NYTimes.com: Twelve years ago, I wrote a piece for The Atlantic, called “The Organization Kid,” about the smart, hard-working, pleasant-but-cautious achievatrons who thrive in elite universities. Occasionally, somebody asks me how students have changed since then. I haven’t been perceptive enough to give a good answer.
5 comments:
There are many articles written about my generation, and I feel like this one encompasses all aspects that others have touched upon. I agree with the title Cynic Kids; there is a general tendency among people my age to distrust "the system". We are constantly told that the job market is at a standstill, giving this generation reasons to fear rather than act boldly. I would really like to read Buhler's essay, because I feel like I agree with many of her points and would therefore like to read the analysis in its entirety.
This article was an interesting commentary on the modern "young adulthood". Of course the recession and 9/11 changed us. There is no way children and teens can go through that and wind up with the same life perspective as those a few years older than them. But I don't think that it is simply that we have taken a more empirical view on life. It's more than that.
We've become scared of life.
There is nothing in our lives that we can take for granted anymore. Not even our safety (the recent bombing in Boston is just one example).Money, safety, happiness, and roof over ones head; they have all become fickle things. Of course we've become "cynical kids". Thinking back on my childhood, I can't remember a time when our country was not at war. A time when people were not committing senseless acts of violence. And unlike like WWII we can't point fingers. We no Hitler, no Mussolini. Who do we blame when our attackers change every couple of months? Who do we fear?
So yes, we may have become more empirical, testing and retesting every idea before moving to action. We may also avoid action all together when we cannot verify the results. But we also grew up feeling that there is a great deal more to lose should we make the wrong choice. And once a group of people have felt loss like that experienced by the young adults in our country, they will do anything to avoid that type of loss again. Even if it means staying in the same, horrid situation that we have always been in.
I liked this article. My generation grew up believing in the American dream. We thought we would be just as or even more successful then our parents. We thought we would get into any school we wanted if we worked hard enough. We thought we would be able to get any job we wanted if we tried. We grew up in this mindset thinking we would one day have it all. And now, we are still waiting. I don't know if we are scared of life. I think everyone is scared of life naturally. But here, I think we are just waiting for success to come to us, when we should be chasing success. I thought the reality tv show remark was very interesting. Americans want to forget their troubles by watching someone else's. We want to set ourselves apart from the trash we see on TV, but the truth is, we are that trash. We need to stop pitying ourselves and get back in the game.
I'm a big fan of David Brooks. He's the Republican that I get to agree with from time to time, which gives me hope, no matter how dim, for the political future of the Nation. But in this case, I have to question his editorial bias and his truly unreliable (if adorably optimistic) observation that "wonksters," as he coins them, are the new hipsters. Policy will never be hip again, if it ever was, and there is little doubt that, outside of Mr. Brooks' Yale classroom, there are fewer Americans aged 18-22 engaged in the theory and practice of Public Policy than ever before. In a 2006 study by National Geographic(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/findings.html), only 37% of Americans aged 18-24 could locate Iraq on a map. If memory serves, we were engaged in something like a war in that country at the time. I understand that it's not apples and oranges to compare geography to policy, but one certainly informs the other, and it's difficult to imagine a population who can have informed opinions about foreign policy without knowing where any foreigners live.
Ms. Buhler worries about an education gap growing in our country, and I agree, although not in the way she seems to posit. If a higher percentage of young Americans are going to college today than ever before (and they are), then how come so many of them can't find Iraq on a map? Presumably they are learning things more pertinent to success in a modern American economy than geography, which I think is the real problem. I think it's very challenging to train a population to be both good computer scientists, engineers and nurses (the top three highest paying diplomas, 2010-2012), and good citizens at the same time. And like engineering, computer science and nursing, being a truly informed citizen when it comes to policy has become an almost impossible task, unless that's all you do. We have become, out of necessity, I think, a society of specialists, and asking the average American to name every capital in South America (Bolivia has two!!) and at the same time write code and locate the hypothalamus is, it seems, beyond our reach. So, in short, it's no wonder that the students in Mr. Brooks' Global Affairs class are such observant, high-level "wonksters:" it is simply their specialty.
This article presents some very interesting thoughts about my generation, and I think that I agree with most of them. It's true that my generation seems much more cynical and pragmatic in respect to job searches, education, and future planning. Most of my friends who I graduated college with do not have jobs even remotely related to their major, and many others are in graduate school to try to make themselves more marketable in the hopes that they can get a better job after incurring even more debt. We are all acutely aware of things like the debt crisis, incurring interest, and how much we have to make to be able to pay rent. Sure, I'm sure these are all things that those who graduated in the 90s were also aware of, but on top of that, we have things like the unemployment rate of our generation slapping us in the face every time we look at the news.
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