Amanda Reid | What is Penn pride?

Reid about it! | What it means to have school spirit

By Amanda Reid 05/12/16 7:03pm

College acceptance has always been tied to pride, whether it be personal or school- oriented. The acceptance email for Penn is delivered in an unshakably triumphant Quaker fight song, heralding the shedding of new skin, ushering in a community that will soon be yours. It formed the ethos of what Penn meant for me as a high school senior: fighting through hard times and eventually being where you were meant to be. The trumpets’ melody signals pride for a school that is, fundamentally, akin to you.

But it is so easy to become overwhelmed and frustrated by the culturally or institutionally- driven problems of Penn. After the first couple of months, you start cherry picking your favorite reasons to complain: the bureaucratic processes, the culture of Wharton pre-professionalism, the perfectionism, racist fraternities, fat paychecks and unforgiving student loans. From health code violations in dining halls, to insanely high administrative salaries, Penn lets you down. Letdowns eventually lead to a lot of doubt and questioning, which leads to a detachment, further exacerbated by the illusory notion that pride meant anything.

Speaking honestly, there is no unifying, campus-wide sense of Penn pride.

Once in a while, you might to go a homecoming game — and wear your Puck Frinceton shirt for a week afterwards — or you might see your friends on the Ivy League Snapchat. Maybe you’ll squeal delightfully because that felt like you were participating in a unified culture. Penn pride had its novelty for a while, but it slowly faded as I got introduced to institutional and cultural flaws.

As an international student, I had a lot of paranoia about how my Vietnamese upbringing would exclude me from certain factions of Penn culture. For a while I felt excluded because certain spaces felt white–washed, and some minority communities felt too close- knit to break into. Penn pride was simply not realistic; I couldn’t find a way to match the brochure–inspired expectations of community.

But the flaws are just buzzwords that sometimes hide something fundamental: As you grow older, the world just gets bigger. Growing up will happen whether or not you expect it, or need it, to happen. So many of my problems emerged directly as a product of learning and growing.

If I think about it, Penn pride grows out of a place of hopeless idealism. It is a naive idealism about life in general; the hope that every little problem would resolve itself like a half hour sitcom special. The hopeless idealism that Penn culture could be condensed into a simple word, refrain or fight song.

Penn pride is not about having faith in the institution to support you, it’s about having faith in the people that the institution brings. Penn gives you a community that isn’t built institutionally, but through your own personal choices.

Penn pride meant that while I saw flaws with the system and the culture, I still choose to go here, because the community I’ve built for myself has been so strong in developing the pride I have for Penn as a community.

Penn pride is not about wearing the Penn gear, showing up to the right events and athletic games, nor is it about finding and knowing the right people. Individuals create the pride for school culture when they individually look to improve the school in your small ways. It’s learning to love the people you’re with. It’s about appreciating that every person here, no matter how small their influence is, shapes a different kind of Penn for every other person. The people you learn from, whether they be peers or professors or the understanding Wawa cashier that held your hands that drunken Friday night, will be the foundation of the pride you feel for where you are.

Penn pride develops out of a place of deep love, but for different reasons. It is nurtured by the love you have for the individuals you choose to surround yourself with. When you consciously decide that you belong, you determine that pride develops from a place of personal acceptance and awareness of others around you.

What I learned about pride is that you will constantly be disappointed by the community you seek to belong to. Learning to accept those flaws pushes you to work for the pride you feel. If you choose to love, nurture and accept the community of individuals you choose for yourself, you know what pride means.

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