please take a number (we're full up on adults right now)

[montglanechess]

I stumbled over a blog post by somebody I know and it was full of angst. I get that. The job market is beyond horrible. Our entire lives were a lie. We had the misfortune to graduate at a turbulent time in history. Yes. But I took umbrage with some prattle from her co-workers.

"I, along with my whole generation got a severe tongue-lashing about our

Comments

[triphicus]

How is telling a child that they can do anything brain warping? So long as the child is aware that it will take hard work and dedication, not to mention good strategy, any child who has that sort of commitment to fulfilling their goals is going to do it. But then again, any child who thinks merely graduating from undergrad is enough to accomplish those goals has made a serious logical faux pas.

[montglanechess]

I should have expounded a bit--it's not telling the child that they can do anything that's warping, it's when the message is distorted by parents who coddle their child and never let them fail (i.e. the worst kind of helicopter parenting where they do things like threaten teachers when their child's grade is too low, etc). I get the impression sometimes that a lot of older people are under the impression that anyone under 30 is a product of this sort of helicopter parenting and are therefore functionally useless entitled brats

[triphicus]

Hehe, I just saw that you aren't responding directly to me in your comments, which is why I'm not getting your response in my inbox.

Anyway, at work. Will respond in full later :)

[montglanechess]

Ha! Yeah--I have no idea what was up with that. I've been sort of distracted the last few days. Probably all the Bejeweled 3 rotting my brain. ;)

[erisedraine]

I think also, at least for many families in my area, not a lot of people got Bachelor's Degrees during my parent's generation. I was the first person in my family to do so, and I was taught from a young age that people who got Bachelor's Degrees got good jobs, and wouldn't have to work making steel or paper (I live in a manufacturing town

[montglanechess]

I definitely agree--I was so angry when I graduated from library school because it felt like everyone had been deliberately lying about all the teaching jobs, and library jobs, (and jobs, period) that were out there for good little kids who graduated with honors and kept their nose clean. Now that I've had time to reflect, I realize that a lot of people my parents age *just don't know* what's going on. Not the big picture sense, but in the sense that "I can't tell Johnny to go to college 'because that will get him a good job'--what are his options? what are the best options? If he goes to college, what does he need to do to *get near* a job afterword? How do we ever pay for college?"

It's a fascinating issue, but in that sense that it's a car wreck featuring someone's £300,000 factory-packaged Aston Martin and you can't figure out how something like that got effed up.