Was Rachel Carson privileged

Answer 1

Answering this depends on what you consider "privileged" but I don't see anything but lots of hard work, and determination. This is a shortened, condensed version of her childhood, and education. In my opinion, I don't consider this to be a privileged background, inspiring but not privileged.

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, into a small family and grew up on a farm of about 65 acres. The farm was in Springdale, Pennsylvania, she came by her love her love of nature, and animals from her time spent playing and learning in the fields, ponds, forests on and around the farm. Her mother taught her, and her siblings the lessons of "nature studies" and she loved to read and write stories at a young age. She had been writing stories for several years, many times involving animals, when she had the first one published at the age of eleven.

She went to a regular school as most children do, and then graduated at the top of her class in 1925, from a small high school, with a senior class of 45 students. Rachel Carson then went to Pennsylvania College for Women, studying English, but in 1928 she switched her major to Biology, but still continued to make contributions to the student newspaper and such. She had some financial issues that forced her to stay at the Women's College for her senior year even though she had been accepted to John Hopkins University with the graduate program, she simply couldn't afford to do so.

She graduated in 1929, "magna cum laude", and immediately took a summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory. She went right back to study, but now at John Hopkins University, in the fall of 1929. After just one year in the graduate program, she went to work, taking an "assistantship" in Raymond Pearl's Lab. to pay for her tuition, and attended classes part-time. She finally earned her master's degree in zoologyin June 1932, she had wanted to continue her education, earning a doctorate, but had to leave John Hopkins to acquire a full time teaching job to help support her family. When her father passed away in 1935, the financial issues worsened, and this is when she moved to the US Bureau of Fisheries, where she was very successful. Her supervisor expanded her duties and she began writing articles based on her research in the Chesapeake Bay. For more details see the site listed below.