Splicetoday

On Campus
Jan 29, 2009, 04:44AM

The Doomed Generation

The economy has caused a collective frightened shudder to pass through those Americans about to enter the work force.

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My friends and I joke about the quarter-life crisis, the period of one’s life where the fantasy college world is reaching an end and the bleak realities of finding a job, starting a family, getting an apartment and negotiating torrents of bills, paperwork, and taxes slowly take over. Until this point, young people spend their entire lives being told what to do. We are told which classes fill our major requirements and our life is run by a set schedule of classrooms and lecture times. We walk this road for approximately 22 years only to find that it ends in an open field, and it’s time to decide what to do now. If you’re lucky, you have it all mapped out by this point, but many do not, and with a job market as unreliable as the current one, more students than ever will take those diplomas and feel utterly confused.

We’re the doomed generation. America fucked us over and we’re scared. Even if someone is fortunate enough to land a job, he is constantly reminded that it might be temporary. Companies are going bankrupt. People are being laid off. Debts from student loans are crushing a graduate’s dream of making it on his own and more and more people are finding their futures in their parents’ basement.

As a college junior I’m lucky that I have another year to prepare, another year to hope that things will get better. My kick-in-the-ass moment came during at what should have been a pub happy hour. The conversation turned toward graduation, and our table went silent. I was sitting across from the nephew of one of America’s most powerful CEOs and he couldn’t find a job anywhere.

What are we going to do? As school comes to an end, students will simply refuse to leave. Graduate school is quickly becoming an escape from unemployment, a way to postpone dealing with the recession for a few more years. What’s sad is that this is most often not what the student wants to do. He wants to get out into the working world and start his whole life plan but he’s stuck in the classroom.

Employers don’t seem to be hesitant to remind the terrified masses of students of this fact. Over the past few months I’ve spoken with about 20 representatives from different companies in New York and Baltimore, and the words “not currently hiring” is the prevailing theme. At a career open house I attended in early January, several companies didn’t even bother to show up. They left signs reading “Place resumes in folder” and the dismayed students slipped theirs in and scurried nervously toward the employers that actually attended.

However, we’re lucky in the fact that our generation was forced to grow up early, and we’re aware of the challenges and troubles that face the world. When we were kids and should have been enjoying ourselves, we had to ask our parents why terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Our first two presidents, who served as our introduction to government and politics, were characterized in popular culture as a narcissist and an outright moron. We had the Internet, giving us access to any information we could find, and social networking sites that taught us about the sex predators on our computer screens. We had school shootings, huffing, rainbow parties, and wrist-cutting before we hit high school. The apparent eradication of any forms of censorship led us to see the darker realities of the world with young eyes. And now we have a version of the Great Depression. But after we finish graduate school, break into the shattered job market and begin paying off debts, we will make up an extremely strong, dedicated work force because of these challenges.

After growing up in a period of history characterized by war, tragedy, and fear, we now have a president who offers us the emblem of “hope,” which to many people, seems like a new idea. The best that the doomed generation can do now is put a little faith in that promise while we wait for the nation to fix itself again.

Discussion
  • I don't think Obama would be pleased about the author's closing line "wait for the nation to fix itself." He'd probably encourage you to "get out there and fix it yourself, son!"

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  • Sorry to be negative, but I find this article to be a whine-fest. Hey, at least you're in college and can make tuition payments. I have no doubt that college graduates will fare better than those who didn't go. Maybe the "Doomed Generation" will have to scale back their dreams, but isn't that what the whole country is doing right now?

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  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVoQfoU0dQ

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  • I'm worried too (finishing grad school this summer seems way too soon), but "doomed generation"? I think the only thing that makes us more doomed than any other generation is the ecological crisis. We have had ample trauma in our formative years, but we have had no Somme or Antietam, no consumption or plague. We are just as doomed as any other generation, and remember that we live in the first world and have high-speed internet connections, and so are far less doomed than billions of our contemporaries.

  • The lack of perspective and understanding in this article is downright embarrassing and a little offensive. "We’re the doomed generation. America fucked us over and we’re scared." Pardon my French, but get a fucking clue. You are, by all accounts, a somewhat successful and able college student. You'll most likely graduate from whatever institution you're currently enrolled at with a legitimate degree and a pretty significant resume (if you're writing here, you're probably not just lying around, hoping you'll get a job). How about the systemic poverty that's plagued America for centuries now? How about those who aren't lucky or able to go to college? The fact that, maybe, you'll have to work a random retail job when you graduate from college doesn't negate the fact that the average working man--the blue-collar citizens that you're completely ignoring--are in a significantly worse position than you are. Think it’s hard to find a job with a degree? Imaging the surplus of overqualified college grads swiping jobs from the people who truly need them. You need to pay off student loans and you’re worried. They need to feed their families. How serious a lack of compassion and understanding do you have to have to write something like "I was sitting across from the nephew of one of America’s most powerful CEOs and he couldn’t find a job anywhere" and not see the inherent irony and self-pity involved. Sure, the economy is bad, but please think about what you say before you assume that everyone has it as good as you.

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  • Couldn't agree more with cgaerig. It is not your generation that is doomed, it is your sense of entitlement and overall attitude that is doomed.

  • "We walk this road for approximately 22 years only to find that it ends in an open field." Culled from Robert Frost's lost manuscript, "The road taken to grad school," yes? Anyway, I thought it was a lovely description of that terrifying pause at the end of childhood. Also, what are rainbow parties?

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  • http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rainbow%20Parties Two things: 1) Has that ever actually happened... to anyone? 2) Does that really deserve to be on the same list with "school shootings," "huffing," and "wrist-cutting"? Because it sounds pretty fun.

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  • There is no better thing to promote the ol' American values of self reliance and independence than when the sense of entitlement is doomed.

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  • Ewwww. Decline of Rome, sounds like...

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  • Really?

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  • I see your pain. Finished grad school by last spring. Has been tough and tumbling since then. But what does not kill me strengthens me.

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  • I feel for the young people today, this must be a scary climate to be jettisoned out to. I never thought I'd feel lucky to have a (blue collar) job with benefits that pays my rent but I do. All I can tell you is to take any job you can get and in your free time keep writing and doing what you really want to do. Life is short, but it's also a cereal. It was once a magazine, but not anymore.

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  • Demian - Is this your working script for a new, edgy and political sequel to "Garden State" or a glamorized blog entry? Either way, every generation bitches and moans that the world's going to hell and it always works out. Save it for when you're curmudgeonly and old - it'll be less whiny and faux deep then. Let's all drink some beers and realize we're - for the most part - privileged white kids with no REAL problems.

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  • I enjoyed reading your synopsis of the shit we've gone through... reminded me of the good and bad times had by all... I'll never forget my first rainbow party.

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  • the beginning of this sounds like a Simple Plan song. i disagree that our generation had to grow up early. we all watched pokemon until are late teens won't start paying back college loans until mid-20's. Sure we had 9/11, but there's no way it gave us more perspective than vietnam, the cold war or world war 2. we're the chubbiest, most distracted generation.

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  • oh, that was you!

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  • You spend your life being told what to do. In college, if you skip one too many classes, you lose the class. At work, if you skip one too many classes, you lose your ass. The world has always been characterized by war, tragedy and fear. Every generation of my family since the Revolution has fought someone. Once we killed each other. Every generation has suffered tragedy and been afraid. The good thing about right now is that things are about to change. A more educated population is fed up and we realize that when we fight it's because of the governments and not the people. We don't hate the Iraqi's, Russians, Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese. The governments hate each other and they kill us over it. We didn't tell the government to go out and borrow $14 trillion and spend it on things that they mostly are not supposed to be doing destroying our economy in the process. We didn't tell our government to turn our economy over to a private bank. Things are going to change now sooner rather than later. It won't be with Obama because he is just a reaction to our anger and he is doing the same things. Unfortunately you are being caught at the beginning of the change. Fortunately, you can help make sure it happens.

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  • Proletariat! Rise up! Throw off the shackles of the Bourgeoisie! Be your own masters!

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  • I think you should stop whining and suck it up. Plenty of jobs will be available by the time you graduate college, and believe me, having a college degree (especially from Hopkins) will help you considerably.

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  • I just got my first permanent job after college, 2 years after graduation. I didn't get it by complaining about the job market on the net. Go out there and make money, at a temp job if that's all you can get. This link might help you: http://tinyurl.com/3vfqv

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  • I for one am aiming to up the ante for destroying America. Do we really want those pussy boomers to hold the record for fucking shit up? There's plenty more down to go, fellow Doom-Geners (Gen-D-ers?), plenty more.

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  • "After growing up in a period of history characterized by war, tragedy, and fear, we now have a president who offers us the emblem of “hope,” which to many people, seems like a new idea. The best that the doomed generation can do now is put a little faith in that promise while we wait for the nation to fix itself again." Demian Kendall, The only war, terror, fear and tragedy you've ever known has come from your television. The 24 hour news you've been tuning into for the last eight years is just as fabricated as 24. You know fear, terror, war and tragedy only as entertainment. Faith is bullshit. Obama will not save us, and neither will God for that matter. The only salvation to be had is that which we make for ourselves. No one will give you a job. You have to find one or make one, period. Our generation will be defined by the blood, sweat and tears we shed to overcome adversity unlike the world has ever seen. You, and the sniveling assholes like you are a blight on our nation and a burden to our future. I don't know who you are but you have two options as of this moment. 1) Get your head out of your ass, find a problem, and use your brain to fix it or 2) get the fuck out of my country because I am not going to carry your dead weight.

  • First off, all you know about me is what you inferred from the 800 words I wrote, so why don't you keep the personal attacks to yourself. Nothing I wrote implied that I think a job will be "handed to me" or that I have any sense of entitlement at all. If you siphoned that out from what I wrote, then it wasn't intentional. I'd love to talk more about how "entertaining" I found the terrorist attacks, war, and genocide of the past twenty years, but unfortunately, this "sniveling asshole" has a hefty stack of job applications to get through (the compilation of three months of hard work) and you've already wasted five minutes of my time.

  • Wryenmeek, you've got a very serious problem. It's called being an incredible asshole. What are you doing to carry the "dead weight" of those who can't find a job. Are you a philanthropist? A volunteer at a homeless center or house for battered women and children? Demian Kendall's article might've been somewhat self-pitying, but he didn't deserve to be nuked by your undeniably inarticulate comments.

  • Demian, Fist off I apologize for the personal attack - the frustration I expressed is really for a much broader group of our peers which are a lot harder to rail at. Your article was a convenient target for that frustration in the wee hours of the morning. That said I'd like expound a bit. 1. Using "we" language. In the future I would caution you against using "we" when expressing your personal opinions. In doing so you are effectively speaking for other people (see paragraphs 1,2,5,6). Your writing does not seem to reflect an awareness of "we" beyond your individual experience. The political substitution of "I" for "We" and "my" for "our" is a dangerous ambiguity and a disservice to the health of national political discourse. (and so was my trollish post for that matter) 2. "Nothing I wrote implied that I think a job will be "handed to me" or that I have any sense of entitlement at all" Fist off most of your commentators here and on reddit.com are inclined to disagree with you. As a writer you should not summarily dismiss this. If your intention was not to communicate this notion of entitlement then you need to examine what you said and how you said it because your intentions and your words are not matching up. "We’re the doomed generation. America fucked us over and we’re scared." "The best that the doomed generation can do now is put a little faith in that promise while we wait for the nation to fix itself again." Both of these statements frame your piece in the language of victimization. In our culture victims are entitled to reparations politically, economically, and judicially. The passive language of the piece as a whole reinforces a sense of complacency and a "sit on your hands" approach to solving national issues. 3. "We are better prepared via adversity," I think is what you were going for in paragraph 6. In general I agree that past adversity can prepare us for future tribulation but I disagree with what you consider adversity. I don't think you realize just how easy a time most of us have had it over the last twenty years - not when you compare it to the trials of people outside the United States. Its those conditions that we have been sheltered from for so long that we are about to confront.

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  • hunchback, The comment was pretty harsh and I apologized for the undue antagonism. In response to your reply - I think you missed the point of my comment. The "dead weight" is not the jobless. It is the members of our society who want something for nothing. It is the people who are waiting for some one else to solve their problems instead of working to solve their problems themselves. It is those who seek to hoard benefits for themselves and pass on liabilities to others. It is those who seek to contribute less to society than they gain from it. Those are the people I have so much contempt for. This approach of no holes barred individual profiteering saturates our culture and will be the end of us if we don't see it for the poison that it is.

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  • hmm, reminded me of this: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3893/

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