I graduated an ivy at the height of the recession and my first job out of school was in an office of about 20 people. The next most prestigious degree after mine was USC (Southern Cal). After that, there was a USC (South Carolina) grad. Everyone else went to much lower ranked schools. My boss had graduated from DePaul University in Chicago.

My first day, as my boss introduced me to coworkers, I got a lot of "what the hell are you doing here" comments from folks. But once they saw that I was a chill, unpretentious guy, they warmed up to me. I could talk sports with them, which was huge, and I actually really enjoyed talking sports with them because they were into it enough to have a good conversation, but were still impressed by my insights/generalizations. They would come to me for all sorts of advice, including how they should invest or where they should send their kids to school. They even started opening up to me. One guy talked to me about his (successful) fight during high school to stay out of special ed classes. One guy shared with me his concerns that his daughter might become a lesbian if he let her continue to play basketball in school. I really felt like the office was a big family, it was a joy to come to work.

Of course, the work was relatively easy and I quickly became an office superstar. Boss gave me a $10,000 raise after just six months. But it wasn't enough to keep me. Within a month of that raise, I got nabbed by another, more prestigious part of the company, and I had to say goodbye to all the friends I had made in the office. One guy came up to me as I left and said he knew I was going to move on to better things quickly.

I work at a much different place now, where I am surrounded by fellow Ivy League grads. I once caught a UNC grad at my current job complaining about all the "Harvard/Yale shit" that surrounds her. My boss has two degrees with Harvard, Latin words after both of them, my boss before him went to Wharton. I'm paid a lot more too. But, you know, on a day-to-day basis, I had way more fun at that first job. I still think about it all the time and wonder how all my old coworkers are doing now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5773536&forum_id=2),#49261916)