Out of My League
My photography of Ivy League schools started with a formal interest in architecture on the campus of Yale University. After I accumulated some images, I realized many of my pictures also portrayed a frustration of exclusivity that permeated my own academic career up until college. Constantly being consumed with grades and working in an unhealthy environment of competition, I was seduced by the promise of an outstanding education and something to finally cement my academic prowess. However, I wasn’t accepted to any Ivy League school, and neither were any of my classmates. After four stressful years of constantly trying to best each other, none of us could have this piece of paper that we were told would give us an all-access key to a successful future. When I came to the University of Connecticut, I was in a much more relaxed environment, and I detached myself from my obsessive nature toward grades. I am more than happy with where I ended up, but there still lingers this curiosity about why these reputable institutions pride themselves on being unrealistically selective in their student body and rely heavily on social constructs. This project not only aims to help me find those answers, but explore the juxtaposition of alluring, architectural beauty with my belief in the systemic issue of competition and elitism in academics that plagues my generation.
"I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, 'Beware: Deconstruction Ahead.'" - Gloria Steinem
"Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you'll find nothing at all." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." - Herman Melville
"Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals." - Dorothy Height
"People who think you can wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg
"The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions, and our education -- education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals." - Linda Nochlin
"Education is the development of power and ideal." - W.E.B. Du Bois
"Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education." - Angela Davis
"Princeton University's campus environment presents unique challenges and opportunities for architecture to act as a social condenser." - Steven Holl
"I hope that one day when I'll go back to Pakistan, I will build a university like Harvard." - Malala Yousafzai
"I don't believe I'll ever get credit for what I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard." - Lyndon B. Johnson
"To educate a man in mind and not morals is to educate a menace into society." - Theodore Roosevelt