Michael Shanks - site 2006: Dropping the S-Bomb

Below are several postings from class blog entries and later from a blog open to the rest of campus.

Posted at Feb 23/2006 11:14AM:
Justine: Like I said in class, I think it would be interesting to look at the different reactions that come from a woman dropping the S-bomb vs. a man. I know I try to avoid the "where do you go to school question" and if im cornered into it, i go down the California, Northern California, Palo Alto lines... sometimes I just lie and say Menlo College. Why such hesistance? simple, because if you bust out and drop that bomb, you get the "oh, so you're the smart type." When and why that became a bad thing, I don't really know, but for some reason, you're a girl and you go to Stanford, then you're a geek, socially awkward, weird. I don't know maybe it's the same for guys, but then again you don't hear "4 out of 5 guys in California are hot, the other one goes to Stanford," do you?

Posted at Feb 25/2006 01:30AM:
Tammy Wang: I also don't feel very comfortable dropping the "S-bomb" because there are so many judgments that people automatically make when they hear it. There is a very marked transition, when the person you're talking to widens their eyes with a knowing look and says that painfully long "ohhhh..." of realization. All of a sudden you're not a normal person any more, you become this sort of untouchable genius in their eyes. I hate it, and I have to really work to show people that I'm not that different from them, that there's more to me than the Stanford name.
Another sidenote- in Asian culture some parents only know of two "good" universities in the US- Harvard and Stanford. So if you go to one of these universities, you suddenly become the greatest role model for their children. Some parents I know always ask their children why they aren't more like me, and I have been asked for advice on Stanford admissions from parents on behalf of their eight year-old children.

Posted at Feb 27/2006 04:20PM:
Brenden Lane: Where I come from, a small suburb of Cincinnati, I'd estimate that about half of all people I have talked to recognize Stanford if I say I go there. At most maybe 5-10% could correctly name which state it's in. I'm not sure if I simply hang out with the wrong crowd but I think the "S-bomb" is a weapon that may be more effective against certain targets than others.

Posted at Feb 28/2006 09:33AM:
Jennifer Ladd: Like Justine, for some reason I have also been conditioned to answer the, "Where do you go to school?" question with "California", then "near San Francisco" and then finally "Stanford." Perhaps, this is partially a function of being from the East Coast (Chappaqua in NY to be exact) where the schools that rank top in everyone's book are the "old boys schools": Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Also, a lot of people think I can commute to class each day because they believe I go to school in Connecticut (where there is a StaMford about a half hour away from where I live). I've also apparently been going to school in Georgia where there is a Samford.

Posted at Feb 28/2006 11:46PM:
Katie Howard: I have the small town in the Midwest thing too. I'm from Nebraska, where a free public college education is given to every good student. Since most adult Nebraskans graduated from one of the Universities of Nebraska, I feel like telling them I'm going to Stanford is like saying their choice wasn't good enough for me. While I got a lot of encouragement from some people, a lot of others treated me like I was wasting money when I was no more qualified for Stanford than others who chose to stay in state. In fact, instead of asking where I was going to school, people tended to ask whether I was going to UNL or UNO, or even what dorm I would live in next year.

Posted at Mar 02/2006 12:22AM:
Evan Pivonka: I hate to poo-poo this whole "S-Bomb" phenomenon, but I have slightly different opinion about it. As an undergraduate at Santa Clara University (that crappy school down the road from Stanford), I must say that no one cared if you went to Stanford. Believe it or not, everyone outside of Stanford isn't busy stereotyping or pre-judging Stanford kids, they're busy judging their own peers. I think it's a great topic, though, and I can't wait to see what you come up with... I just hope you interview plenty of kids from other schools and see what kind of negative pre-judgments they in fact have (you might be surprised that saying you're from Stanford might even incur genuine respect or admiration)...

Posted at Mar 02/2006 12:51PM:
[Maggie]: I try to avoid saying the S-bomb as well, but not really because I don't want to hear the "oh you're so smart stigma." It's mainly because I personally don't care anymore that I go to Stanford. Sure, Stanford has the rankings and a certain top reputation, but all that is actually relevant to my daily life is that I am an undeclared sophomore unsure about what I want to do with my life. When I was in high school, I was very judgmental about universities (especially since everyone in my HS was incredibly ambitious for an Ivy yet they always ended up at University of Michigan). When I got rejected from NYU but was accepted early to Stanford, I thought I was some awesome person but now I realize that the US News Rankings are totally evil and college is just college. As long as you go and hopefully figure things out, you're awesome.

Posted at Mar 12/2006 11:20PM:
Meghan Kennedy: The most common situation where I have thought of Stanford as the "S-bomb" was when I was waitressing during the summer. Generally, the scenario would go one of two ways. Most of the time, when asked where I went to school I responded with "northern California" or "near San Francisco." I did this because I noticed that a lot of people, particularly older adults, have associations with the name Stanford and the type of person who attends the school. When I would say I was a Stanford student, the responses included: praise for getting in, comments on my intellect (not just about being smart, but also questioning why, if I go to Stanford, was I a waitress...leading to an explanation of whatever unpaid internship I had), remarks about going to an expensive school (...therefore I must be wealthy so why was I waitressing) and finally, strange attempts at rivalry from people who had gone to Cal. While getting these comments isn't a big deal, and they were generally pretty amusing, I usually prefered to just avoid the situation and the possibility of getting stereotyped by where I went to school. On the other hand, there were a few times when I got customers who came into the restaurant with the stereotype of waitresses being unintelligent (hence the comment above about why I was waitressing if I go to Stanford). In these (luckily) rare situations where I could tell I was being spoken to as though I was practically incapable of taking an order correctly, if the question of where I went to school came up I would eagerly jump at the chance to say Stanford because of people's connotations about Stanford students being smart. There was something satisfying about disproving the stereotype that I was unintelligent by using the stereotype that "I must be smart if I go to Stanford," even though I would rather not be judged with either view.

Posted at Mar 13/2006 02:42PM:
Josh Liptzin: I'm from New York, and surprisingly a lot of people on the east coast don't really know what Stanford is. I remember being at my aunt's house while she had some of her friends over and getting into a conversation with someone about colleges. I was talking to the man for about 15 minutes about my school and how much I like it, what I'm studying, etc. Then he tells me that there must be a lot of people from Connecticut at my school, thinking that I've been talking about Stamford University in Connecticut the whole time (even though I'm pretty sure I mentioned California several times throughout the conversation). Also, when I first decided to go to Stanford over Yale, the principal of my high school said he respected my decision (but was questioning it) to sacrifice going to a prestigious university with a famous name like Yale over a smaller one like Stanford, but to me they are equal. Things like that tick me off.

The following postings are from an open blog.

Danny Karp, Larkin, 2009 I actually have an interesting story about this. In my experience, telling strangers where I go to college is always awkward and usually quickly terminates the conversation. The main example I can think of was when I was with a few friends, one going to Harvard and one to MIT in Mexico. We were on a local bus and ran into an American women who began to talk to us. She asked why we were here and we said we were on a pre-college trip, before we dispersed across the country. She informed us that her daughter was in college at the University of Kentucky and then asked where we were going. We replied (Harvard, Stanford, MIT) and there was a momemtary silence. She then replied "Then you guys must be really smart then." My friend laughed awkwardly and then there was silence for the rest of the bus ride. After we got off, we decided we needed a strategy to deal with this situation (this had come up before), so we invented a college. From now on we would all say we went to Banderman in Maine (which obviously does not exist). The responses we got for the rest of the trip when we replied we go to Banderman were far more friendlier and pretty funny. People said "Oh Banderman, I hear thats a good school" and "Banderman eh, I have a cousin who goes there." Needless to say we had a bunch of laughs, but ultimately we decided to stick with Banderman over our schools, and never told our true destinations for the rest of the trip. 12:48 PM

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

B. Barajas, Zapata, 2008

I'm really careful about who I tell I go to Stanford. Sometimes, I use it to my advantage like when I wrote the U.S. Geological Survey people that I wanted a copy of their research for a policy analysis to be presented at the university and they rush delivered their data. But when I'm back home and a cute guy approaches, I'm hesitant to tell him where I go. "Up North," "Bay Area," and "Some private university up north," are all replies I've tried. Sometimes they get left at that, other more inquisitive admirers ask for specifics and then after some silence and awkwardness, I get dubbed "the girl from Stanford" or "the smart girl" and it's not that fun anymore. When my friends from home introduce me to their new friends and they say "this is B, she goes to Stanford," its almost as though they think thats all there is to me. It's especially awkward when some of your friends have dropped out of school, or are struggling in two-year colleges or state schools and there i am: fulfilling the college dream. It almost makes me feel guilty.

Still, when I'm looking for a job or a foot in the door for something, I'm sure to throw in the "@stanford.edu" with a confident smile. :) 2:27 PM

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Isaac Johnson, Larkin, 2009 Actually, I usually try to avoid saying that I go to stanford in most coversations. I mean, when people ask me what school I go to, I'll tell them. But when I bring up the whole issue of college, I usually tell them that I go to school in Palo Alto, and stop there unless they ask for more details. I feel like I'm being an elitist or bragging or something whenever I say I go here. I also don't fit the stereotypical profile of a "stanford kid" so I enjoy going through a conversation (this actually happened with a Cal student, IT WAS GREAT) with the other person treating me as if I was just another scrub, then bringing up stanford towards the end. Oh yea, and one (actually a few times now that I think about it) time, I was talking to my friends, and introduced myself as "Isaac Johnson from Stanford" because he introduced himself as "Kevin Tran from S.F. State" and he got all offended, even though I wasn't implying anything. Another awkward moment was when I was talking to my friend from Chaminade, and I said, "wow, we don't do that at Stanford." In actuallity, I was just saying that we had a different process, but it was interpreted as "the way you do things is far inferior to the stanford way of doing things." I don't know, I usually just try to avoid the s-bomb, but its hard to do when my friends changed my nickname to "stanford" now or bring it up whenever we see eachother. 8:56 PM

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Melissa Luu-Van, Larkin, 2006

I'm from a pretty small town. Typically one graduating senior every five or six years goes off to an Ivy League school or the equivalent, so it was a pretty big deal for me to go to Stanford. I was "that kid" for my five/six-year period, I suppose, so I very quickly grew accustomed to dealing with the awkwardness associated with having a less conventional answer to the "Where are you going to college" question.

In my experience, I found that meandering around the issue ("Oh, I go to a school in northern California", etc.) rather than just coming out with it and saying it straight-up often just increased the awkwardness, because people would just keep asking for more specifics anyway. There'd be this huge buildup until I would finally run out of increasingly specific ambiguities and would eventually be "trapped" into saying that I went to Stanford. Typically at which point it would appear that I was so uncomfortable with the inquirer knowing that I'm (GASP) a Stanford student that the whole situation would just be awkward in general.

With that said, I think there's certainly a right and wrong way to "drop the S-Bomb" - one thing that I've always been careful to do is to avoid seeming like I'm using Stanford as a way to show off or act like I'm better than other people, because that's definitely not how I feel about it. I more just mention it as a part of who I am and carry on with the conversation. I think that people of the outside world might think "Oh, Stanford - she must be the super smart nerdy sort," but honestly, people who actually know me know better, and those who don't know me, I don't particularly care if they think that. 3:21 AM

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Anonymous said... I've done it -- I'm not gonna lie. Both for things I feel good about and guilty about. It really helps me show people that I'm a serious student even though I'm dropped out of school working on a project. It helps me avoid the hippie drop out image.

But I've used in less appropriate ways. Handing a highway cop my wallet with my SUID over my drivers license, etc. Not cool.

Bottom line" It's bull shit that it gets us so far. 5:39 PM

Back to Stanford University: Changing Lives Since 1891