Blog

On the Millennial Work Ethic

2010-04-05T12:49:01Z

Over the weekend the Washington Post published a story that takes a look at the Millennial work ethic. The article explains that Millennials are "the only age group in the nation that doesn't cite work ethic as one of its 'principal claims to distinctiveness,' according to a new Pew Research Center study, Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change."

The piece focuses pretty heavily on anecdotes about the distractibility of my generation - those who lack the attention span and desire to wait tables, and who watch whatever sort of handheld device they [inappropriately] bring to work. While I do find this generation's lacking-attention-span (including my own) to be troubling, it should be pointed out that it is easy to lazily substantiate this kind of story by painting a picture of disparate millennials who can't keep it together in the workplace.

Our friend Maya Enista, chief executive at Mobilize.org, was quoted in the article attempting to offer some context:

"[Enista] said the term 'work ethic' is misleading. 'It's not about being at a desk from 9 to 5. I work part of every hour I am awake.' Enista said her fellow 20-somethings' constant connection to technology keeps them at least as tethered to their jobs as older workers are. 'It's a given that we work hard, because the reality is that millennials are the most educated and most in debt.'"

What the story lacked, though, was a deeper look at why - culturally or historically - Millennials might feel this way about maintaining a work ethic worthy comparable to those of yesteryear.

From films like Clerks to American Beauty, and from the books of Douglas Coupland to Brett Easton Ellis, I grew up on entertainment and literature made by and for disaffected, dissatisfied Baby Boomers and members of Generation X. I was terrified by what can only be described - in retrospect - this collective narrative unraveling of every lie ever baked into the 20th Century American narrative. The viewer watched the absurdity of Clerks protagonist Dante Hicks taking his job at a New Jersey convenience store tragically seriously while s/he was encouraged to cheer retail anti-hero Randal Graves as he harassed the dim-witted consumer. We watched the not-so-subtle, phoenix-like rise of American Beauty's Lester Burnham, which was possible only after he realized how silly his life had become as a result of internalizing the myth and taking his job so seriously. We loved him because he was able to find freedom in a happiness-centered (versus a work-centered) life.

I have - on a number of occasions - had conversations with members of Generation X who describe Bret Easton Ellis' books - particularly American Psycho - as overwhelmingly accurate in their tone and description of Gen X's working youth in the 80s. A financial professional takes his life in context so seriously that he becomes a delusional, violently psychotic, misogynistic manifestation of said sector? Sign me up. And now we're constantly under the microscope and discussed for not sharing a similar views on work ethic?

We were raised in the shadow of the discovery that much of the American Dream was misleading, if not straight-up untrue. If we're optimistic - which countless stories and polls suggest we are - it is because we are vaguely confident that we can steer ourselves out of the mess that we inherited. Weaned in the 90s - a decade in which the unraveling of said myth became the fodder of pop-cinema - and in the Aughts - the decade in which, under the Bush Administration and in a post-September 11th / Enron world, it became somewhat difficult to not assume a worldview rooted in existentialist uncertainty about the payoff that comes with doing the same great job in the workplace reportedly preformed by the generations that came before us.

I say all of this because I know a lot of hard-working millennials in the for-good and not-yet-fully-imagined sectors. From members of Gen Y who are helping to reinvent the nonprofit organization as we know it, to those who are trying to reform the civic sectors, there are plenty of folks my age working hard to re-imagine and implement what America can look like. Those who are pushing for the construction of a new myth, one based on substantiating optimistic, though not-yet-true realities - the Maya Enistas and the Chris Goldens and the Aria Fingers and the Nathaniel Whittemores and the student protestors in California and on and on - are some of the hardest working people I know. Those employed (and often self-employed) in the "let's make shit better" sector are enthusiastically-hard working.

After all, having been weaned on that which we were, and living through the history that we just came through, I find it unsurprising that - on the whole - we're not particularly excited about working hard to maintain the same apparatus that gave us five-figure student debt, Enron, and September 11th. My mind - my friends - is on creating a marketplace and apparatus that does not yet exist. Fortunately, we're just under-employed enough to devote a substantial amount of our energies to making the creation of said apparatus possible.

Alex Steed is a teacher, activist and political candidate based in Cornish, Maine.

One Millennial’s Perspective on Education, Money, and the Conservation of Soul

2010-03-30T18:58:30Z

After 24 months, mother had a strong suspicion that I utilized my dimples to con her and maintain baby privileges of being carried everywhere. In a last ditch effort to call my bluff, a previously uninvolved aunt sat on the edge of the bed where I happily played, and took out a crisp dollar. “Nikki, Darling we all know you can walk. Now, come prove it in exchange for this pretty dollar.” As the family story goes, I promptly got up, walked over, took the dollar, and sat back down, laughing uncontrollably at my easily accessed fortune. The point of this repeated tale, as is the point of any family fable, was to establish my familial label as a smarty pants charmer, able to outwit and gain simultaneously. A year after the story, my father left, then, at age 10, my emotionally abusive stepfather stole all of our money and household possessions and fled the state. With no money, furniture, or next move, my mother creatively explained the art of resilience asserting that I would be expected to believe and utilize the family fable by having faith in my ability and propelling life forward.

As I grew older, I didn’t think of money relative to greed - that ideology is reserved for individuals of privileged wealth, I thought of money as a way out of specific hardship and my resilient tool of choice, given the family label of wit, was education. School, therefore, was a ‘frenemy’ I had to publicly annihilate in order to gain recognition in my deserved path to financial freedom. Despite academic accolades, I was constantly being punished for insolence because I thought authority figures within my private school were ignorant of the difficult socio-economic world that I lived in daily. Assuming backgrounds, I asserted that ‘the system’ didn’t take into account what it was like to work as though your identity depended on it, sleep in fear that your future unborn child’s father would abandon you, or view existence as a never-ending ball you had to keep airborne in order to claim independence. I wasn’t going to school solely to learn, although I enjoyed that as well, I was going so that I could use the system of education to propel myself, my loved ones, and all who shared the same economic hardship without the educational privilege that I did, forward into opportunity.

I got into Brown University, wrote an economic thesis on the Reproduction of Class Stratification in Jamaica, graduated as a triple concentrator with academic honors, began working for Donald Trump, bought my first condo at age 24, created an impressive financial portfolio, and then, to my horror, watched all the jewels in my ornately decorated armor begin to fall as I too disintegrated into the soul bearing hole of disgust. Not until I worked with a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, zealots who considered themselves smart based on their financial power, which they arrogantly abused daily, did I realize that working within a system to change a system could prove counter-intuitive if the two systems were morally opposed. I also realized that my own perpetuation of that structure, despite, intentions, could backfire into self-loathing. My soul began to ooze out of my progressively educated ears and slap me in the face everyday that I entered the leech-filled hellhole of a corporate cubicle. Everything about my existence depleted me and, after being caught staring into my ‘I’m a billionaire and you’re not’ tricked out computer screen, crying, I was let go due to inactivity, and, I’m sure, suspected depression.

Education and I worked through this painful process together and, in the end, became closer. By both personal and educational measures, I knew too much to forget an elitist educational system designed to economically rape the underserved and then justify programmatic injustice with a pointed finger at a privileged token. If I were to be that educational token, I wanted to use my ‘privilege’ to aid others. However, after corporate life, I realized with dismay, that jobs centered on helping others tended to be volunteer or stipend-positions, while jobs with any semblance of financial stability, what says abundance, tended to be part of the machine I couldn’t stomach. Moreover, to make matters even more excruciating, my mother and grandmother had worked multiple jobs to send me to Brown and now, with my education and financial success paving a yellow-bricked pathway to early retirement, I barely treaded water when the Great Recession hit. I felt as though I had let them down. For the first time in my clever little life I spent some time guilt-ridden, confused, praying, and sad.

After a long celebrated pity party for one, however, I grew bored of my depression and re-ignited my natural born fire. I decided to think outside of my immediate concerns, channel energy into productive work, and embrace my personal struggle as part of a shared national issue, built upon historical consequences that needed to be expressed. Working at nonpartisan, research, and advocacy organization, Demos, helped my process of renewal because I received documented insight into the direct link between education and economic gain and the extent to which my generation’s educational prospects were being hindered. Additionally, I began to understand how, specifically, the greatest economic downturn since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression, was crippling the future of Millennials on a greater scale than any other age bracket nationally. According to Bloomberg.com, during the time period of, December 2008 – to December 2009, the employment rate of 16- to 24-year-olds in the United States fell by 1.78 million. This accounted for one-third of the total estimated drop in employment. Furthermore, according to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds reported having a full-time job in 2010 compared to 50 percent in 2006.

Though select individuals in other generations had the insight to discuss the Millennial plight, I feared that neglect of the generation’s authentic voice would only prove to be a negative and potentially detrimental shock to society’s metaphoric system once the thought patterns of today’s young adults took effect. Something had to be done. According to Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking, a Connecticut-based research firm that studies young people in the workplace, as a result of these statistics, and inherent overall culture of the Millennial generation, “the recession has confirmed a skepticism that’s very deep for Gen Yers (a.k.a Millennials) that there is no such thing as job security. You’ve got to be a free agent to pay the bills.” In order to be a successful ‘free agent,’ Millennials have become increasingly interested in varying avenues of communication and networked opportunities in order to independently take control of their own destiny.

In keeping with my generation, I decided to create a literary platform that allowed Millennials to speak on their own behalf about issues directly affecting them, and then apply their notably unique experience to the ever-changing present and future culture. After writing a concept and requesting submissions, I received an extraordinary amount of writing samples that were then narrowed down and assembled. With confirmed contributors working diligently on expressing their experience through written word, I asked Justin Rockefeller and Maya Enista, Board member and CEO of Mobilize.org respectively, to write the compilation’s forward and they generously agreed. Maya, with my deepest gratitude, put me in touch with Morley Winograd, who introduced me to Alex Steed, and the eager trail of interconnected support has continued at a humbling rate.

I didn’t ‘fix’ the system after all, and my story, thus far, doesn’t prove me to be an economic oracle with the ability to eradicate destructive systems single-handedly, but I do know there is collaborative empowerment in communication. Despite my experiences and fabled aptitude, I am not rich - but I am educated and, if God continues to give me grace, I, along with the thundering voices of my generation, will one day utilize that power to impact. Mark our words.

Oneca Hitchman is a contributing writer.

Millennials: The Army's Perspective

2010-03-22T14:34:48Z

Check out this NPR piece when you get a second to do so:

New Basic Training Hardens 'Softer Generation'

In the piece, NPR host Scott Simon discusses the Millennial Generation with Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, Deputy Commanding General for Initial Military Training, who is faced with the task of adapting military training to the generation.

Lt. Gen. Hertling explains:

"We are seeing a decline across the board in America," he says. "This isn't a decline in our recruits; this is a decline in our American society in terms of their physical capacity. It's just a softer generation."

The piece goes on:

"They're different. They have a technology edge. I think they're smarter than any generation we've ever had before," he says. "They certainly ask a lot more difficult questions."

They have loyalty, Hertling says, but he thinks the most important thing about this generation is that they want to change the world. "They want to contribute to something that's bigger than themselves."

"I think they're magnificent."

[Excitedly] Introducing: Oneca Hitchman

2010-03-15T17:44:18Z

We are extremely excited to introduce you to Oneca Hitchman, an exciting new guest voice/commentator here at Millennials Changing America.

We were super excited to have the opportunity to talk with Sharalyn Hartwell last week, and it is important for us to be able to feature a wide-range of Millennial ideas and insights. We are very much looking forward to sharing Hitchman's commentary.

Here, Oneca shares a bit about her already robust life and career.

Take it away, Oneca.

Throughout my diverse educational and occupational life I have always had a distinct interest in the creativity and communication that the written word lends to collaborative empowerment. A long time student of history, cultural studies, environmental progression, economic development, and international politics, I am currently utilizing my interests and background to create the only primary literary source addressing the societal needs and absent voices of the Millennial generation.

My process thus far has been a wild and winding one, to say the very least. With regard to my educational background, I graduated from Brown University as a triple concentrator with academic honors in Public Private Sector Organizations, American Civilization, and Ethnic Studies, with a focus on International Business and Economic Development in the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora. I completed my thesis on The Reproduction of Class Stratification in Jamaica after researching Economic Development and Gender Equality on the island, at the University of the West Indies. Later, to contextualize my interest in nonprofit and corporate-based events, I became a classically trained chef and restaurant management graduate from the Institute of Culinary Education. In addition to conventional learning, I became a published slam poetry artist for the Random House/Russell Simmons produced compilation Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, was contributor on Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s young adult social commentary broadcast, Respect!, and proudly managed Soul Cypher, an organization seeking to promote political awareness through lyricism.

After college, I tried to utilize my cosmopolitan background of development, programmatic coordination, writing, and research, to personally grow, aid nationally and internationally focused concerns, and explore a variety of diverse occupational experiences. At Utendahl Capital Partners, the largest African-American owned investment firm in the nation, I executed corporate conferences targeting Community Reinvestment Act shareholders and planned large-scale, organization-based events, nationwide. After working as a Regional Coordinator for Donald J. Trump, and a New Business Research Coordinator for advertising firm Muts&Joy, I became sick of corporate life, discouraged that I had deviated off the path of progressive enlightenment, and suffered a mild quarter-life crisis. As such, after the mini breakdown, I re-ignited internal fires and revived my spirit as an Event Director at public policy research and advocacy organization, Demos. Here I received documented insight into the direct link between education and economic gain and the extent to which my generation’s educational prospects were being hindered. Additionally, I began to understand how, specifically, the greatest economic downturn since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression, was crippling the future of Millennials on a greater scale than any other age bracket nationally.

I decided to create a literary platform that allowed Millennials to speak on their own behalf about political concerns directly affecting them. I wanted the compilation to provide Millennials the opportunity to change the consequences of past disregard by communicating first-hand experiences, opinions, and suggestions, and then, apply their notably unique experience to the ever-changing present and future culture. After writing a concept and requesting submissions, I received an extraordinary amount of writing samples that I then narrowed down and assembled. With confirmed contributors working diligently on expressing their experience through written word, I asked Justin Rockefeller and Maya Enista, Board member and CEO of Mobilize.org respectively, to write the compilation’s forward and they generously agreed. Maya, with my deepest gratitude, put me in touch with Morley Winograd, who introduced me to Alex Steed and the eager trail of interconnected support has continued at a humbling rate.

Though my life has undergone wonderfully instructive twists and turns, I truly believe (and sincerely pray) that I have found a literary mission that will seamlessly connect the many pieces of my background and be utilized in a way that proves helpful to others.

More with Sharalyn: What do YOU define as Millennial? What events had the most impact on our generational identity?

2010-03-10T17:09:00Z

In my chat with Sharalyn Hartwell (The Examiner's national Gen Y columnist), we discussed the various cut-off dates that are established for who is / who is not considered a Millennial. Sharalyn was born in 1980, which, in Mike and Morley's definition, does not technically qualify (though they address the question "When does one generation end and another begin?" here). According to many other definitions, it does.

Sharalyn commented on being on the older end of the spectrum:

There is almost a division within the generation. For example, I never worked with Internet until I was in college, and my sister [a member of the generation as well] grew up with it throughout her life, and she had it in elementary school. This younger group is very, very aware of The Internet."

She went on:

You can get hung up on figuring out who is a Millennial and who is not, and it becomes inconsequential. I scanned through the [Pew report on Millennials]. One of the things they pointed out was that the parameters are not necessarily categorical, and that they're just trying to find a basis [for commonality].

There is the period effect; how do wars, social movements, and so on impact cohorts depending on which life cycle they're in? For us, there was definition in events like the DotCom rise and fall, 9/11, and this recession.

Some questions:

There are many definitions regarding what is / is not a Millennial. Which do you adhere to and why?
Which events do you believe have had the most impact on the formation of our generational identity?
Are you an older or younger Millennial? What are your views of those on the other end of the spectrum?

Sharalyn Hartwell: The Vanna White of Gen Y on giving thanks and generational self-awareness

2010-03-09T14:45:57Z

It was very much my pleasure to have had the opportunity to chat with Sharalyn Hartwell, a freelance writer and a nationally syndicated columnist for The Examiner on millennial culture and issues. As her Twitter profile suggests, she has been dubbed "The Vanna White of Gen Y," and she has been using her column to offer to millennials a constructive voice which serves - in part - to combat some of the persistently hyperbolic, negative stereotypes regarding the generation.

Mike, Morley and I stumbled upon the column back in November when Sharalyn was running her Gen Y Gives Thanks series, a collection of a series of posts from Millennials on what they are most thankful for. This ultimately serves as an illustration of her take on the generation's values, as well as a deconstruction of ill-informed, negative stereotypes. "Conversations in the media [about millennials] can be quite negative, really reactive. There are a lot of fingers pointed at us," she explained. Hartwell says the "Thanks" series was something that she had initially done for exposure, but as she began receiving responses from members of the generation, she realized "what we were grateful for, and it flew in the face of stereotypes." From there, Hartwell began to write for the the audience, and it became a process of getting to know her own generation.

Sharalyn and I also discussed, among other things, millennials' awareness of its own generational categorization. I asked Sharalyn: "Do most millennials even know that there is such a thing a the 'millennial generation' or 'Gen Y'?"

"No," she responded. "There is very little [generational] self-awareness. In observing and interacting with various social media channels, you see that people are extreme in one way or another. Young people are either very in touch with these types of conversations, or they're completely out of touch with them. The dichotomy is pretty stark, too; there are very few people in the middle."

I found this particularly interesting, as this is a conclusion that I came to when I went on the Millennials Changing America tour in late 2008. The genesis of me deciding to go to 35 cities to talk with Millennials about their take on the generation why my thinking, "OK. Here are all of these older people talking about this so-called 'Millennial Generation', but how come I've never heard of it?" And as I traveled around and spoke with members of the generation, I found that far more often than not, members of the generation had not heard of the terms "Millennial" or "Gen Y," and apparently this persists. I might suggest that now that Pew has released its How Millennial Are You quiz, and that since it appears to have proliferated the social media scape, that perhaps more Millennials have become familiar with the term. However, in my experience, all of those that I have seen report their "Millennial" results are early Millennials (late 20s), Gen Xers, or older.

Do find some time to take a look at Sharalyn's column if you have not already, and definitely spend some time with her Gen Y Gives Thanks, series. We look forward to talking with her some more soon.

17 to 25-year-olds: Take a look at Generation18 Speaks!

2010-03-05T19:37:19Z

From Generation18:

We're inviting young people all across the country (between the ages of 17 and 25) to apply for one of these cameras. Apply on or before April 12, and if you are selected, you'll have a camera for four months to film a series of short video pieces (3-5 minutes) about issues that matter to you, and to film youth taking action from marches to group meetings and from handing out fliers to storming city hall and everything in between.

We'll be putting your videos online to let your voices speak to the country about our generation, and in the fall we'll release a documentary that brings all of these stories together.

Click here to apply now for Generation18 Speaks!

You can also follow us on twitter at @generation18

A few nice bits caught on the Twitter feed.

2010-02-23T20:03:09Z

Some odds and ends we've seen pass by at our @MikeandMorley account:

[For millennials, p]hysical proximity doesn’t matter as much as it used to."
Ira Wolfe wonders: Who - exactly - do we mean when we say "entitlement generation"?
Our friend Alicia Menendez (of NDN) points out the Democrats are still most likely to succeed among millennials.

Speaking of NDN, Mike and Morley have a couple of new pieces up on the web as well:

"Rewarding Education" can be found at the NDN blog
"Democrats Rock the Vote" can be found at The Huffington Post

Answers! Visions of your ideal career!

2010-02-18T00:11:00Z

Last week we asked millennials what their vision of an ideal job/career looks like (see the full question here), and we got responses on Facebook, via email, Twitter, Buzz - seemingly every digital venue imaginable. Here are some samples of the answers we received. Please, should you feel so compelled, feel free to offer your insight in the comments section:

Ahser Platts told us: The idea career path for me, would be something that either is in the field of making the world a better place, where I can make ends meet simply by pursing my ethical interests-- or a job with high enough pay, and flexible enough hours that allows me to make ends meet and do all the things that change the world for the better, but sadly pay nothing.

Dorothee Royal-Hedinger, our friend from OrganicNation.tv suggested: Above all, my ideal career allows me to make media that challenges the status quo and promotes sustainable living. A great day for me is one that allows for exploration and creativity at every turn. With that said, I have to admit that time and following my ideals has certainly been valued over money although I certainly see the value in being properly compensated for your expertise. I've been happy to discover that my work has been able to blend what I love doing and what people want to pay me for.

Bryan Guffey explained: A job that allows me to have flexible work hours so I can continue to engage in my community, that supports my educational endeavors by investing in me, and one that creates a positive working environment by focusing on the quality of the work produced, not the number of hours it takes to produce it.

Bryan McLeod (a Gen Xer) jokingly offered: I think Peter [Griffin, of the Family Guy] had it right, and he attached this picture:

We also had two great responses via email, each of which are from millennials, and each of which will remain anonymous:

Person one, a young woman in her mid-20s, wrote:

The feeling of "needing to be needed" is something that I've thought about a lot lately. It's that feeling that unites everyone who works at [my last job] and an addiction I've obviously had to fight since working [at this less intense job] in coming to terms with the fact that the work I do isn't urgent. It doesn't need me to stay late. It doesn't compel me to sacrifice time with my family. It means that I don't get to say yes when people ask me whether or not I'm passionate about what I do. For a lot of work-addicted people like my co-workers, though, this is a deal-breaker. I imagine that it would be the case for young entrepreneurs and the ambitious millennials in your audience as well. So maybe it's a question worth raising, especially since, for the vast majority of people who are less than superhuman, the ability to keep a job that feeds into one's passion is oftentimes in direct conflict with family/friend time.

Person two, a young woman also in her mid-20s, wrote:

For me, the ideal career - in a way - is about freedom.

This means not being tied down to or aiming for a particular job, but rather seeking one that fulfills my needs and goals for personal and intellectual stimulation. I have come to understand through working both "ideal" and "unideal" jobs, often finding each to be the reverse or at least a complicated mix of the two, that it is useless to really aim hard for something particular, as opposed to keeping in mind that:

you can always learn something, and even if you think you will never use it again, you probably will
nothing is forever, especially in today's job market - meaning you could get canned big or, conversely, offered something else amazing when you least expect it
without personal pioneering and drive, you will end up in an unideal job, no matter how close it is to being exactly as you envisioned your life would unfold.

Equally, this is the approach i take regarding time/relationships with family and friends, and i think it's useful to have the same, open-minded approach - one that does not attach itself to particulars or proscriptives, but all the while remains conscious of what feels like it does and does not fit, as well as an awareness of when it is time to change/move on.

I'm not really answering your question, so much spouting a sort of abstract philosophy of life. But for me, I think, the questions you ask are so fundamentally intertwined with personal values that they become one and the same.

I will say, though, on the subject of personal values, that i absolutely think about health care, child care, sick leave, and opportunity for promotion when deserved, as - not only are they necessary, particularly later in life - but I would feel uncomfortable working for an organization for whom these issues were non-issues.

I will also say that my sort of indiscriminate freedom-loving ideas about careers is probably the result of privilege in a lot of ways, and comes from a consideration that I have been afforded by never having struggled to the point that I thought I couldn't eat or pay my rent. It has been tough at times, and I have definitely gone hungry for periods, as well as worked from age 16 to contribute to my education - but not in the same way that other, less fortunate people have had to. I would posit, perhaps, that this is likely the position a lot of our generation comes from, for many of whom career ambivalence has nothing to do with a long-thought out philosophy of freedom or desire to be happy, having significantly struggled to do so in our society, but rather from a place of sort of wanton privilege and an excess of options and opportunities. Not to say that everyone is spoiled because they have had everything handed to them, but that our culture and society presents such an overwhelming and repercussion free plethora of choices, that we sit around "waiting" for the perfect job, vacillating, never committing, just waiting for things to be perfect without feeling like we have to really work for it, and that sometimes things are shit - just like it has been for every generation that preceded us. The same can be said of our approach to relationships. Those who don't rush into marriage seem to sit in 5 to 8 year relationships, living with their partner, ostensibly participating in a "married" relationship, but keep waiting and waiting to feel like they know they really want to commit - that this is it. We seem to actively participate in the myth that you don't have to work for things, relationships included, which is troubling. Having so much, I think, has led a lot of us to have - concretely - very little indeed.