They need constant praise. They’re unaware of the existence of time before 10:00 a.m.. They want to be promoted three days after being hired. They duck out of work with alarming Rob Ford-like frequency. And it’s your civic duty to employ them!
After watching the video, please take a look at this follow-up article: .
First of all, let’s deal with the issue of stereotypes. A stereotype is not MEANT to encompass everyone in the particular group about which it is speaking. It is merely meant to draw broad brushstrokes of information regarding characteristics of that particular group. So not only will not everyone not fit the stereotype; NO ONE will fit the stereotype.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to offer my own perspective on this situation. Since placing oneself on a “side” of the fence seems to be necessary in this argument, I’ll briefly state my bio: I’m 33, and an adjunct professor of English at both a local community college and also its big sister – a highly-prestigious four-year research-university. I haven’t had an easy time of it – I’m still working on my PhD, and it’ll be several years before I complete it – and I have worked in both academia and “the real world” for many years (I got my first job at 16, and have been self-supporting since 18). I’ve been a manager, and I’ve also been an employee (and you, sir, Mr. Marxist – for pity’s sake, yours is not a new, nor is it an enlightened viewpoint). My parents were loving, supportive, “you’re-a-special-snowflake” parents who didn’t teach me much about work ethic, and definitely subscribed to the view that participation trophies were important. I’ve struggled with my lack of work ethic my entire life – one reason it’s taken me so long to get where I am – but I’m not blaming my parents. They raised me the best way they knew how, and they wanted me to have a better life, and think better of myself, than they did.
Now that I’ve established where I sit (or don’t, I suppose), my perspective: I teach a range of students, from still-in-high-school-17 to learning-new-skills-to-get-a-new-job-because-I-lost-everything-in-2008-55. I teach students with widely-varying skill sets, and widely-varying backgrounds – rich, poor, helicopter-parents, no-parents-because-drugs – I have them all in my Intro to Comp classes. Now, bearing in mind the comments I made about brushstrokes and stereotypes above, I will say this: the students I teach in the younger range of the demographic have many things in common, and none of them good. They are in school because they “have” to be there, not because they have any real desire for knowledge or education; they have a work ethic that leads many of them to fail my classes, for sheer lack of effort; they get upset when they don’t get the “A” to which they believe they were entitled (I have had actual conversations with actual students who said, “You should give me an A because I’m smart!”); they don’t understand that they are not special snowflakes, and that there are millions – MILLIONS – of other individuals who are as smart, talented, skilled, and creative as they are; they believe that because they are getting an “education” (and I use this term loosely), they deserve a job; they don’t start projects until the last minute (in fact, right now I have seven students – out of 24 – who have JUST emailed me to get approval for a topic for their research paper, the rough draft of which is due tomorrow, and is the final 25% of their semester grade); and through it all – and this is the most contemptible part – they continue to hold OTHER PEOPLE responsible for their failures. “My parents didn’t teach me this,” “My school told me to do this,” “The economy is terrible because of the Baby Boomers,” “We don’t have the same chances as everyone else.”
My parents went through bankruptcy when I was 12, in 1992, when all the military bases were closed down in California, sending the state into a repression. They worked hard, and built their businesses back up, only to watch them shut down again in 2008. They are in their 60s, and are wondering what they’ll do when it comes time for my mother’s forced retirement (at 65), as she is the primary breadwinner. Their socioeconomic status is no better than many new and young employees, and they have much less time to fix it.
I suppose my questions to all those bitchy younger generations are these: instead of complaining about it, why don’t you do something to fix it? Instead of sitting around, whining because no one recognizes what a special snowflake you are, why don’t you force them to recognize it? Instead of waiting for salaries to get better, why don’t you go prove you’re worth the higher salaries, and then do what I’ve done six times in the past – go into your boss’s office, point out everything you’ve done that is BEYOND expectations, and then ask for a raise? If you don’t like the society or the economy in which you find yourself, change it. If you don’t like what you’re doing, change it. Instead of blaming others, instead of waiting for things to get better, because the “Deserving Fairy” will come down and make them better, shut up and get to work.
And, seriously, if one of you points out that “you aren’t like that, because you’ve been doing it on your own since you were a wee lad, and you don’t want to be lumped in with all the others,” I refer you to my comments about stereotypes and brushstrokes. But if anyone has the temerity to say, “We didn’t create the mess, so why should we fix it?”, then get off the planet. Your type of insipid, flabby, uselessness is not wanted here.
