Adulthood

[Bothersome]

Ummm...no....There ia no such thing as a "comfortable career position" Anyone can lose their job and be easily replaced at any time. Ask the "older generation" how easy it is to get a job after they lose their current one....near impossible......If you dont get this then you are missing how the real world works (or doesnt) these days....

And think how much harder it would be to get a job if you didn't have that shiny degree + filled resume.

 

[chicago]

The whiny blame game kinda proves my point. I know people of all ages that have been laid off / can't find work. The country as a whole is struggling.

 

[kis123]

Ummm...no....There ia no such thing as a "comfortable career position" Anyone can lose their job and be easily replaced at any time. Ask the "older generation" how easy it is to get a job after they lose their current one....near impossible......If you dont get this then you are missing how the real world works (or doesnt) these days....

I have two degrees and ended up making my own job! I will NEVER depend on some corporation again in life! Been off that hamster wheel almost three years. And when you're older, the job market got exponentially smaller. Imagine my surprise when I got 80K in student loan debt in my 40s and the market tanked right around my graduation? I put out over 100 resumes and didn't even get the "Dear Jane, thanks for applying" letter! If I didn't figure out how to survive without dependence on some employer, I'd be homeless and maybe dead by now!

I lived under that fairytale of work 40 years and retire with a watch most of my adult life! My longest time on a job was nine years........and that was back in 1997! Still ran the hamster race for over a decade until I was tossed on the side of the road by some Ivy league grad lawyer who thought her degree meant she could run a HR department! What a joke! She was the absolute worst HR manager I ever dealt with.......EVER!

*******sorry, digressing again! Tough weekend folks********​

Especially in this economy there is no such thing as job security so do yourself a favor and just live your life as best as possible and be prepared for periods of un or under employment. It's a rare thing to not experience these days! I'd rather deal with the uncertainty of fluctuating income (which I've almost mastered) than to place my fate in the hands of some "boss" that'll put you on the street if they don't like you.

You younger ones have a really tough road to hoe these days but it isn't impossible. Be creative, learn a skill trade to keep you fed and the bills paid, then work to live your dreams. Please, please, please don't kill decades living someone else's idea of what your life should be. I did it and have a lot of regrets behind it, but I'm not wasting another second of my life anymore worrying about what anyone else thinks.

 

[kis123]

When it comes to the Millennials, they have been raised as a generation with a feeling of entitlement and at the same time handled with kid gloves by hippie parents.

No dodgeball during recess, but told every day "You can be whatever you want to be. You're special. Here's a trophy, even though you lost."

They were told that university is the only way these days and that if you don't go, you won't be successful. (Truth is, had I stayed at the job I was at back in Chicago, within a few years, I would have been making a satisfactory salary that would have allowed me the independence I was looking for - without college.) With my family situation (which was well known to my guidance counselor) instead of suggesting I go to fucking Northwestern (ridiculous 30 grand a year tuition or something) he should have suggested a trade school of some kind. I would have had a decent job at the time when I needed it most.

Many of those Millennials didn't work any part time jobs through high school or college. They were told to focus on school. Now when they enter the very difficult working world, they are sensitive, whiny, have no idea how to act in a professional environment. Their parents are calling to see if "Jimmy made it in ok." or to check on pending applications. There are even seminars for employers on how to handle this generation.

I'm not saying they are all like that, but I grew up much the same way. The real world kinda kicked my ass and made me realize life does not always follow the fairy tale that they laid out for us, jobs are hard to come by, and to appreciate the value of a dollar. Had I not really changed my way of thinking, I would be just another one of those spoiled brats.

Really? Who's fault is it that kids grew up this way? Let's be honest, most people CANT be whatever they want to be, even if they try their hardest. Most people are not special in any way. And what does giving a kid a trophy for losing really do for him in the long run? Sure, college is great, but it shouldn't be the only option we give our kids. It's not for everyone. And I'm not going to say who has it worse, baby boomers or millennials. Although, the job market (in Chicago at least) for 18-25 year olds was pretty cruel. 25% unemployment rate. But of course you're going to hire someone with experience over someone without any experience. And if I was an employer, I'd probably rather hire the disgruntled old man that knows how to put in hours, versus the wimpy kid that calls his mom on his lunch break.

So, I see both sides of it.

I didn't catch this post earlier but it speaks volumes!

There is a false sense of expectation and almost complete inability to cope with life's stresses and issues with these younger generations. But at the end of the day, how did that happen? Well since generally speaking, children don't raise themselves.......you gotta' go back to the source and shake some parents up! Many (not all) parents have not properly prepared their children for the real world out there. So that poor kid turns 18 and is automatically supposed to know how to live and function as an adult. It just don't work that way........at all! That's where the false sense of entitlement comes from.

My daughter used to be Daddy's perfect little princess that could do no wrong and had to have everything she wanted. He went out of his way to give her everything; brand new cars, expensive clothes and shoes.....a lot of stuff. When the kids would come to me with that nonsense, I'd tell them to call 1-800-DIAL DADDY, because I wasn't doing it. He was the buddy dad and I was mean old mom who had to keep them grounded.

When he died in 2011, I had a talk with the kids a few months later. I told them that the 1-800-dial daddy line has been permanently disconnected and I will not be continuing his legacy of giving them everything they wanted. It has been an adjustment period to say the least, but my daughter is coming around to her adulthood. I'll provide for their needs, but their "wants" are on them.

 

[Jagermeistered]

We have the oldest kids on this planet(as far as the US is concerned). If it is not their parents, then it is the State. When something like a student loan, scholarship, grant is offered; the financier is making a bet on future labor. These bets used to be made by private entities, and we had progress(they were objective in nature). Nowadays, the State finances these goals, but the State has no clear objective - they have their hands in everything else. So, they rely on academia(colleges/universities), and they(faculty) set their salaries based on needs and wants(rather then market demand). That is probably why we have a market-bubble(malinvestments).

I have known a few friends that have skipped universities/colleges and went straight to a technical or vocational school. For example, my friend Anthony wanted to be an iron worker. He skipped the formal education scene, and went to a school and harnessed his education and training straight to the core of his objective. Sure, he had to take on student loan debt, but paid off his note quickly once he became employed.

 

[ticklishdanny]

It's tough for college grads to find jobs these days, really the only degrees that are worth going to college for are in engineering. Maybe you should go to college if you want to go off to medical school (1-2% acceptance rate) but a degree in gender studies or French art history is completely useless. Watch the documentary "The College Conspiracy" and you'll understand. It's tough out there for everyone, but people applying for jobs that have a few years of experience under their belt are much better off than those that have a piece of paper saying they drank and partied for four years and know how to speak Latin.

 

[Bothersome]

The whiny blame game kinda proves my point. I know people of all ages that have been laid off / can't find work. The country as a whole is struggling.

Sure, it's whining.

But until you can say that a person with a degree of any kind plus 20+ years of references and work experience has a harder time finding a job than someone who just graduated high school and can't afford to go to college yet, then it remains true.

 

[Amnesiac]

When it comes to the Millennials, they have been raised as a generation with a feeling of entitlement and at the same time handled with kid gloves by hippie parents....They were told that university is the only way these days and that if you don't go, you won't be successful....Many of those Millennials didn't work any part time jobs through high school or college. They were told to focus on school. Now when they enter the very difficult working world, they are sensitive, whiny, have no idea how to act in a professional environment. Their parents are calling to see if "Jimmy made it in ok." or to check on pending applications. There are even seminars for employers on how to handle this generation.

Really? Who's fault is it that kids grew up this way? Let's be honest, most people CANT be whatever they want to be, even if they try their hardest. Most people are not special in any way. And what does giving a kid a trophy for losing really do for him in the long run? Sure, college is great, but it shouldn't be the only option we give our kids. It's not for everyone. And I'm not going to say who has it worse, baby boomers or millennials. Although, the job market (in Chicago at least) for 18-25 year olds was pretty cruel. 25% unemployment rate. But of course you're going to hire someone with experience over someone without any experience. And if I was an employer, I'd probably rather hire the disgruntled old man that knows how to put in hours, versus the wimpy kid that calls his mom on his lunch break.

Competition is as much a scourge as it is a boon.

The American Dream hasn't really been an American Dream per se, but more of a Spartan one. When the post-WWII period started, the Baby Boom was the step onto the American "destination": a peak state of existence, marked by prosperity, security, and uniformity, which would extend in perpetuity. Once the culture had a definitive lifestyle model (regardless of its bias towards race, gender, age, and sexuality), they were quick to broadcast it across the national template. The future was to be nothing more than a more efficient and lucrative version of the present.

So as a result, nobody designing or monitoring the systems bothered to consider the results of mass-producing a monolithic template of efficiency. So the New Left and anti-War movements--both perfectly understandable (with hindsight) developments of higher education and prosperity--were seen as impure corruption by foreign interests and the result was the Cultural Revolt of the 1960s. The model didn't account for the eventual return and growth of foreign markets, so we didn't factor in the effect of outsourcing, resulting in the labor, union, and recession of the 1970s. And more than any of those, they didn't account for "academic inflation", which was the effect of competitive models on an exponentially growing population: as college attendance increased, the certification process inflated its criteria to maintain quality with the expansion of quantity--a Master's Degree needed instead of a BA, a PhD needed instead of a Master's, and a lower pay rate needed for that entirely. Sir Ken Robinson illustrates this more eloquently than I can:

<object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iqG7XT41WgM?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iqG7XT41WgM?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nmCD1HyabDw?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nmCD1HyabDw?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

If you went back to the 50s and told people that streamlining the workforce with the academic certification process would result in multiple recessions, high unemployment, the erosion of labor unions, and escalating poverty to the endangerment of the middle class, they'd think you were crazy. How could the embodiment of everything prosperous sculpted into a hyper-efficient machine possibly have the opposite result? Because, much like Karl Marx, they focused on the economic to the exclusion of the psychological. True, it's impossible to predict the future accurately, but they never thought the model or the competitive nature of it would change.

"We've reached the promised land, we've figured it out, and now things will be this way forever."

That's the unwritten creed of America in the 1950s and it was the emphatic dream of Ancient Peoples who imagined a spiritual or technological deliverance from mortal stress. I could go on about how the religious foundation of America co-opted this vision, but I won't because this ain't the right place for it. The point is, this is the vision of the country from that standpoint and the culture pushed this into production without hesitation or best-testing. Now we're reaping the results.

By institutionalizing everything, we've removed the intellectual and the personal from intruding on the maturation process: now everything goes through official channels, and even parenting is considered an official channel, with entitlement rights and all. Children have become increasingly proprietary, and now have even less autonomy than ever before. That creates a dearth of experience and conceptual understanding of the world in which they will live and work, and there's little hope when the people who are doing the educating are trying to fix the problem by escalating the things that caused it to malfunction in the first place.

In addition, the self-esteem movement missed the mark. They correctly learned that positive reinforcement could be more beneficial than traditional negative reinforcement, but they failed to address the core hindrance to growth: autonomy. Instead of training children how to think abstractly (as best as possible, each person is different), troubleshoot, and have some personal investment in what they were doing, they instead focused on over-emphasizing the triumph of negligible accomplishments ("Yay! You get a participation trophy!"). With no sense of personal accomplishment, and no comprehensive glimpse of the workings of a professional environment, and not to mention an education system that has NO CONSIDERATION of prepubescent and pubescent circadian rhythms, you have kids with a lifetime of experience with superficial institutional scheduling and motions, but virtually no character-building experience or comprehensive education. Those people are ill-suited for the world around them, and have the emotional sophistication of people half their age.

The people haven't yet figured out a way of teaching children about the conditional properties of the culture without turning them into sociopaths. We've all known the kids who came from the bad homes where they experienced unfiltered reality, and we all saw what it did to them. To compensate for this, we've taken to completely standardizing information and reinforcing it with platitudes as a way of preserving empathy (which is good) and concealing our own faults (not so good). It's not a problem if a parent/teacher tells a child that "you can be anything you want to be when you grow up" as long as they include the word "legally" afterwards. It might then help to explain that that wasn't always the case and that's why it's a big deal.

 

[Bohemianne]

When I reach adulthood I will let you know.... <3

^ 😀

 

[chicago]

Sure, it's whining.

But until you can say that a person with a degree of any kind plus 20+ years of references and work experience has a harder time finding a job than someone who just graduated high school and can't afford to go to college yet, then it remains true.

Has it not always been that way? It's common sense. The shitty job market makes it even harder for recent college graduates, but is that the fault of the seasoned worker that the new grad can't find work as easily? Let's remember, while it is difficult, it's not impossible.

And also, think of it this way, would it make sense for employers to possibly hire new grads at a lower salary versus the experienced worker who is used to a higher one?

 

[Bothersome]

Has it not always been that way? It's common sense. The shitty job market makes it even harder for recent college graduates, but is that the fault of the seasoned worker that the new grad can't find work as easily? Let's remember, while it is difficult, it's not impossible.

And also, think of it this way, would it make sense for employers to possibly hire new grads at a lower salary versus the experienced worker who is used to a higher one?

Is it their fault? Of course not.

And it's an employer's market right now. They can hire whoever the fuck they want, and that tends to be the person who they think will get the job done more efficiently. That almost ALWAYS is the seasoned worker. Even in entry level jobs.

 

[chicago]

Cool little chart here I found

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm

 

[coldneck]

My parents were old school: "When you graduate from High School, you're on your own"
They made just enough for me NOT to qualify for grants, so it was guaranteed student loans or seeking scholastic/athletic scholarships.
Neither offered to help me in the process.
I took my ACT/SAT tests and applied to colleges myself.
They disconnected themselves from the process, probably because neither of them had been to a University and thought of it as a HUGE BILL they would have to pay.
Looking back, that's when I grew up for real.
When I moved out and started buying my own food, budgeting $, and planning my future.
Half way thru college, I hit the wall, and decided to join the US Army on the GI Bill to pay for the rest of my education.

Best decision I ever made.
I went in a boy, and came out a man.
And I did it all on my own and gained experience that you really can't put a price on.
It's also made me mentally and physically tough, and more than equipped for what life will eventually throw at you.

Doing it yourself. All by yourself.

Accept no substitution.

 

[Canadian_Eh]

I think it's easy to say that "any job will do" when it comes to what's out there in the job market, but the truth is, that's just not realistic. Cost of living is stupid expensive and personally, I don't see a point in taking a job you know isn't going to be able to help you to make ends meet... That's just my opinion.

I also believe that lower entry positions that are being taken over by older generations is also because, in this economy nobody can afford to actually "retire" and not be working. Taking those lower paying jobs is much easier to do when you already have a foundation you can just add to, as opposed to the "now" generation who are trying to build from the ground up.

My husband and I have owned our home for three years now, when we bought it, the economy was much better than it was now. Had we decided to buy right now, in this economy, it wouldn't happen. We would be forced to wait, but now we have it, and we have a mortgage now that we have to worry about meeting so we can keep our house... For us, taking lower paying jobs just isn't realistic when there's so much at stake. Especially when only one person is able to work at the moment.

Has it forced us to become real adults? Absolutely. Responsibility does that to anyone who has to take it on.

 

[chicago]

I believe if I was in an emergent situation with no money coming in, any pay would be better than no pay, and would help while looking for something better instead of doing nothing.

 

[C.A.B.]

As much as I hate to say it, because I loved the man and I believe he meant nothing but goodwill, I fear Mr. Rogers (and those who subscribed his like) got it wrong. The mantra for at least 3 generations has been "You are Special". The reality is you are not special... more accurately, you might be special to someone that perhaps loves you, but in this world you one of billions that must strive in order to achieve. You can sit alone in your room, self-convinced that you are 'Special' and perhaps you are unto your Facebook Page (among millions) and all the other social media (among millions) specifically designed to suck you in by your generational, unabashed narcissism. But... don't whine and complain when your ship doesn't come in... or pull up to your front door, for that matter. Most of the exceptional and successful people in this world (and not just monetary success) have been the folks that GET OUT and GRAB the WORLD BY THE BALLS in spite of adversity. There's an old fashioned phrase for going through hard knocks... it builds character. Its still true. Unfortunately, its rare now. Adult-aged children raised by adult-aged children. and not enough Binkies to go around.

 

[chicago]

As much as I hate to say it, because I loved the man and I believe he meant nothing but goodwill, I fear Mr. Rogers (and those who subscribed his like) got it wrong. The mantra for at least 3 generations has been "You are Special". The reality is you are not special... more accurately, you might be special to someone that perhaps loves you, but in this world you one of billions that must strive in order to achieve. You can sit alone in your room, self-convinced that you are 'Special' and perhaps you are unto your Facebook Page (among millions) and all the other social media (among millions) specifically designed to suck you in by your generational, unabashed narcissism. But... don't whine and complain when your ship doesn't come in... or pull up to your front door, for that matter. Most of the exceptional and successful people in this world (and not just monetary success) have been the folks that GET OUT and GRAB the WORLD BY THE BALLS in spite of adversity. There's an old fashioned phrase for going through hard knocks... it builds character. Its still true. Unfortunately, its rare now. Adult-aged children raised by adult-aged children. and not enough Binkies to go around.

I've had this very opinion for some time now.

 

[Canadian_Eh]

I didn't say we weren't doing nothing, I agree that would be irresponsible, but currently the job my husband was working for wasn't working out and he was layed off. Right now the lower paying jobs won't hire him because he's too qualified with all of his schooling as well as his vast amount of skills for some of the lower salary jobs, so right now we're left in limbo scrambling to find another job he can go to in a not so great economy. Keep in mind we're talking US Vs Canada. Different economy.

 

[chicago]

Everyone's situation is different, of course, I was speaking in general terms.

 

[Bohemianne]

Everyone's situation is different, of course, I was speaking in general terms.

Yes. It is the main thing about each one's formula that is not applicable to the another...

 

[BrightEyes1082]

Appreciate your opinion, and of course there is the responsibility of the child to use the opportunities presented them wisely (although, it is remarkably cheaper for Canadian residents to attend university versus American ones) however, there have been some responses here that it is the responsibility of the parent to do as much as they can to help see their children succeed. There have been responses that imply this means higher education and that without that being provided somewhat for their children, said children will have remarkably less opportunity for success.

To pose another question, how does one achieve that independence / success without higher education, or rather, without assistance from parents?

I've been working since I was a junior in high school. I'm in college full-time now, and I'm 30.
I pay for it myself while working full-time. It's hard as shit to do both full-time, but it's the only
way. I would never let my mom pay for my education or even expenses. Any time that I lived at
home once I graduated high school, I paid rent and my share of utilities and groceries. I am getting
ready to transfer to a 4-year school this fall, and will have to take out loans. I've never seen anyone
else as responsible for anything in my life. There have been times where I've been in jams where I've
had car problems or something, and my mom loaned me money, but I've always paid her back. I wish
my brother, who has some pretty serious entitlement issues, would share the same mindset.

 

[chicago]

That's pretty amazing, Mondy. Not many could do what you're doing.

I don't know that I trust myself enough to be able to handle that amount of pressure. I'd probably have a nervous breakdown.

 

[BrightEyes1082]

Gurrrrrrl, if I can do it, you can do it! 🙂