Austin Weighing In

Austin (my son) a twenty something responded to my blog about the New York Magazine survey of graduates from 2011 and an earlier time the grads of 1960. If you need to read the blog he is referring to, go to the archive below and click on July 6th. Enjoy

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post ""Seniors Then and Now":

Austin weighing in:

What survey was this? I mean, where did it come from? Who published it and who conducted it? It sounds pretty biased. Surveys are heavily flawed too, because (as you indicated in one of your paragraphs) they often use wording that is vague, limited or confining. The fact that 0% of people said that they were gay (or bisexual or transgender?) makes it seem like a wholly non-credible survey.

But we are of a generation (us twenty-somethings) that has sprouted the term "quarter-life crisis." I've always been a big fan of the quarter-life crisis because; why not get it done at quarter life rather at during mid-life? And besides, the infamous mid-life crisis is known for being costly, new cars, divorces, renting an apartment in the valley.

But that used to be more of a male thing, though not exclusively a male thing. The quarter-life crisis affects youths of all stripes. I think it has to do with, in part, the economy. We need our parents to survive financially. We can't, like older generations, do it on our own. And people in their early to mid twenties fail to launch, not because they don't want to work hard, but because the jets are fueled, the launch pad is set, but there's no take-off because there's nowhere to land.

And we're also a generation who looks at life in terms of what it has to offer us, not the other way around. This is both good and bad. It's good because it means we have the potential to fulfill our dreams and not live as one of Marx's alienated workers. It's bad because... we often dream more than we do.

Can you picture it? Student X was a History major. He is smart, organized; marginally skilled. He knows how to write. So he gets said job at said company and works in said cubicle. He always pictured himself doing something else, something more "meaningful," but what? He's thinking about going to law school, but he's not sure if it's what he wants or if it's just something to do. He'd really like to backpack through Europe; maybe even "find" himself while he's at it.

In so many ways, this is a totally ancient dilemma. One can picture a ancient student of Athens-U pacing around a campfire at night in a toga, looking up at the constellations, saying to himself: "I always pictured myself doing something more. I really like Philosophy and Astronomy but I don't know... I'm definitely not going to work at the sandal repair shop the rest of my life."

The Biblical adage 'there's nothing new under the sun' was invented by a moody youth with a melancholy bent. Yes, the currency of wood and shale had been greatly devalued. The only thing the young and listless could do was wander the desert.

But it is true that the American socio-economic landscape is changing, and America's youth has all the things the previous generation had, but less of a chance to do something with it.