People are sharing what it was like encountering insanely rich kids for the first time. It's fascinating.

It's common for most people to grow up going to schools where people are of a similar social status. Lower-income people tend to grow up with people in the same situation and affluent people usually grow up around people who are rich as well.

But things can change dramatically in college. People who are from completely different sides of the socioeconomic spectrum attend class together and sometimes wind up sharing the same dorm room.

One student can be there on a scholarship and have a part-time job to make ends meet. The other may be on a massive allowance from their parents who pay full tuition without batting an eye.

What exacerbates the issue is that many people go through college being dirt poor. If they have a job, it's often low-paying, they can't work many hours and they aren't old enough to have accumulated any wealth.

So seeing someone one of your peers wasting other people's hard-earned money can be downright stupefying.

It can also seem highly immoral for some to have so much and not appreciate it when others are struggling to get by.

College is also a time when people begin to learn about income inequality and why it exists.

Freelance journalist Jake Bittle started a fun conversation on X where people shared stories of some of the insanely rich kids they knew in college. Many of the responses came from people who went to the University of Chicago.

Bittle's story started with seeing a girl open her laptop to revel a ton of money in her bank account while they were taking a class on Marxism. The tweet inspired people to share stories of the insanely rich kids they met in college and how some of them were terribly wasteful with their money.

(Jake has since deleted his original tweet.)

Another user shared: "My freshman year roommate got a letter of recommendation from HW Bush who was President at the time. The guy didn’t know how to wash clothes so he kept buying new ones and throwing the old ones out."

"I remember the classmate who told me I should switch to her bank because I'd get free checking just by keeping a $10k balance," posted another user in the comments.

A user by the name of Sankofa wrote: "There was one girl in Blackstone who used to make AMAZING, intricate dishes. One day I saw just how filthy her dorm kitchen was, and she said it was because at home her maid would clean up after her. Anyways I stopped eating her food and never explained why ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Sauce Moe Dee chimed in: "My first day at Amherst College my freshman roommate showed me his JP Morgan account on his MacBook and I remembered being mortified when I asked him if that was his account balance and he said that that was how much money he had made that day."

"My friend’s dad lectured me on how much harder rich people work than poor people. I was working 50 hours a week at the time and his son had never had a job before. Guess who the rich family was," tweeted another user.

This reminded @alex_murra of a similar experience: "Reminds me of the time in my intro to sociology lecture where I witnessed a girl in front of me casually order a pair of $400 Gucci sunglasses while my prof discussed wealth inequality"

@kinanta adds: "I knew someone who, instead of doing laundry, would just buy new clothes to wear. And her sister, after living in Chicago for a few months, didn't know what the CTA was."

Tracy M will never forget her first experience with incredibly rich folks: "First day of law school, guy in class pulls out a Tiffany box and removes a gold fountain pen from a velvet bag to take notes."

This article was originally published on June 23, 2020. It has since been updated.