Primed for a career

Professor Nelson joked, during his lecture on bobos, that everyone attending Harvard is being primed to be a bobo, While it may make sense that most of us are being primed to be in the similar class when we graduate, we should also recognize that our class backgrounds and habitus may still put people in different positions after graduating. For example, my classmate whose father is a partner at Goldman Sachs will have a much different experience in the finance industry than I will have. He grew up being primed to go into investment banking, whereas I started out the job search without any inside knowledge or any personal connections that could help me land an internship.

These careers and the type of people who go into these careers are reproduced through habitus. Professor Nelson showed the class several pictures of celebrities who were essentially primed to go into showbiz. Angelina Jolie's father is Jon Vaught, an American actor who won one Academy Award, out of four nominations and three Golden Globe awards out of nine nomination. Taking after her father, Jolie has received one Academy Award and three Golden Globe awards as well.

I expect that many of the careers that my peers chose will be heavily influenced by what their parents did as well. Their choice might be a response to their parent's position, but it will still have been shaped by their parent's career choice.

The business card scene from American Psycho: how I imagine investment banking must be like at the top.