Talkin' 'bout your generation

In her WorkinProgress blog, Bridget Nelson writes about Millennials and asks what changes I have seen in students through the years. I posted a comment there, but also thought I would continue the discussion here.

Some thoughts on students through the years:

Students as a group have always had strengths and weaknesses and I frankly spent little time wondering how to group them. Sociologists make their living doing that and ad people love those demographics. The rest of us, though, see people with broader strokes. My students were generally hard-working, smart, funny, creative, concerned about broader issues, respectful yet spunky, and just nice people. Yes, there were exceptions, but I didn’t worry too much about those folks.

I wonder if the Drake SJMC attracts its own breed, and that does not include the lazy louts and ego-driven brats we read about. We have always expected a great deal out of our students, so people who do not want to commit to that amount of effort and can’t play well with others probably don’t apply to the program or leave early on. Some do stay and are miserable, making the rest of us miserable, but that applies to Boomers as well as Millennials.

The SJMC is big enough for opportunities but small enough that students have to work together, which means some of the crazy Millennial—or Gen X or Gen Y or whatever—traits are smoothed out by rubbing against other students’ personalities.

As many of you may have noticed, I don’t suffer fools gladly, so students who are not up to snuff would probably have stayed away from me, no matter their generation.

When I first started teaching in the 1980s and early 1990s, students were more into following the system than students of the 2000s were. I am not at all sure that is a bad thing, largely because the system has changed so much.

As director and as a professor in recent years, I did get complaints about how students dress, and I think that might be something to take seriously. I got a lot of comments about women’s blouses being too tight or too low cut. I also heard complaints about too casual dress—such as flip-flops in the office. I always hated to pass these comments on to students, but I did, so if I didn’t tell you to keep your breasts from being a focal point, you were fine.

I have lived my entire life with the Boomer stereotype. I wonder if the Millennial generalization will be as enduring.   It gets old, I tell you.  And so have the boomers.

PEP