A couple of weeks ago, my former professor asked me if I would be interested in coming into one of her classes and talking about my post-grad life. I was excited about the idea because I absolutely love my university, but I am nervous about it because as much as I have learned in the last year, I’m not sure if anything I say will be able to prepare these students for what their life will be like outside of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and their Jesuit education.
When someone asks me about my life at college, I could talk their ear off. It is where I started this blog. It is the place that instilled in me the core values that I take into my life today. It is the place where we all went away with custom sweatshirts to remind us of our student days. It provided me with opportunities that I never thought were within reach and I was able to imagine ideas and turn them into creations and traditions. There are many current students and graduate students who can relate to my feelings on our university and for that, we have been given both a blessing and a curse.
The criticism about my generation right now is that we are self-entitled. I don’t like that label either, but there’s no denying that it exists. At times, I have those thoughts and I know that I have friends that could be considered entitled too. After college, some of us believed that it was so easy to find a job and didn’t realize the challenges that it would throw in front of us. Friends asked themselves why employers weren’t eager to hire them when they had impressive resumes and experience through work study jobs, internships, and college extracurriculars. While these are experiences, I think it might be difficult for employers to understand the responsibilities tied to a role when we say we are a leader on a retreat or a student event planner utilizing a $75K budget for one event. How do you explain that to someone? How do we accept that good just isn’t good enough? That won’t be the case for every employer though.
Is it our personalities that make us self-entitled or is it the environment that we are surrounded by? As an involved student, like many other students, you may feel entitled because of who you know, what you’ve done, and what you are capable of doing. You may be someone with a great deal of charm who can talk your way into anything. Sometimes, it is the environment. I came from a small school where ideas were welcomed and collaboration was expected. If you wanted to get something done, nothing was impossible, but is that the school’s fault? Who is at fault? How did we adopt this mindset? I spoke with a couple friends about this matter recently and I think one way universities can remedy this bad rap is to better prepare seniors for what life will be like outside of college because for most – it is a huge wake up call. Not every team will include just five people. Do you know what it means to work in an office environment? How comfortable are you using Microsoft Word, Outlook, and Excel? Have you checked out microsoft excel training to advance your knowledge? While you may claim that you are an expert because you’ve used these applications in one way or another, your employer will see you as a certified n00b. We were in school for 16 years and we’ve never known anything outside of that. I’m not saying you have to hold our hand through this, but a little bit of assistance in our transition would go a long way.
The reason I say that is because earlier this week I read an article on Gawker about a high school senior who slammed her dream college for not accepting her. Apparently she thought that ‘being herself’ was enough to get into the school and that it should be enough. On her path to taking down her dream college and successfully making them NOT regret their decision, I’m sure, she also made a number of offensive statements. So there’s that. And we really don’t need to have any more of that from our generation now, do we?
To these current Seattle University students, it’s okay to not have everything figured out when you immediately graduate. You may not have your dream job, but that is normal. You may have to have lots of jobs and experiences to get to that point just like you will date a handful of duds before you meet Mr. Right or what I like to simply call “your husband!” Then again, who am I to talk because I’m about to say this to current students and I haven’t been out of school for a whole year yet. Hopefully they’ll be easy on me.
*This is a new installment on Yow Yow, check out the first post here.