Young and Old Alike Love to Pile On Gen-X Jenny.

• What you have just taught me is that you need to wake the hell up. You think your generation is the first to worry about retirement? To hate committee work? To be head-explodingly frustrated by the bureaucratic structure? To want modern classroom and office equipment? You haven’t expressed one original thought, except that you want academic recognition for a blog. Ever heard of “peer review”? Get over yourself.


• The Gen-X post reminded me of a discussion I had earlier in the week with a friend, in which she told me about all of the "how to interact with 20-somethings" books currently being marketed to businesses. According to these manuals, recent graduates need to be praised, not reprimanded, which in practice translates to praising someone for coming in on time, rather than reprimanding them for coming in late. Praising a worker, in other words, for meeting the minimum requirements of the job. I can sympathize with Gex-X's dislike of committees and paperwork (who doesn't?), but I'm not sure that this is a generational thing. Saying "If we are moving on, perhaps you haven't done enough to try to understand us and are just trying to make us fit in to your mold" sounds suspiciously like a "special [faculty] snowflake" argument to me.


• I want to thank the Gen-X dude or dudette for making it so perfectly clear that he/she is just a perfect little X-shaped snowflake. Someone else too precious for words, someone else everyone has to make sure is taken care of. Grow up.