A Comment on the Me Generation

My generation has an open road, full of promise, ahead of us.

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile and is honestly rather old news but nonetheless it's coming up in my life lately.

I am currently taking a class at SF State in order to try to get a leg up on my grad school application. It has definitely been an adjustment to get back into the study mode after 3 years out of college but one of the greatest things that has come out of the experience is the ability to see the world from the perspective of bright eyed, optimistic, 20 year olds again. Though I cringe at the thought that these students were born when I was 5 or 6 and in this setting are still considered my peers, it's hard to ignore their collective zest for life, untarnished by dead end desk jobs and failed dreams. These college students are giving me hope for the future.

Yes, our generation has some problems. We are dependent on technology and have incredibly short attention spans. We imagine our future with perfect work-life balance. We want to do minimal work for maximum gain. We spend much of our in person interactions distracted by our phones. No one my age seems to memorize anything when information remains available and unlimited at our fingertips. But unlike this article and others like it suggest we are not sedentary, homebodies who prefer checking Facebook to taking risks. More and more of us feel empowered to deviate from the norm. We are interested in outlining our own life paths which may or may not include marriage, 9-5 jobs, home ownership or children.

Yesterday the professor asked the students in my class why they got into the major they chose and 8 out of 10 students answered "to help people".  This idea in and of itself is more noble and more difficult a goal than most currently employed people strive for. In a world where profit and getting ahead is glorified the idea that the next generation of entry level workers want to help people is pretty uplifting. Who knows what will become of them or how their lives will actually pan out but my classmate's selflessness cemented my faith in my generation.


P.S. Unrelated, you can now follow Goy Seeking Grace on Bloglovin'.
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