When I Was Your Age...

I have heard this phrase several times. It bothers me...I don't know why. Following this phrase comes something saying that I have it easier and that I am spoiled. I am not disagreeing, it may be true. But, of course it's gonna be different. I mean, the people that tell that to me are atleast 15 years older than me; I really do hope America has improved somewhat in 15 years. But instead of just ending the conversation short by "agreeing" with them or telling them 'they just don't understand' maybe introduce them to the thoughts and ideas of those born into the digital world. Those classified as Millennials. Those who are between the ages of 10 and 29. A good majority of you who read my posts fall into this category. Recently there have been many sociologists who compare and contrast baby boomers to us as millennials. They hypothesize what the workplace will look like in a couple of years as the baby boomers start to retire as well as the common trends we tend to follow. Doing some research on my own and observing for myself, I have found that they are not that far off...

Our generation is comprised of impatient (microwave ready), experiential learning, multitasking, and electronic consuming individuals. We demand more selectivity, personalization, and customization in the choices we make.

Sociologists say that there is a common trend among millennials in that we value education more than we value family. I agree with this statement; let me explain. Most students graduating from high school, both male and female, attend college. And yet, we go further; we go to med school, we get our mba, we get our master's in education, we get our phd in chemistry. We want to be the biggest and best we can be. We look at "getting married and starting a family" as something that can wait. Most of us are fine with getting married at 30 instead of at 22, right out of college. We would first like to get out there and make a name for ourselves because that's what we value.

According to demographics, the largest birth year for Millennials is 1990. In about a year or two, we can expect a great incline in competition among graduate students and continuing professional education. The standards in the workplace will be set higher; employees looking for more and more credentials. This encourages us to keep going, and going, and going...

We like to have choices. We like things to be immediate. We are very unhappy with limited choices. For example, there should not be just one professor teaching a specific course. The school should have atleast a couple of professor's teaching each course so that we can have the choice of who to take from.

We prefer learning by doing. We almost never read directions. We love to learn by interaction; we find average lectures boring.

We prefer to keep time commitments flexible longer in order to take advantage of other options. We may make decisions last minute so as not to foreclose a better option later (job offers, college acceptance, etc).

We like to make our things personal. Personally, I don't like people to have the same clothing as me. Selfish I know, and I am getting better at it, but it takes all the originality out of it.

We have no tolerance for delays. We want things ready when it is most convenient for us. We require constant feedback to know how things are progressing. We are permeated by instant gratification. We want to learn what we have to learn and then we are ready to move on...we live speedy lives.

We excel at juggling several different tasks at once. It is perfectly normal for me to be chatting to 2 people online, listening to music, watching TV, and doing homework at the same time; it is almost weird not to be doing all these things at once...almost boring.

We expect communication mobility; whether it be online communication, email, cell phone, texting...we love to be able to communicate to whomever, whenever. This allows us to live the speedy lives we like to live, the instant gratification, we even use shorthand and abbreviate to communicate even faster.

Our view on intelligence is changing. When group projects are assigned, everyone wants to be partners with the smart student because they value their grade. Being smart is cool.

We want balanced lives. We don't want to sacrifice our health so we set aside time to exercise. We believe that we need some sort of leisure time each day to 'reward' ourself, so we set aside an hour of "me time". Work is important, but it must not be the only thing that fills our day. We also picture ourselves making more than our parents; living the same [or better off] of a lifestyle than our parents do now right when we graduate from college.

Good bye old school...hello upbeat, multitasked, immediate, and ever changing world!