I remember having been a fan of things–of a number of things, in fact. None of them were what I “should” have been fans of, though. Rather than what the football or basketball teams were doing, or what was happening in the races or in the ring, I kept up on what was happening in the pages of comic books. Rather than reading the newest New York Times bestsellers, I read epic poetry and classic science fiction. Rather than following the Top 40, I listened to the music that had been popular–or less so, as I found later–in decades past, progressive pop and jazz-rock fusion and more esoteric blends yet. And for each, I did everything I could not only to learn the words and melodies of each by heart, but also to learn the greater fictional continua in which they existed and the details of the artists’ lives.

Had that been all I did, things might have been otherwise–and better. But that was not all I did, to be sure. I held myself aloof from that many others did, and in so doing, I isolated myself from them–which ended up leaving me in quite the awkward position when I returned to the town where I grew up. Worse, I made a point of berating others for their interests, and so invited being belittled for mine–and some went further than the invitation. Still worse, I staked my identity on knowing most about the things I knew, so I felt–and acted upon–the desire to show that knowledge and, when that knowledge was not enough, I recoiled in shame, chastising myself bitterly over things that few if any others cared about.

Often, that last has been my experience of fandom. There are many who are able to do as I did, to spend their time and money collecting the things from which knowledge (not wisdom, to be sure) can be made and copying over that knowledge from the things into themselves. (I know now that it was an exercise in privilege that I could do so.) In my experience, they have tended to view their knowledge of their interests as their primary value, and they have worked to secure that value by displaying themselves as having mastered it most. It becomes a display like that of the peacock or the bird of paradise, the shouting of the howler monkey, a jockeying for status within a group that seems devoted to no good end. And I did more than my fair share of preening and posturing, making much of knowing things (but not of doing anything with them) and delving into obscurities simply to avoid being wrong–and more often making myself look more the fool in doing so.

But even with all the problems of fandom–and there are many, more than I care to elaborate on here or have the capacity to expound upon elsewhere–there were decided rewards for me. I was able to learn a great many things, and I have tended to enjoy learning. (It should be clear that I do, else I’d not have gone back for more degrees.) And I enjoy even now the exercise of such faculties as I have. (How many is debatable, as witness my degrees.) And there is a pleasure in getting lost amid the details of things, of being able to take the time and spend the resources to focus narrowly and deeply on something purely for the pleasure of it, to be able to be immersed in a thing that has no real purpose and no real relevance, something that is idle and unimportant. (Again, witness my degree work.)

There are times I miss it.

Believe me, I am glad that I have the life I have now. My wife and daughter are excellent, and helping them be so brings me no small amount of joy. I have a good job, one that does some good in the world and makes use of quite a bit of the skill-set I developed in earning my degrees and making an attempt to work the work of the mind as my main job. I have a good second job, one that has helped my family to build up a bit of a financial cushion, enough that we can begin to think about diversifying how we handle our money. And I am still able to do some small bits of academe, both in teaching with the second job and doing some light scholarship–nothing ground-breaking, but (I hope) solid and reliable.

The thing is, doing all of those things prevents me from giving myself fully to any one of them–as I used to be able to do with my fandom. Parts of me miss being able to focus narrowly and deeply on a single thing, to take the time to master all of its minutiae, to expend the resources to acquire all of the newest and best materials in the effort to have a complete account of things, a complete record of how a thing I have enjoyed–whether it be the traditionally nerdy Tolkien or Star Trek or Star Wars or one of any number of role-playing games or some other thing that becomes nerdy through the obsession (because I maintain that the essence of nerdiness is obsessive passion). And I confess to having felt delight in the metaphorical dick-measuring contests of competing geekitudes; while I know better now than to get into them, I do miss the feeling of victory they often (but not often enough, oh, no) allowed me.

The thing is, I am enough in things that I am around people who can do the things I used to do and enjoy, and they do them–while I can only watch and, when I participate, do so as one who has been but no longer is. I am left behind, I feel, brought along only on sufferance. Part of me wants to have something to contribute to those communities–but I realize that I no longer really do, except the occasional friendly ear and reminder of good times for the friends I have made. But many have such ears and friendships without having expended the energies I have, so I have to wonder how much of my time and effort have ultimately been wasted.

On 9 January 2018, Eboo Patel’s “Attending an Elite College Is an Identity, Too” appeared in the online Inside Higher Ed. After opening by relating a passage from Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, Patel notes the rarity of understanding college attendance as constituting an identity, tacitly calling for more such recognition. Patel goes on to note that elite colleges are more prone to the lack of recognition than are less prestigious institutions and sketch out some of the parallels between elite institutional privilege and white male cishetero–including their social construction. The article continues by pointing out parallels to other systems of valuation and the consequences of the exercise of elite institutional identity in the current economy before reiterating (explicitly) the wish for more recognition of that identity. It ends with a reminder that working with people of diverse experience and identity is a key component of the collegiate experience.

I think Patel is correct in the claim that college attendance is an identity, and I believe the assertion that more needs to be done to recognize the identity and its socially constructed nature than typically is is similarly correct. But I would like to expand on the point Patel makes, if backhandedly, that students at colleges other than the elite are more likely to recognize college attendance as identity than their counterparts at more prestigious schools. I attended such programs, and I have taught in them, and my experience is that those who attend the schools both make much of having attended college and of having attended the colleges they have.

Sometimes, the awareness of attending college has been a good thing. I have had many students who were the first in their family to go to college (and some who were the first to have graduated high school or its equivalent), and most of them have been keenly aware of the privilege commensurate with that attendance. They have seen how much they work who do well in life without having attended or completed higher education, or they have experienced first-hand life in the lower reaches of the underclass–no few of my students have been ex-cons–so they have a keen idea what college can mean. They value it, and so they tend to be among the more diligent and devoted of my students. It tends to make them my favorites, for, having come from a similar background–as I write, neither of my parents has completed an undergraduate degree, and my father still works in the trades–I am sympathetic to their situations and appreciate hard work in itself.

Sometimes, the identification is, if not good, generally harmless. When I taught for a Big 12 school, for example, much was made of having attended the institution, of participating in its traditions. While some of those traditions have unfortunate overtones and undertones, and I found many of those traditions decidedly annoying as an instructor expected to conduct classes among them, they were largely benign, allowing the students a sense of community extending back from themselves and, presumably, forward to students yet to attend the school. Many involved athletic and academic rivalries with other schools in the conference, particularly the other such school in the state, but, as encounters with populations from those schools was relatively rare, the rivalries little mattered. (Little, of course, because there were always some who used the rivalries as excuses for all manner of bad behavior, although rarely so bad as I have seen in Texas, when the Longhorns and Aggies still faced one another.)

In no few cases, though, the identification becomes outright problematic. I have long since lost count of the number of times I have been told by students at state schools and two-year schools and schools of last resort that they are “only” at such institutions. Term after term, year after year, institution after institution, I have heard students say that they are “only” at the school where they study, as if earning a spot in a program is not itself a worthy thing, as if the learning they are doing does not matter because it is not done at some fancy place where more is made of who a person’s parents are than the effort they expend to achieve–or the results of that expended effort. Some try to use the “only” to excuse their own non-performance, but more say it with a certain tone in their voices that bespeaks their having accepted a lesser status for having gone to less prestigious schools. When they say “only” to me, they are saying that they believe themselves less than, something I know not to be true but which I have yet to be able to convince more than a handful of my students that is so. It grieves me that they accept the identity which has been constructed for them, that they have internalized being less than for the schools they attend, and while I do everything I can to ensure that what they get is of value, because of such identities as they and I have, there are barriers that I know not how to surmount.

So, yes, Patel is on to something, and the article is correct in its assertions. But there is more to explore on the matter, and there are many more than might be expected who would benefit from that exploration.