First impressions of Nick

Nick is typically classed by students and lecturers as an unreliable narrator; you can't trust his judgement.
There is plenty of evidence for this; he is so easily swayed. First he claims to be unjudgemental, and then launches into the typical tyrade of the recently wealthy; Boring, absorbed, and oozing with a perhaps misgotten sense of extreme self worth and infuriating affected modesty.
As with all stereotypical "children of trade" lineage and rank are of great importance to Nick. As a well-to-do tradesmans son entering the grandilopuent walls of Yale, he must have felt like a molusc in a shark tank. I percieve this to be the reason for his arrogance... he carries the hopes of his family on his vacillating shoulders.
Perhaps Nicks propriety is merely an outcome of his upbringing, as it seems he has no sense of self. Raised in a family that are pushing their way with cash and tuition into that elite "inner circle" He must have no idea of who he is, and has no real sense that just because something is well funded, it does not make it acceptable.
Nicks flightiness is can be seen therefore as this limbo he is in. It frustrates him surely, although i have little doubt that he'd actually allow himself to realise this. He is so caught up in this exasperating whirl-pool of pretending to care what his father said to him however many years ago, and then allowing everyone else to help him realise that actually he doesn't care at all, that it's almost impossible to keep up with him. One moment he seethes, the next he flatters. One moments he's lonely, the next he's a "real resident", one moment he's duke of whatsitsname and the next he's the son of a hardware store holder who came into a bit of luck. To Nick, it's galling that he should be the outcome of a dynasty founded on hard work and cunning, and not from a dynasty of chosen elites.