes that may not be accurate verbatim, as I was not recording, but are as close to accuracy as Grace and I can collectively remember.

“What?” Grace and I gasp, still unsure if he was joking.

“It is of my belief that a man and woman should come from similar economic backgrounds in order to raise normal, well adjusted children,” he replied, deadly serious.

“Well, what if the girl comes from a poor background or simply attended a public school but now attends an Ivy?” I ask.

“Well, they might fall in love, but they shouldn’t get married. They won’t have anything in common! Their families won’t merge well and they will always feel uncomfortable around the other’s family.”

“Do you realize you’re talking to two public school girls?” Grace asks, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, and one Title I public school girl. I’m double crossed off your list of dating prospects,” I add. He shrugs and continues the conversation as if he didn’t just directly insult the two people he willingly chose to enter into a conversation with. A conversation, might I add, that was not even his own or involved him in the slightest. I left that conversation feeling a bit hollow. Not only was I shocked that people like Matt existed outside of books and movies about posh private school bullies, but I also became acutely aware of the difference between me and a large portion of Yale’s population.

You see, while yes, Grace attended a public high school, she is also the daughter of a Managing Partner of a law firm in Sandy Springs and a graduate of Columbia University. This is certainly not a dig at her parents or her upbringing, as her parents are among the loveliest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, and Grace was raised to be an incredibly kind-hearted, humble young woman. This is just to say that a student’s attendance at a public or private school is not wholly indicative of class divide, which is something that is very prevalent at an institution like Yale. While a little over 50% of the student body receives some sort of financial aid, the income cutoff is much higher than at other schools, coming in at around 250,000 dollars for a household with only one child in attendance at a college or University. This makes the divide between students on financial aid and students paying full tuition even wider, especially for those receiving higher financial aid packages, like myself. This divide might seem insignificant, but when you’re surrounded by people who talk about their summers in Martha’s Vineyard, their houses on Sea Island, their European excursions, and private schools with tuition higher than my parent’s salary, it begins to make you wonder, where are those opportunities for people like me?

In the end, the class division I began to realize during my first year at Yale comes down to two things: opportunity and attitude. In my opinion, it is these two things that set students from other places apart from my peers in Chattooga County. While the previous sentiments I have shared might be taken as a girl from nowhere playing the victim  and complaining about her social status, these next two issues are things that I believe we, as a community, should take accountability for and work to change for the sake of future generations of Northwest Georgians.

While not all of a lack of opportunity falls on the inhabitants of a community, a significant portion of it boils down to what we are willing to put into our towns for the sake of future gains. Once, on a rush meal for Something Extra, my a capella group, one of the girls told me she was from New Haven. I had met a few native New Haven students before, but I was curious as to what their parents do for work, so I asked the girl, “What do your parents and other students’ families that are from here do for a living? I haven’t seen any mills or factories around here.” She looked at me as if I had 10 heads and a handlebar mustache on each one. She, of course, didn’t mean anything by the look, she was just confused as to why I would ask such a thing. She told me that her father was a professor at Yale, and that it was probably the case of the other students that their parents worked for the school as well. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of that. The truth is, it never really crossed my mind that people could choose a career that wasn’t in a mill, in an elementary or high school, or in a nursing home. This isn’t something that I woke up one day and chose to believe. This is something that is taught to our children through the distinct lack of opportunities in our community. While the residents of Chattooga County aren’t directly responsible for this, as it has always been this way, we are enabling it by allowing things to stay the same, the schools to fail, and local leaders to be held unaccountable for their apathetic attitudes toward community development. With a math proficiency score falling a whopping 20% lower and a reading proficiency score 8% lower than that of one of the lowest ranked public high schools in Massachusetts, it is clear that Chattooga High School is not preparing students for success in achieving whatever they set their minds to, and it is even more clear that the focus of our community is not on the education of our young minds, which is something we should learn from our fellow Americans in the North. While one might say that opportunities are for everyone, I would argue that opportunities only come to those who prove they want to see a change.

I can hear the feedback emails now. “Well, Pippa, you made it to Yale, so the schools must have prepared you pretty well. There were plenty of opportunities for you!” While I suppose, to a certain extent, Chattooga High School did get me to where I am today, to that statement, I have two responses. First, in order to be a competitive candidate to attend an Ivy League Institution, I had to look elsewhere to bolster my application. Hence my graduation from Dalton State College with an Associate’s degree in the spring of my senior year. Second, and much more importantly, I had a different attitude than what is common in rural America, specifically in places like Chattooga County. In Chattooga County, as is the case in many small, blue-collar communities in the South, children aren’t told that they can work hard to become whatever they want to become. After the childlike wonder of elementary school, where students want to be an astronaut, a heart surgeon, or the President, wears off, we’re left with dreams of being a teacher, a welder, a nurse, or, in rare cases, a doctor. I would like to preface by saying there is absolutely nothing wrong with these aspirations at all. In fact, I think it is great that these professions are encouraged in our schools, as these jobs are increasingly important as the population grows and more people seek higher education. However, at what point is the ambition to do bigger things lost, and why do these students lose it? Why is it that so many of our graduates settle for blue-collar jobs and careers they aren’t passionate about but they know are safe, easy options? The answer is our attitude. In our schools, our children are praised for satisfactory work, but are not incentivized to strive for excellence. At home, the same children see the fruits of their parents’ hard work and are satisfied knowing that making a living is possible even without a college degree. I was told my whole life that I wouldn’t be able to achieve my dreams, especially if I stayed in Chattooga County. But who said I had to stay?

My parents did an excellent job of fostering a place where I could reach for bigger things, and they did so without spending extra money on private education, tutoring, or any other tool that money can buy. All they did was tell me that I could work hard and achieve my dreams. This is something I grew to think must be rare in all places, but in attending college I realized that isn’t true. I learned that in places outside rural communities like our own, even in low-income households, parents push their children to strive for excellence. For example, another one of my good friends grew up in a low-income household with two immigrant parents in Connecticut. One could say that the odds were stacked against her and that success would be difficult, if not impossible, for her and her sister because of their circumstances. While I am not downplaying the difficulty of her situation, I am here to say that her parents prioritized education and extracurriculars, helping to shape their two children into well-rounded students and individuals. My friend attends Yale on a Questbridge scholarship and her sister attended Harvard. They, too, went to a Title I public high school. They, too, grew up in a low-income community. But there is something different about the culture of Northeastern schools, even at the lowest end of the totem pole: they encourage students to rise above their situation. Learning that so many students from low-income public schools that my friends attended went on to attend Top 25 Universities blew my mind, making me realize that it isn’t the money that causes much of the divide between communities like our own and communities outside the rural south, it’s the attitude and the culture.

All of this isn’t to say I’ve gotten too big for my britches and I’m looking down on my hometown and its people. You can ask anyone I attend school with; I have so much deep love for my community, so much so that I want to see it change for the better. Being at Yale has been so eye opening for me, not just because people have different opinions than me, different beliefs, or different languages, but because of the way they’re raised, the way they see the world and their own circumstances, and the positive connections between the students and their communities. While these cultural differences made me uncomfortable at first, they have taught me so much about what makes a person who they are and that there is not a “right” or “wrong” way to grow up; there is just growing up. Most importantly, it has made me so proud of where I come from, no matter how much I think it could stand a change. At the end of the day, I never introduce myself without saying “Hey, y’all,” I still miss my dad’s sweet tea, and I’m still blessing your heart, all the way from up north.

References:

Peters, Olga. “Northeast Kingdom Economic Report: A Renaissance in
Progress.” Northeast Kingdom Economic Report: A renaissance in
progress, January 5, 2025.
https://vermontbiz.com/news/2025/january/05/northeast-kingdom-economic-report-renaissance-progress#:~:text=For%20instance%2C%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau,the%20state’s%20rate%20of%209.7%25.

Reich, Josie. “Parents, Students Concerned by Yale’s Cost as Term Bill
Surpasses $90,000.” Yale Daily News, April 1, 2024.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/03/31/parents-students-concerned-
by-yales-cost-as-term-bill-surpasses-90000/#:~:text=Fifty%2Dthree%20percent%20of%20undergraduates,average%20grant%20of%20over%20%2463%2C000.;
Financial Aid at Yale. “Affordability.” Accessed May 28, 2025.
https://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/affordability.

US World Report. “Chattooga High School,” 2023.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools
/georgia/districts/chattooga-county/chattooga-high-school-5770.;US
World Report. “Westfield Vocational Technical High School,” 2023.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools /massachusetts
/districts/westfield/westfield-vocational-technical-high-school-9557.