Over the last few days, I’ve had many encounters with young people wrought with frustration (mostly because they haven’t done the things they were tasked with doing in previous weeks) but I have tolerated them as they unload their not so original excuses; everything from car trouble, boyfriend/girlfriend issues, Internet outages to conflicts between work and other schedules. I even had a student who thought by telling me that they were out of school for a week with asthma issues and pneumonia (I was out of work for three weeks with pneumonia), that I’d have more empathy for them. My response was “while I was on breathing treatments four times a day, barely able to eat and exhausted from the medications, I wasn’t on life support and I managed to keep my boss abreast of my situation, found a substitute for my face-to-face courses and still managed my two online classes.” All the student could do was to look me in the face and move on to the next excuse.
In another situation, I found it troubling that an individual could take the time to pen a page and a half email (which I’m sure took about 20 minutes) but couldn’t find the time the previous day to do an assigned task that would have taken equal or lesser time. This same individual chose to throw me under the bus per se by copying several other individuals on the email. I guess this was a way to “put me on notice”, that I was being put on notice….to that I said, let the paper trail begin, I’m an excellent record keeper and rest assured, I have all of my emails (especially the excuses) saved in my outlook in a folder with your name on it.
Another teaching moment for me was this: don’t schedule anything on April 20th or as it’s said in youth culture “four-twenty”. For those of you who didn’t know, that is an underground holiday in which students on college campuses across this country pay homage to marijuana. I had secretly heard about this, but asked the student who scheduled and no-showed for two meetings prior to “four-twenty” if he was going to show up and the individual was adamant about making the appointment before taking part in the festivities. On four-twenty, I sat in my office for two hours. Waiting. Of course, my time was utilized wisely. I even took time out to shoot the individual a scathing email to which they responded…three days later.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping incident of all was this next account. This particular individual had literally been on my couch “woe is me-ing it” for an entire class period. After a brief pep talk and the tears dried up, I went out on a limb and re-purposed their awful work. (I call it re-purposing because I took what was there and made something new and acceptable out of the muck and mire). I then gave the individual clear, written instructions, a script of sorts, so that they could properly executive this production. The person called me a few days later anxious and frustrated because I apparently left an extra slide in their PowerPoint presentation. The conversation went something like this:
Student
“Dr. Edwards, you said you were going to take that slide out but it’s still in.”
Me
“Are you serious? Are you kidding me?” You sat there watching me do your work, you were texting, trying to talk to me about some damn 2 Pac Hologram and you don’t have the gumption to figure out on your own how to delete one extra PowerPoint slide then click save! You need to figure it out!”
Needless to say, by the time I had the encounter with PowerPoint Patty, I was at the end of my rope. You may have chuckled a few times reading this. You may have even recounted your own situations where SMH was the only response. But it’s much more serious. Here my scholarly breakdown of how serious it is and the dreadful repercussions that many of today’s young people may face if they don’t get some critical thinking skills or begin to exercise good judgment.
In scenario #1what, the individual fails to realize that trying to play on someone’s emotions wears thin after the second or third attempt to deploy this as a tactic. I have spent the last four years listening to excuses from this particular individual and have caught them in so many lies that I could just gouge my eyes out. What they fail to realize is that once your bluff has been called, there you stand, naked and exposed for all to see. People won’t stay it to your face, but they view you as a fraud, unworthy…they see you for who you really are.
With regard to my email-yielding scholar, try copying your bosses boss on an email and watch what happens. You’ll be bounced out of the door on your ‘at-will’ employed behind quicker than you can hit the send button. What some young minds fail to realize is the importance of something called hierarchy and protocol. While the scalar chain of command is something reminiscent of early management theories and has been replaced by more open and lateral leadership, in some environments, following protocol and respecting the hierarchical chain of command is still an unspoken rule. In some instances, firing may not be the result, but when you try to discredit someone with more academic knowledge, credibility and life experience than you, in the end your contribute to you own demise.
The “four-twenty” situation just confirmed the fact that the millennial’s have their priorities are all wrong. Emphasis on current trends, social lives, getting weaves done and finding financial resources to get the in next ‘in’ gadget, etc. are how many of today’s twenty-something’s spend their time. In a non-scientific poll of students who came into my office over a week’s period, about 3 in 15 students had a short- and a long-term plan that included emphasis on furthering their education, career goals and life after college. While many of them knew they needed to get the gears in motion, they just didn’t know how! Surprisingly enough, most of them have access to career services, advising and mentorship, free of charge.
The last situation made me realize that even though many of today’s youth don’t come from privileged families that they somehow adopted elitist, entitled attitude. The individual references earlier in the blog showed little appreciation for the fact that an entire project was completed for them on someone else’s time, but demanded even more by requesting that I correct the error that “I” made on their project! I’m constantly being told in the academic environment in which I work that we basically work for them and although not directly stated, many of the young people I work with expect you to jump when they say jump. I’ve heard students cursing out grandparents, who are paying for college tuition on fixed incomes, I have mediated an argument between a faculty member and an irate student and I’ve overheard students threatening legal action, just because they believe they are entitled to do so. In many instances, there is no effort to look inward before making demands or pointing the finger of blame at someone else.
While much of my life is made whole because of what I do as an educator, I am extremely frustrated at the fact that somehow, somewhere, someone lost sight of what really matters in life and forgot to pass that insight down from generation to generation. A generation of unconscious, non-goal seeking, self-centered youth stand before us and we are assuming that they will be ready to take the helm and run our churches, schools, corporations and this country. Today’s youth lack common sense, critical thinking skills and definitely lack the ability to exercise good judgment.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the actions of some of today’s young adults amount to moral turpitude but I will say that it is a crime that many of them don’t care about their own intellectual short-comings and even worse don’t seem to want to do anything about it. While the tone of this blog may be sobering, I believe there is some hope. I don’t plan to give up. I’m going to stay in the trenches, give tough love and try to do my best as a mentor and educator. For those of you who are as passionate as I am about helping to groom the next generation of leaders; I urge you to continue to good fight.
