When I observe the serfs toiling in the fields below me, I feel a pang of sympathy. I often call one of the tan, toned workers up from his drudgery and begin a conversation. Here’s a transcription of the time I mingled with the lower classes and survived to tell the tale.

“You know, son, we’re not so different, you and I. I survey these whole lands and you have all of these rakes and fertilizer.”

The serf, taken aback, mumbles, “I-I-I’m just trying to make it to sophomore year —my grade has suffered from a food shortage, and it’s been rough, to say the least.”

Genuinely surprised at the eloquence of this young serf, I decide to take him under my wing (not you know, an actual wing, as much as I would enjoy that). How could he have any formal education, what with his lack of upper-class status?

I coaxed answers out of him, and acknowledged the plight of his class. Soon enough, I promised, he would reap the benefits of first-class living — from that sneer he could soon give to the new batch of serfs the tiny little toothpicks daintily placed on satin pillows for his third luncheon of the day.

I realized that this little serf, this small broken man, represented far more than I ever could have imagined.

There is no M. Night Shyamalan plot twist to this, if that’s what you were hoping for. I am not simultaneously the serf and the king, much to your dismay; nor was I both dead and alive (what even was “The Sixth Sense”?). Instead, I have worked my way up through serfdom into the aristocracy, a laughable prospect in any country. A lifetime of hard work with little reward is just so incredibly awful when juxtaposed with the ease of upper-class life that it HAS to be funny. You have to laugh, or else it just seems mean.

Regardless! There is something to be said for the ease of social mobility in high school. By this I don’t mean between social groups necessarily, but the feeling of being a second-semester senior as opposed to an incoming sophomore. Those poor saps have so much left before them. So many fields to plow before they reach the base of the castle. But trust, trust in your work through the golden hills and the manure and the rains and the sun. The castle is in sight, and it looms ever nearer, thankfully — a reward for the hard work of the serfs in this little fable where social mobility is more different than it ever has been.

(The classes are the classes of high school, if you didn’t notice. I’ll paint the picture: freshmen are serfs, sophomores are stronger, more experienced and weathered serfs, juniors are your typical barons and dukes (nothing special); and seniors — your royals. Got it? Good.)

Here you actually can progress from the lower classes to the highest, which never happens except to Drake. (That doesn’t even work anyway, he was on “Degrassi” and now he’s on top of the CN Tower — not royalty by any means.) You can rise up through the classes and become a senior and pursue your castle, whether it be college, a gap year or your true calling.