At private school, you want to show off all things you have. You want to brag about all the expensive things you have so you can be like other people. But, in my other life, my gymnastics life for example, I don't like them knowing that I go to private school. The truth is, I am one of four or five people of my outside friends that goes to a private school. So I'm an outsider in a different world then I have been used to for ten years.

When I make a new friend that does not go to my school, they, of course at some point, ask me where I go to school. And everytime I take a short, uncomfortable pause before I tell them. Why, you might ask? Well, I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed that it seems I am more fortunate than my friends because I go to a private school. Really, I am scared of what they might think of me. They might think that I'm a brat that has a lot of stuff that is so expensive and I'm really rich. I should not care what other people think, but it always just happens.

These situations always start like this: “So, where do you go to school?”
Awkward pause. “Private school,” I reply.
“Oh.” Pause. “Cool.”

Then they walk away with an expression on their face that makes me want to not go to a private school. It makes me want to not be apart of my community or have friends from there.

I do not know why they think of me like that. A lot of the time, they are just as fortunate as I am. That is why I do not like when those people call me rich or spoiled or a brat or privileged or upper-class. It can sometimes be very mean and hurt a person’s feelings a lot.

One of my really good friends from gymnastics said things like this before we became close. Let’s call her Rebecca. When I first met Rebecca, she, of course, did the stereotypical thing from above. But soon she escalated it into something that can really hurt someone’s feelings.

When we would talk about something at someone else’s school, Rebecca would say, “But you go to a private school, so you would not know what we are talking about.”
That always hurt my feelings. She would also say things like, “How come you do not have the new phone yet?”
“Because I already have one.”
“You do go to private school, right?” she’d say.
Or, Rebecca would say, “You live in a mansion right?”
“No.”
“Really?!?!?” she said.

These comments did not last for a long time, and we eventually became close and she accepted that we are not that different, but the things she said hurt me a lot before we became friends. So, now I’m very sensitive to this kind of thing. It does not happen often, but has made a big difference in my life. Now I am even more embarrassed with my friends from gymnastics or from anywhere else. This is why I do not like to combine my school life with my outside of school life.