1. Nevertheless, I don’t want to overemphasize the degree of my poverty at the time, for I often find inappropriate those who conflate the temporary deprivations of student living with the long-term despair inflicted by intractable economic disadvantage. More often than not—particularly at institutions like Cornell—those who would claim the mantle of poverty tend to have trust funds and ample salaries awaiting them as soon as they leave. Poverty figures as a romantic rite of passage rather than a cruel fate doled out by a cruel world, and it’s always struck me as a mark of true privilege when one can dabble in the darkness of economic despair—eating instant noodles in one’s dorm room only to go back to one’s suburban house during vacations to feast like a rarefied gourmand.