By Emma Cummins
staff writer
It was a Friday evening and I was excited to hang out with my friend at my dad’s apartment.
As my friend came into my dad’s apartment, I experienced some embarrassment. When we walked in, my friend’s look of awkwardness and disapproval that came to her face was something I wasn’t sure how to handle.
My friend eventually decided to call one of her own friends who owned a big house and nice pool to pick us up so that we could spend time somewhere else. After that experience, bringing my friends home to hang out was a no-no for me, as well as my friends.
Many a times, the things we own determine our value because of the emphasis our culture puts on material things, and this can be degrading to many teenagers.
Coppell is an affluent community with a 3.3 percent population under the poverty rate (2012). Three out of four people residing in Coppell live in a house.
For students who live in an apartment or small house, living in Coppell can be a challenge.
I was one of those students. My freshman year of high school, I lived in an apartment. Before going to high school, living in an apartment didn’t seem like something to be ashamed of. After going to high school and seeing all my friends houses, I felt embarrassed that I did not live in a house.
For the rest of the year, I tried to hide the fact that I did not live in a nice house. As a sophomore, my family and I are now moving into a nice house with five bedrooms, a pool and plenty of space.
Now, my friends are excited to come to my house and spend time in my neighborhood.
Living in an apartment in Coppell can entail many negative opinions about the apartment community. In Coppell, those living in an apartment can be considered lower tier. Many students make snap judgements about where people live because it can be easier to distance oneself from a person in an apartment by making negative conclusions.
My friends have been guilty of basing people’s identity on where they lived. In our relationship, it did not matter how smart I was, what sports I was good at or what my personality was like, if I didn’t live in a big house something was “wrong.”
Many of the students at CHS don’t even consider the fact that a student’s living arrangement is something they have no control over. It is a student’s parents who do or do not make the money. A student’s car, house, and nice things are in reality, their parent’s car, house, and nice things. This is something many people don’t consider.
Small house or apartment, I can understand why students feel self conscious about where they live because I have been on both sides. If you do not have the nicest house, there is a sense of isolation in a community like Coppell.
For students, living in a community like Coppell and feeling like their house is something to be ashamed of is an unfortunate part of life for some students at Coppell High School. In our community, it is about who has the biggest and best houses, cars, clothes, things. It is time for students to make decisions based on a person, not where that person lives.
The amount of importance people stress on things has become a harmful occurrence in teenager’s lives. Just because a child cannot afford something, they shouldn’t be ashamed nor should they feel like they don’t fit in. A person should never be defined by what things they can afford.
Fortunately, as freshmen eventually become sophomores, sophomores become juniors and juniors become seniors, most teenagers begin to realize that a person’s personality is something completely different from where they live.
Despite maturity lessening the peer pressure, in our culture today, there will always be an emphasis on things being more important than the person himself. In a community such as Coppell, this emphasis is multiplied. It’s time for students and citizens in Coppell to stop the pressure.
Does where you live, make a difference to who you are?
