For the scene kids, humanities graduate students, and every other young adult who takes himself too seriously

I'm gonna rant a minute, because dammit, this is my blog and I can.  Gird your loins for Timothy at full blast, and if the good lord's willing this will be brief.

Dear Disillusioned Twenty-somethings of America,

Quit your bitching.  Especially those of you with mothers and fathers who love you, college degrees, and hybrid cars.  If you so choose to make everything you do, say, and eat (God.) a political statement, I support your choice.  But don't reprimand me for eating cheese (regardless of the metaphors you use, cheddar IS NOT crack).  Back off of my friends who light up in bars where everyone else is smoking.  It's a bar, dammit.  If you can't stand the smoke, well, you know the rest.  Remember that your reading of Joseph Campbell, Jacques Derrida, and Karl Marx is merely an interpretation, not permission to instigate fights with people who would otherwise probably like you despite your ridiculous upper-middle class oppression.  At least a little.  And for God's sake, get a haircut, take a shower, and get rid of the bandanas around your necks.  Your mama loves you and wants you to wash behind your ears and under your arms, your grandma does not approve of your strategically planned grease ball 'do, and none of you are cowgirls, regardless of what you do with your lassos.  Clean people get jobs.  Jobs give you experience.  Experience, not club drugs and philosophical texts, makes you wise.

Rock crack babies.  Read to the blind.  Recycle til your heart's content.  Do something productive instead of bitching about how the world is going straight to hell.  And don't blame me for global warming because I bought my socks at Wal-Mart.  Blame your SUV-driving parents.

I love you, twenty-somethings.  I'm one of you, and I'm not saying I'm better.  Hell, I'm bitching, too.  But I am saying this:  Learn to act and not speculate, practice and not theorize.  Soy yogurt won't change the world, but teaching a kid to read will.

Bless your hearts.

Timothy

End rant

Gen Yers Care

In my English 101 class, the students are doing a unit on work, which will ultimately lead to a research/observation paper about some aspect of working. Since I'm a GA, I don't teach every class, but I am teaching all next week. While browsing around the net for some teaching ideas, I found an interesting Time article about Gen Y work ethic.

Some of the stuff reported in the article surprised me. While I'm well aware of the tech savvy workforce Gen Y has created (and I feel as if I betray my generation by not knowing HTML), Gen Y's trends toward opportunistic job seeking, working with friends, and volunteering is very thought provoking. I can see how members of my generation are primarily self-interested (and thus less loyal to companies which we assume will screw is over in the end), but the volunteerism is interesting. Perhaps Gen Yers are padding their resumes with volunteer experience as a self-interested way of getting ahead in the work world.

Also, note the trend among recent college graduates who move back in with their parents while they search for jobs. This provides a cushion between rent-and-utilities-paying adult life and mom-does-my-laundry student life in which twentysomethings can take time to find higher paying jobs without taking the financial risk of moving out on their own. Personally, I'd sooner live in a cardboard box than move back in with my parents, but I can see how the comfort and stability of living at home until something better comes along is appealing to some my age. Being an adult is scary sometimes.