I used to hate my yellow lunch container. It was a faded cylindrical thing, ostensibly a thermos but perpetually lacking heat retention, with a twist-on lid that bulged at the seams and would not seal. It symbolized something about me that I could not change—my family’s lack of money. We could not afford school lunches, so I ate leftovers out of that cracked yellow lunch container.

That thermos wasn’t the only thing that felt different about my upbringing. I wore clothes my parents collected from charitable friends, three sizes too big so I could “grow into them.” We were the “cable cutting” family before there was an alternative to cable. I went to six elementary schools because my dad couldn’t keep a job in the same place.

In some ways, our socioeconomic status seemed to make everything harder for me. When I wanted to go on a field trip, I sold lemonade; when I needed money for my first date, I flipped a saxophone I had found on Craigslist. Because we didn’t have the resources other families had, no one took me seriously unless I worked to get what I wanted.

In other ways, though, my family’s lack of success gave me certain advantages. There was no path set out for me. I could explore and learn about the world the way I saw fit. That’s how I found myself teaching chess to middle school students in Oakland and selling life insurance to small business owners as a teenager. That was why, when I wanted to explore more, to start college a year early so I could learn about local politics and econometrics and coding, I didn’t feel restrained by convention. Instead, I felt like I could accomplish anything if I only worked hard enough.

I still have that yellow lunch container. It has discolored from use and the sun, and I’ve lost the lid. It still reminds me of my family’s modest means. But to me it has also become a symbol of perseverance and opportunity.

David’s Comments

One of the challenges of writing about poverty is that it can seem abstract. Socioeconomic status is a pervasive condition: how do you get the reader to feel it, hear it, see it? In this fantastic diversity statement, the writer solves the problem by describing a symbol of his upbringing—the thermos—and imbuing it with emotion. The thermos serves as a springboard from which to launch into his broader story, and then—in the conclusion—a callback with which to end it.