Trojan Psyche: Check on your Bay Area besties

I spent my entire Saturday on Delta flight 3634. While many of you flew to the Bay to tailgate, I embarked on my ill-fated trip with the hopes of conducting field research. Like many, I’ve found USC students who hail from the Bay ever so enigmatic and, more importantly, annoying. As social determinism’s biggest fan, I figured the most effective way to both understand and anticipate the behavior of their kind is to go to their home.

But, just like the insular Bay Area students who spurn outsiders, the San Francisco fog made it impossible for my pilot to land. After circling the area a few times, I was taken back to Los Angeles International Airport, shocked and left to think about the entire fiasco’s metaphorical undertones.

Many on this campus have lost endless minutes to the rambles of students who can’t stop talking about their Northern California hometowns. Others have been left wondering whether their meager 100 LinkedIn connections would ever compare to the high school student with 500+ and three internships under their belt. Some have looked on distantly as students, some more capable dancers and others utterly rhythmically challenged, began to “smeeze” in public, unprovoked.

It’s not a question of if you’ll be victimized by a Bay Area student, but when. These are all instances of what I call Bay Area-induced delusion, and if you’ve experienced any of these situations, you may be entitled to financial compensation.  

Kids from the Bay love where they’re from — sometimes a little too much for the rest of us.

“I guess you don’t really like your city if you’re not going to rep it that hard,” said Makkonen Haile, a sophomore from El Sobrante, Calif. majoring in computer science and business administration.

And there does seem to be a lot to love. Every Bay Area student I spoke to reveled in the fact that they grew up in a culturally diverse land. Many felt their racial and ethnic backgrounds were embraced in their hometowns, especially because of the Bay’s high percentage of Asian, African and Latinx immigrants and rich African American history.

Haile, in particular, lights up while talking about the Habesha community in the Bay Area. He finds home not just in the Bay but in the people who remind him of his heritage. 

“There’s a very large Habesha community in the Bay Area — I’d say mostly comprised in Oakland,” Haile said. “It really forms that community between you and a whole group of people, even though you’re not really back in Eritrea or back in Ethiopia, which is very, very comforting.” 

Ashley Chough, a senior majoring in communication, echoing a similar sentiment, said she felt most comfortable growing up around other Asian people, and specifically other Korean people. 

“I studied abroad in Paris, my freshman year, I was part of the [Trojan Transfer Plan] program,” Chough said. “It was more of a cultural shock to just realize how little support that you can receive as a person of color when you go to a white majority school.” 

Students were more than aware of the Bay’s competitive reputation. Junior Zaid Hassan, a San Jose native majoring in cinematic arts, film and television production, and Haile both described different tactics, from early-learning courses to private college counselors, employed by many Bay Area parents to get their children an edge over others.

“I would be learning for the first time in school, like a normal person, right? Or you’d think. But then everyone in my class is already like, years ahead of me,” Hassan said. “I’d always be like, ‘Wait … How are you guys on multiplication? I’m still learning addition.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, my mom put me in summer school the past four years.’”

These parents appear to be less narrow-minded and more anxious than anything. The Bay Area parent is not merely projecting onto their children, but, oftentimes, imbuing their children with the same standards they held for themselves. As Haile notes, many are the same parents who were the first in their family to leave their country.

“They’re the parents who are sturdy enough and cutthroat enough to make the move and take that step,” Haile said. “To start a whole new life in a totally different country.”

Although our immigrant parents may fall perfectly into the meritocratic “best of the best” mantra that pervades the Bay, they can’t be held responsible for creating the environment that forms the LinkedIn fiends they call their children.

Few things are more sobering than realizing you’ll never be able to afford to live where you grew up. Although Bay Area students expressed varying degrees of family pressure, most of them pointed toward the prominence of industry and gentrification as a source of anxiety.

“If you want to buy a nice house to live in a nice neighborhood, it’s going to cost you like $2 [million] to $3 million in San Jose, which is insane. Who has that money?” Hassan said. “Yeah, nobody has the money other than the computer engineer, which is why everyone’s going into computer engineering.”

It’s easy to indulge in the idea of first-generation students being at the full mercy of their parents. The trope can be a great distraction — even amusing — and has a very real existence, even outside the Bay — trust me, I’d know.

But, maybe growing up around Patagonia and Allbirds is far more traumatizing than sitting through another one of dad’s end-of-the-school-year lectures. Although I journeyed to the Bay with the intent of understanding the social determinism behind the most toxic among us, this is a matter, like many, better understood through the lens of technological determinism.

The existing meritocratic beliefs of individuals are not to blame; instead, it’s the technocracy of Silicon Valley bros trickling down onto unsuspecting children, whom we now know as computer science-business administration-chemical engineering triple majors.

So the next time we question why our Bay Area bestie refuses to develop a personality beyond being a workaholic, remind yourself that their future’s have always been a bit foggier than ours (*ba dum tss*). Knowing this, their unending Bay-Area-speak sounds less like a pathetic conversation starter and more like the mourning of a reality that increasingly slips away.

Amina Niasse is a junior writing about USC stereotypes, archetypes and trends. She is also a Features Editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Trojan Psyche,” runs every other Wednesday.