Millennials – You're Right, It's All Our Fault

Keri, Peter,

Thanks for your comments on this.

I definitely agree with Keri's point that Millennials' brains are physically different than any other generation that has come before. We've been (occasionally) misdiagnosed with rampant ADD... but I think there's more than that. I also find myself at a loss when someone asks me to place myself in either the "forest" or the "trees" group, because for me there's a sort of narrative and context that each new piece of life's puzzle adds to the whole.

Peter's point that loyalty is a two-way street is an important one that many employers seem to miss. True, managers in big companies are not head-honchos, but middle managers who just happen to be in charge of people. Therefore, they're not in the best position to make promises. And broken promises seem to be the worst transgression you can make against millennials.

All things considered, there's a lot of misunderstandings that can be managed, but it takes good communication to manage those - from both sides!

Thanks!

-Nick

I'm not one to argue that the millennial generation is not self-centered; my time on MySpace and Facebook has laid this question to rest. However, as a recently-graduated millennial fortunate enough to have secured solid employment with a university (secured, I must add, despite my outrageous expectations that my bachelor's degree entitled me to a job that pays more than $8.25/hour), I must contest the image of my generation in the eyes of the venerable powers-that-be, here personified by the blog post from one K. MacGinn.

I think the deeper issue that Ms. MacGinn fails to acknowledge is the source of the “excruciating” arrogance of the millennial generation. While my parents were hardly the coddling type, they did make the unwise decision to tell me that I am an individual with my own needs and feelings, a doctrine championed by teachers across the country (a category that presumably includes Ms. MacGinn). After 20+ years of being told "just be yourself" and "you're a special and unique snowflake," it can be a bit jarring to enter the economic machine and realize that you really are nothing more than a cog with a serial number after all. Adding a healthy amount of tension to the issue is the fact that it was the boomers that agreed as a whole that teaching us these sorts of things was a good idea. Tell us not to compromise our individuality for two decades, take it back and tell us to buck up and deal with our commonality when the real world hits, then blame us for not snapping to it. Sounds fair.

Additionally, we are now the ones that must compete for jobs in the economy that they are largely responsible for crippling (generational tensions also arise when our boomer competitors land the jobs through that esoteric ideal of "sufficient experience"). We were told that college was the way to go to land a successful career, but many of the curricula that our boomer professors are endorsing scarcely touch on this. After four and a half years as an English major, I had no idea how to market myself so potential employers would believe my skills could be useful to them (though I was quite adept at deconstructing the job postings). Some would argue that it's not the university's responsibility to teach us these things. I counter that we were told by our parents and teachers that college is the path to a career and simply possessing that $50,000 sheepskin would make the employers come courting. Also worth noting here is MacGinn's assertion that our coddled sense of self can't weather the blows of a negative performance review. While there may be some truth in that, I believe the greater sense of frailty comes from the simple fact that we understand how disposable we are to employers (one cog is as good as another), so a negative review could mean we are one wrong step from unemployment. I might shed a few tears myself if I thought I was next in line to be jettisoned into that cold, abhorrent vacuum. Tangentially, the assertion that we millennials have low employer loyalty is perhaps due in part to the all-too-apparent void in the reciprocation of this loyalty; I’m not going to take a bullet for a captain who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me in the back if it meant he could afford another feather in his hat.

Another point to consider is the one Nick addressed: we've watched the boomers fuck up a lot of things. Though our untested, sophomoric minds may lack the wisdom of our elders, is it any wonder that we think we could do things better after observing the myriad failures of said elders? My corrupted sense of entitlement leads me to arrogantly believe that I am performing my current job as satisfactorily as my predecessor, yet I am at a much lower pay grade simply because of my inexperience. Meanwhile, the former president of CSU was paid $389,000 to leave after neglecting the university's academic programs for six years. Let me state it another way: his severance package for fucking up was more than I would receive for 12 years of doing my job right. My swollen, millennial ego cries that something somewhere doesn't quite add up.

I couldn't help but post my manifested reaction to this blog - specifically the link to the awarenessblog.com.

Millenial's brains function differently than any generation before it. We are able to focus on the details as well as the big picture. No longer are we "either detail oriented people or big-picture oriented people" as those ridiculous company questionnaires ask you. We're simply both. We're able to see, interact, and create those fragmented, detailed moments in everyday life while being able to focus them into the context of the bigger picture. We function as a TV movie and commercials do; we see the big picture, the movie, but are able to go flitingly through life, from task to task, thought to thought (putting the term multitasking to shame...or work, depending on how you look at it...) as one would go through commercials or channel surfing until the program you wanted came back on. We are able to fit the fragments of our reality into the bigger picture, the grand narrative to make sense of our world. I, personally, am usually thinking of several - 5, 7, 10 - things at once without falter. I can go through multiple tasks everyday without missing a beat whether it's a conversation with a friend to call my mom to come back exactly where the convo left; to writing an essay, leave it to write a quick email, back to the essay without flaw or hesitation. And these are basic tasks. The ability to perform more tasks that have more detail within them aren't a problem either. I don't think this is an anomaly either; I think my mind is acting so quickly, going over so many things, it's able to stop and reconnect the fragmented actions of everyday life easily, as a commercial in the middle of a movie reconnects to wherever the movie left off before going to a commercial break; our minds are able to pick back up where it left off and still make sense of the bigger, important picture - the movie - with ease.

This rant was partially tipped off by a recent and hostile presentation of postmodern theory by a university professor. I have a fairly well rounded background with theory and a handful of appreciation and knowledge regarding postmodern theory, so I was highly put off when she began berating PM theory before even beginning lecture. Until my first encounter with PM theory I thought I was some anomaly in the world on how I created my sense of self. It was PM theory that led me to understand that I wasn't alone; in fact it was likely most of my generation developed their sense of self in the same way I did (that's what I get for being an only child and being around adults most of my life). It was PM theory that explained how my generation was likely to pull parts - fragments - of reality from the world around them (society, culture, etc) to create a unique individual. Before this realization, I was worried I was weird because I didn't fit an pre-set category laid out before me. No, I wasn't weird, I was a new generation of thinkers. A generation making sense of fragmented information. Part of this begrudged professor's argument was the PM allusion that the meta-narrative is dead; how can we possibly live in a fragmented world?! You can't make sense of fragments!! Oh, but you can. That's where my generation comes in. We don't simply see the big picture, riding narratives already laid out before us, we pick fragments from the world around us and make our own stories.

We fit well into the postmodern theory of fragmentation. Not only can one argue that our creation of self is fragmented (pulling fragments from different parts of culture and society to create a sense of self that is unique and individual from that of any of my fellow Millenials) we see and perceive the world as such. Not only are we able to engage, interact, understand, and create our own moments of fragmented reality in our everyday lives, but we easily fit it into a bigger picture without a problem, as one would understand the obvious randomosity of a commercial in the linearity of a TV movie; we understand those stops and starts, disconnections and reconnections, easily and they fit into a grand narrative without an issue for us. I honestly, sincerely, and genuinely don't believe an older generation has been able to understand or see the world we do, nor can they grasp how we see the world because our brains literally function differently than theirs do. As with the question on the company questionnaire regarding whether one is a "detail-oriented person" or a "big-picture person", that may have been a legitimate question for any older generation, it is outdated and irrelevant to ours. We're simply both. Personally, when I've been confronted with this question, I've been dumbfounded, speechless, and befuddled at how to answer. I'll sit for what seems like ages trying to decide on an answer (as though it's the make or break question to whether or not I get the job) and I have no idea how to answer. I do both. Our generation has been bred to focus on the details while being able to understand and see the big picture all the details will fit into; we see the details AS WELL AS the big picture. We don't do one or the other, we ARE both. Are brains function in such a way that we are able to see both possible paths of perception, and we act accordingly. Now, not everyone in our generation can do that, that's not what I'm saying. But for the most part, it seems a large fraction of us can. We can see, create, and interact with the multitude of tasks and fragmented moments of everyday life with the ability to put it into a greater narrative as you would be able to go from the linearity of a TV movie to the fragments of commercials or channel surfing and then go back to the movie, without missing a beat. That's how a Millenial's brain functions: it's able to go back and forth, from detail orientation to big picture, without missing a beat.

Some how I don't find that kind of brain functioning to be a bad thing. Just because we come in a more efficient package shouldn't make us something to be afraid of or penalized for. Take a look at the generation from a more open-minded view-point and you might like what you find. And to the generations looking down on us: every generation before Millenials dealt with resistance as they were coming of age, keep that in mind when you criticize us and remember that you haven't destroyed the world...yet. If you let us try without so much resistance, we might actually save the sorry state of the world you've given us.


Over and out,
KO