We get it, Gretchen, your dad is the inventor of Toaster Strudel. But are you realllllllllly putting your best Stuart Weitzman–clad foot forward when your fun fact at your SPEC Connaissance meeting icebreaker consists entirely of the fact that your parents donated one of the shitty study lounges in the quad?
Never do you hear more “my ‘father/uncle/second–cousin/ex–boyfriend's family friend’….is …” than during OCR. You can’t toss a bottle of Banker’s without hitting a future banker (or someone who knows someone who knows Jordan Belfourt). It’s like Penn’s Napoleon–complexing to account for the Malia–Obama–in–a–Harvard–shirt–shaped hole in its heart. Or maybe we’re compensating because our most famous alum closely resembles an expired off–brand cheese puff.
And though many a Whartonite will tell you differently, it’s not just who you know. Potentially even more important to any good self–aggrandizing hanger–on is the people with whom you can tangentially align yourself.
Oh, are those Warby Parker glasses? The founder of Warby Parker, you know, he went to Wharton. We love to give back here at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce.
We boast of seeing Dean Furda at Bamboo Bar or being friends with a Biden relative on Facebook. Penn culture, academic and sceney alike, isn’t what you know or even who you know, but how loudly you talk. Highbrow hates to be the one to break it to you, but you’re overusing these proper nouns.
The only acceptable proper noun to overuse this fall? Prêt a Manger. Highbrow hears that faux–French–fast–casual is making a comeback. So shove an egg salad sandwich in your mouth and, for the love of Jon M. Hunstman, stop talking.
xx,
Highbrow
