Hacker News Reader

Comment by jtzhou | Hacker News Reader

Yep. If you slip up -- a series of B's, a summer wasted at a dead-end job, or a break-up with a significant other you sunk tons of time into, and end in a lower-tier area, you'll be effectively "banished" from the community. Your "friends" will look down at you at the 10-year reunion you likely won't attend, and you'll never be able to afford to live in the area you grew up.

Banishment, or the threat of it, is one of the most psychologically difficult ordeals. Cut off from friends, community and our surroundings we have become accustomed to.

Making a middle-class lifestyle in the Bay Area affordable, with better transit, will go a long way.

View on HN

Your first paragraph sounds so dramatic that I was expecting you to laugh the idea off as a joke at the end, but you didn't. It sounds like you're 100% serious. Is this actually the case? Don't mean to pry, but it sounds a little extreme, and I wonder if this has happened either to you or anyone you know. I grew up in Irvine (mentioned below as similar to PA) and no one I knew would have banished anyone for getting B's or not getting a nice job. We were normal kids.

It's not really an exaggeration of what it's like growing up in Palo Alto. When people marveled at someone's GPA, it would be how far above 4.0 unweighted it was. I think one kid at my school had a 4.8 weighted GPA.

Anything below a 3.9 and you were seen as not all that interested in academics.

Not sure how the grades work there, how can unweighted GPA be above 4.0? At my HS, APs were weighted (to 4.5) but there was no way to go above 4.0 without that.

AP as well as "honors credits" are graded from 2.0-5.0.

To achieve this, you take probably 3-4 honors classes freshman year, along with the dreaded dead weight PE and a language if your school doesn't offer an AP language.

Then you transition to 2-3 AP classes as well as 2 honors classes (Precal and English) sophomore year, as well as secondary PE.

Junior year and senior year you take 5 or 6 APs.

Then, if the competition still has not been shaken, there is option of enrolling in supplementary colleges at the local JC after school or over summer (which, nicely, also are measured out of 5.0 on the HS transcript).

I enrolled in a mid tier private college instead of a UC due to fear of working harder than I did in high school.

I cannot believe how much free time there is. I'll probably transfer up soon. We'll see.

You aren't literally banished. What happens is that if you can't succeed at a high enough level, then you won't be able to afford to live in the same type of community as an adult. Economic banishment, not social, although the social separation happens as a knock-on effect. As social/tribal creatures this is absolutely a huge deal psychologically.

I think this is the root of it. The high cost of living (high property values, high taxes, high regulation around inputs like fuel and wages) mean that being able to put four walls around a family and feel even a modicum of financial security requires a staggering -- a simply staggering -- income.

If one looks at the inputs into the cost-of-living issue, I suspect one would actually find that much of the pressure cooker atmosphere is the result of bad policy. There's no shortage of land, energy, labor, or even water* in Silicon Valley. But there's an enforced shortage of these things, and the resulting high prices create the "banishment effect" for these children.

* Since I'll take some flak for this, here's one supporting view: http://www.city-journal.org/2015/cjc0402vdh.html

In the end it's not that big a deal because there are tons of places and ways to have a happy life and be a "success" (whatever that is). But it takes time and experience to learn that.

The kids I spoke of lived in shady canyon and had a ton of competition to get good enough grades to be in the advanced classes because if you weren't in the advanced classes you wouldn't get into the AP classes and have a higher GPA and get into the "good" college, get the good job, etc. This is from the perspective of seeing a good friend and her kids. It seemed immense pressure to me looking in but most of the kids got almost perfect SATs, were in multiple extracurriculars (soccer, track, putting on a community concert, etc.), acted in commercials, etc. I thought they were all insane personally. :-)

Horrific! Is this just an exaggeration? Is this a real reflection of the environment the Bay Area offers to families in such a prospering economy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com