I wrote about these and other experiences in my 2018 memoir, “Educated,” which surprised me by becoming a best seller. The full complexity of my opinion on inequality and poverty then could have been summed up with utter simplicity: I was tired. I also don’t recall feeling humiliated or disrespected to be cleaning plates or toilets used by my classmates. I don’t recall either of us mentioning the fact that we were serving food we could not afford to eat I don’t recall feeling angry as I hooked my apron in my locker and reached into my backpack for my own lunch, a protein bar and pack of ramen noodles (10 cents at my local grocery store). The woman who worked alongside me was also a freshman who could not afford the meal plan. Then, because I was short on rent, I added a second job, serving coleslaw and Jell-O in the cafeteria. This was my routine for the first two months of my freshman year. I will finish around 8 a.m., then head to class.
I’m heading for the engineering building, where I will pick gum out of short nylon carpet, wipe strange equations from dusty chalkboards, and scour the interior of toilet bowls with an odorless blue gel. Outside I feel the Rocky Mountain winter on my cheeks as I begin the scramble to campus on sidewalks that will not be salted for another three hours. It was my habit to dress for the day the night before, because an alarm blaring at 3:40 really does sound much better than an alarm blaring at 3:30. Then images: the orange glow of the jumbo numbers in pitch black, the instinctual, semiconscious tapping of the button, the gradual shrinking of my bed as I climb out of it and move toward the door. There is the siren-screech of an alarm sounding at 3:40 in the morning. When I think of my first semester of college, the memory comes to me as a physical sensation.
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