Summary
While at Yale, Vance fell in love with a classmate of his, Usha. She represented many things Vance wasn’t. She had attended Yale for her undergraduate degree and knew to encourage Vance to take advantage of resources he didn’t know existed, like office hours with professors. Vance refers to her as his “Yale spirit guide.” Usha also taught Vance about FIP, or Fall Interview Program, which is a week in August wherein law firms interview, wine, and dine prospective talent from the law school. Vance lined up six interviews during the first day of the week, including with the law firm he wanted to join most: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
Following the interview, which went well, Vance was invited to a dinner at a fancy restaurant in the city to hobnob with some of the firm’s recruiters. Vance tried to relax and be himself. The only problem was that Vance had never been to a dinner like this, so “being himself” meant gawking at the crystal clean wine glasses and stumbling over wine names. Despite his clumsiness, however, he made conversation, chewed with his mouth closed, and ended up with a job offer, just like everyone else at the dinner.
Vance marveled at how easy it was to get these jobs; in just one week, he had sixteen interviews with major law firms lined up and actually ended up canceling a few interviews he didn’t need. With a degree from Yale Law School, he already had a foot in the door. But Vance was shocked to realize that “successful people are playing an entirely different game.” They were not applying to jobs like everyone else, but networking with old friends and family friends or having their school’s career office set up interviews.
The idea that these networks and advantages have real economic value is called “social capital,” Vance notes, and he was experiencing it for the first time. For example, when Vance flubbed an interview, he still got a job offer because his professor told the recruiters he was an excellent candidate. For the first time, Vance had a safety net.
Another example involves The Yale Law Journal writing competition, a prestigious organization that many of Vance’s classmates had been preparing for even before they arrived at Yale on the advice of friends who knew how important the competition could be. Vance, however, had no idea if applying to the competition could be useful to him, so he asked Amy Chua, a professor of his, what the big deal was. Vance calls this “closing the information gap,” an important step towards gaining the social capital he needed to succeed at Yale. “It was like I’d learned to see.”
Vance also considered working as a clerk to a federal judge, which meant he’d have to move across the country and work long, hard hours away from his girlfriend. However, Amy Chua suggested he withdraw his application even after Vance made the short list, as the job wouldn’t advance him towards his specific goals, and would probably mean he’d have to break up with Usha. Looking back, Vance treasures this advice, glad that he finally had a way into the inner circle of knowledge.
Ultimately, Vance did end up clerking—but he did so in Kentucky, for a judge whom he respected, and with Usha by his side. This time, he applied as an informed candidate. Overall, Vance had a major handicap when attending Yale in that he didn’t understand things like the necessity of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview, or that going to a nicer college would give him some social capital if he worked for it. As a hillbilly, he entered Yale “remarkably ignorant of how to get ahead,” and “not knowing things that many others do often has serious economic consequences.”
Analysis
Whereas in the immediately previous chapters, Vance alternated between his new metropolitan homes and his Ohio hometown, this marks the first chapter that takes place entirely away from Middletown or Jackson. But even in New Haven, Vance’s hillbilly background lurks in the back of his mind. This is particularly at play when Vance must attend a fancy dinner to seal the deal with a law firm offering him a job. The image of Vance spitting out a stemmed glass full of sparkling water epitomizes the ways in which his Appalachian roots cause him to stick out when attempting to get ahead. Although Vance eventually gets the job, his misinterpretation of the word “sparkling” is a case in point for the ways in which his hillbilly-ness follows him everywhere—even to New Haven.
Indeed, much of this chapter revolves around this very conflict, as Vance begins to realize that his law school colleagues have been “playing an entirely different game.” This realization constitutes one of the salient themes of the last few chapters in Vance’s book: that people without social capital are at a disadvantage when trying to succeed. Until this point in the book, Vance has excelled beyond his family’s wildest dreams, bettering his character in the Marines and even proving himself academically. However, this chapter addresses Vance’s sobering realization that it is neither his intelligence nor his work ethic that’s holding him back, but rather the inherent disadvantages that come with being raised in a working-class family in Middle America. For example, Vance has no idea when approaching the important dinner that wearing an ill-fitting suit or stumbling over wine names will automatically cause him to stick out from his fellow law students. As a result, Vance feels destined to fail, and we wonder if he will ever be able to escape his hillbilly roots.
Vance uses a few metaphors and similes to illustrate his point. One of these is that learning about the social capital that his peers arrived at Yale already enjoying was like “learning to see.” This powerful simile accounts for just how fundamental Vance’s realization that his colleagues were inherently more advantaged than him purely because of their upbringing. In some ways, this single epiphany is so central to the overarching premise of Vance’s book that it could provide clues to why he wrote it in the first place. Vance is not discouraged by the realization that he will have to work harder to succeed, but rather envisions it as the key to his success so vital that it parallels gaining the gift of sight.
In fact, soon after Vance learns about the social capital his colleagues seem born with, he realizes that, now that he attends Yale, he has social capital too. Once he realizes this, Vance invokes a metaphor that has been present throughout the book but used in a different sense: a safety net. Whereas Vance envisioned Mamaw as a “safety net” that would catch him when he fell—or perhaps more literally, when his mother made him feel unsafe—he now envisions his social capital as a “safety net.” In some ways, this is a bewildering substitution; whereas Mamaw once made Vance feel safe, now that Mamaw is gone, he takes comfort in his social connections and advantages. However, as cold as it may feel on the page, perhaps this change in values is simply part of Vance’s journey towards upward social mobility.
Like the chapter before it, this one also invokes a theme that is key to Vance’s arc throughout the book: the ways in which his identity remains in flux as he becomes upwardly mobile. When Vance attends a fancy dinner at which he must perform well in order to receive a job offer, for example, he tries to remember to be himself. However, as the festivities appear increasingly foreign to him—from tiny forks to fancy linens—Vance realizes that “being [himself] meant staring slack-jawed at the fineries of the restaurant and wondering how much they cost.” Just as Vance debates whether to admit he attends Yale while in Middletown, he debates whether to be his hillbilly self when at Yale. Caught between two identities that often seem irreconcilable to Vance, he experiences an identity crisis as a result of his newfound upward mobility.
