New Ways: Bridging the two worlds I exist within
New Ways is a biweekly column written by Sebastian Strawser ’29. Strawser reflects on the pause of his Stanford education and ponders new ways to approach education, mental health and life itself. He loves to remind Stanford students that there indeed are new ways of thinking, doing and living.
I’ve worked as a grocery store cashier in my hometown for 19 months. To be quite honest, the shifts have started to blur together. I ring items up and bag them. I go through the steps of checking the $50 and $100 bills that come my way. I send a coworker a minute, nonverbal look of solidarity after a disrespectful customer — by the grace of God — finally leaves the store. This job is the main thing I’ve dedicated myself towards during my time away from Stanford. It’s become my new normal.
The normal things about my job are far different from what was normal during my time at Stanford. The government employees that I see are public school teachers, people from Caltrans and mail carriers — not diplomats, judges and members of Congress. The most common business leader that I see is the owner of the store I work at — not Jensen Huang. I am cashiering with high schoolers and people decades older than me — not sitting in lecture with startup founders and Olympians.
To say the very least, these are two different worlds. In one, I was a public policy major that attended every Faculty Senate and Undergraduate Senate meeting I could. In the other, I’m just a cashier that is shocked to experience even minute gestures of respect from customers. In this country, there are thousands just like my store. On this planet, there is only one Stanford.
The fundamental contrast of these two worlds — one being just a blip in the radar of our capitalist society and the other charting new ways forward on research, innovation and community — has motivated me to be more conscious of both. I am just as much a person that’s been a Stanford student as I am a grocery store cashier. There is no untangling the two, so the time is now for me to look at them together.
Looking at Stanford and my workplace side-by-side has forced me to confront how academically abstract and societally isolated Stanford is. The Stanford bubble is real. It’s all too easy to go days — an entire quarter, perhaps — without needing to leave campus. The closest that Stanford students, particularly undergraduates that aren’t driving, may get to interacting with the broader region is the occasional Marguerite ride or the CalTrain ride to Bay To Breakers. And while I will forever love my classes at Stanford, from sustainable energy decisionmaking to the philosophical underpinnings of justice and law, they were just that — classes. Classes in such an enclosed and separate campus community only underscores Stanford’s isolation.
It’s different at my job, which feels much more comparatively ingrained in the everyday workings of society. I see customers taking things off their purchases to make due with their limited CalFresh benefits. I have conversations that range from customers’ immediate dinner plans to the status of business closures in the community. I hear customers speaking in Spanish, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Tagalog and many other languages. Being at the intersection of tourist attractions in the community and alluring grocery deals, people from all walks of life pass through the store. The job certainly isn’t intellectually challenging, but it strikes in material and experiential significance deeper than the classroom ever could.
By no means am I saying that my Stanford education never mattered. Instead, my time in this other world — a more everyday, necessities-not-accolades world — has augmented my educational foundation in ways I never thought possible. A mother planning a quick, calorie-dense dinner for her family tells a story of gender structures and policy consequences. Someone returning to the store after a long drive home just to make a return signifies how big a difference a couple of dollars can make. This shift in perspective, which links the classroom with societal experiences, is a shock to the conscience that strikes so deeply that there can be no going back.
The 19 months I’ve been at this job will likely grow past 38. It has been tempting to find the easy answer — that this retail job is just a temporary roadblock getting in my way of returning to the Stanford classroom and finally getting my public policy degree — and just roll with it. But my Stanford education taught me better than to think so easily. To embody the values underpinning the intellectual rigor and systemic analysis of Stanford, I must pair it with the day-to-day societal awareness of my job.
To that end, being a grocery store cashier has been a uniquely educational experience. Over these past 19 months, I’ve been able to learn with more of a conscience. There is more to the world than textbook understanding and more to me, as a person, than the 112 units at Stanford I’ve earned thus far. I just need to take the Stanford part of me and pair it with the cashier part of me. Only by bridging those two worlds can I chart a new, better path for myself: a way forward that bridges society and the classroom.
The post New Ways: Bridging the two worlds I exist within appeared first on The Stanford Daily.