I used to idolize Rory Gilmore. I wanted to be just like her; I wanted to get perfect grades, go to an Ivy League school and have multiple cute boys chasing after me, which obviously didn’t pan out for me. Anyway, she inspired me to study and work hard in order to pursue my goals in life. However, when I watched “A Year in the Life,” there was a shift in her personality. Some examples of this include when she fell asleep interviewing a homeless person for her article, when she went to a job interview completely unprepared and got mad that she didn’t get hired on the spot and when she kept forgetting that her boyfriend existed. This definitely makes me feel better about my life, but where did she go wrong?
I think that many factors play into this. Everybody around her would tell her how talented and smart she was, including her family, her friends, her teachers and especially her mother, Lorelai. Anybody growing up in this type of environment is going to develop an ego. They’re going to believe that the entire world revolves around them and that they can achieve anything without putting in the work, and they’re going to crumble at even the slightest criticism, which is exactly what happened to Rory. She immediately gave up after any rejection she faced, like when she dropped out of Yale after her boss told her, “she didn’t have what it takes to be a journalist.” She’s also overly confident- when she graduated and was applying to different newspapers, she rejected them all as she was certain that she’d get the job at the New York Times. However, she didn’t end up getting it, which made it so she couldn’t find any job when she graduated.
Also, it seemed like Lorelai would always try to convince herself and Rory that they weren’t as privileged as they actually were. They lived in a small house in a small town which really gave the illusion that they were a humble, middle-class family, but in reality, they came from a ridiculously wealthy family. Whenever Rory needed financial assistance, she was able to run to her grandparents for help, without really working for anything she wanted. They even donated a ton of money for the astronomy building to be named after her. Everything came so easy for her, and she was coddled, but she never realized it because Lorelai tried so hard to keep her separated from that aspect of her life.
It wasn’t entirely her fault that she turned out the way she did, but she really needed to do some reflecting to realize how lucky she was to have everything handed to her on a silver platter. Rory Gilmore went from a seemingly perfect, put-together, heroic figure, to a complete mess, which is really comforting because you see that not everybody is perfect no matter how well put together they may seem.