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Woman's Essay About Being Judged By 'Poor' Goes Viral

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A West Village college student made headlines this week, for an essay she wrote about feeling like she was judged for being well-off.

Rachael Sacks' essay, "I'm Not Going to Pretend That I'm Poor to Be Accepted by You," appeared on the site Thought Catalog on Thursday.

She describes an experience at a Gristedes store in which, "The girl says to the cashier 'I went in-state to save my parents money for school.' The Cashier then replies 'That's smart.' They then both glare at me with my shopping bag and my Coco Lite snack cakes and Diet Coke as if to say here's daddy's little princess wasting money.'"

"I am sorry that I was born into great financial circumstances and my father likes to provide for me. I am sorry I don't have to go to a state school to save my parents money. What do you want from me?" Sacks wrote, adding later, "It just seems really petty and makes you look bitter and unhappy with your own life if you are casting nasty glares at college girls in Gristedes because you're a cashier."

She also wrote that she was called "Rachael Sacks of Cash" as a teenager.

The column was quickly subjected to criticism. Numerous Twitter users addressed Sacks personally.

"I know many rich people who are not hated because of their wealth. Perhaps, you should re-evaluate your personality," one wrote.

"You are probably getting berated but I am baffled that anyone would even care to write about their rich struggle. Stop writing pls," another wrote.

But Sacks was quick to fire back at her critics, on Twitter and elsewhere.

"I'm rolling my eyes because I definitely don't deserve this much attention," she wrote in one tweet.

"I'm just an obnoxiously loud voice of idiocy amongst billions," she wrote in another.

Speaking to the New York Post – which featured her on the cover Friday – Sacks said she is not "repenting or regretting" and has no shame I being a "spoiled brat."

She also told the Daily Mail it must have been a "really slow, horrible news day" that her article received the amount of attention it did.

"If you really wanted to make me feel bad, you would just not acknowledge my existence at all," she said in the Daily Mail video interview. "If you want to get through to me that I'm a brat and I don't matter, don't say anything."

She also said many readers were missing the point of her commentary.

The point, she said, was, "You shouldn't shame people for what they are or what they have. You shouldn't have to pretend to be poor or do this in order to make other people like you. It's stupid."

In her self-description on Thought Catalog, Sacks writes she is "working on (her) goal of being a rich eccentric old person by writing a lot of things."

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