Class Bullshitters

Imagine two men: Toby and Alex. Toby is the son of a teenage single mother called Jane. Jane dropped out of secondary school, and relied largely on state benefits for the first few years of Toby’s life, with some help from family. He grew up in council housing (I guess this is called public housing in the US?), went to a mediocre state school, and eventually got into a good university by getting decent grades in his late teens. Alex comes from a family of academics - two of his grandparents are professors at prestigious universities. He had a lot of help with schoolwork from family, his mother and father both had good degrees, and although his father, Tom, wasn’t particularly well off when Alex was born, Tom eventually lands a six-figure job at an accountancy firm and is able to buy Alex expensive gifts during his childhood. Toby and Alex ostensibly have very different backgrounds - but they don’t actually, they have the exact same background. Because I am both Toby and Alex - all of …