“A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much” written by Catherine Rampell is an informative article about today’s millennial generation after high school. It provides the reader with a deeper look into young people’s work ethic, or what some to think to be, lack-there-of. The author does a fantastic job using research, credible resources, and statistics to support her belief that Generation Y (children born in the 1980s and 1990s) is no less productive than previous generations. I will admit that before reading this piece, I was one of those who believed that Millennials were in fact the “coddled, disrespectful and narcissistic generation” (Rampell, 2011, para 3). After reading this article, my opinion has changed. It has touched on issues …show more content…
Previous generations have a strong belief of keeping work and home life separate; that work is for work and home is for play (Rampell, 2011, para 21). Today’s professionals do not seem to abide by similar beliefs, constantly crossing the borders of one into the other. While many recognize this as an issue that could result in employees being less productive, it has actually resulted in them accepting that their work may run late into the evening or even into the weekend. I agree with this completely in that I grew up being taught that business is business and personal is personal; you leave your home life at the door. But now times have changed, and my weekends are no longer dedicated to my home life, but for work, because I attend classes during the week. Also, in my line of work in the Allied Health industry, it is a requirement to work off hours. Long gone are the days of working nine to five, Monday through Friday; technology and the demand of wanting affairs done and done as soon as possible, has made it so the “work week” is now 24-7. “Jon Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard Institute of Politics, said, ‘Some experts also believe that today’s young people are better at quickly switching from one task to another, given their exposure to so many stimuli during their childhood and adolescence’” (Rampbell, …show more content…
Not So Much”, explains how Generation Y is not necessarily lazy, but rather conforming to fit changing times and a changing system. Her degree in journalism from Princeton, and experience in writing about economics, politics and data-driven journalism, more than qualifies her for writing about such a topic. I was one of those people who believed that today’s generation is too dependent on their parents, always looking for a hand-out and have a sense of entitlement. After reading this, I now have a slightly different opinion about Millennials. Of course, there will always be slackers in every generation whether past, present or future, but there is always more than what meets the eye. Just because someone may not spend their forty-hour work week all in the office, does not mean that they are working any less, but that because of today’s technology they can work from almost anywhere. As for the amount of graduated college students that return to live at home with their parents, it is not necessarily because they are too apathetic to go out and support themselves, but rather the reason being the high unemployment rate among sixteen to twenty-four year olds. After the Great Recession in 2009, many Millennials either lost their jobs, or were simply unable to find one after graduation. While I was raised to believe that if you wanted something, you worked for it, I truly hope that today’s generation is still
The tone during the whole plot of in Brave New World changes when advancing throughout the plot, but it often contains a dark and satiric aspect. Since the novel was originally planned to be written as a satire, the tone is ironic and sarcastic. Huxley's sarcastic tone is most noticeable in the conversations between characters. For instance, when the director was educating the students about the past history, he states that "most facts about the past do sound incredible (Huxley 45)." Through the exaggeration of words in the statement of the director, Huxley's sarcastic tone obviously is portrayed. As a result of this, the satirical tone puts the mood to be carefree.
The article “The Next Ruling Class: Meet the Organization Kid” by David Brooks, published by the Atlantic in 2001, presents a glistening, positive view of the merits of a select sample of young people in our society: highly privileged “millennials”. According to Brooks, these “future leaders” have lives which are highly organized, with time carefully choreographed to ensure future success in life. For example, today’s elite kids “are likely to spend their afternoons and weekends shuttling from one skill-enhancing activity to the next.” Millennials don’t hang out in neighborhood parks with buddies. Instead, they “lead lives that are structured, supervised, and stuffed with enrichment.”
In Caroline Porter’s article “Millennials Face Uphill Climb,” the author talks about the U.S. work market for individuals from the Millennial era as of September 30, 2013, concentrating on the expense of school, understudy advances, middle compensations, and the monetary conditions that have brought about changes to the U.S. workforce. With educated and formal diction that creates a negative tone, Porter hopes to reach her audience of Millennials to inform them about how employment has changed.
The inability to achieve “work-life balance” has become a major focus for workplace equality activists. When this topic is brought about it is primarily used to describe how woman cannot have a work and home life but instead are forced to choose. Richard Dorment took on this point of interest from a different perspective in his article “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” published with esquire. Going against the normal trend he describes how women are not the only ones put into the same sacrificial situations, but instead that men and women alike struggle to balance work and home. Dorment opens up by saying “And the truth is as shocking as it is obvious: No one can have it all.” In doing so Richard Dorment throws out the notion that one
This is the age old story of a mildly accomplished member of an older generation criticizing the emerging younger generation in the current news platform calling them lazy, entitled, self-centered, risqué, and condescendingly judges them as if their own generation was not treated the same way, or is it? Well it’s both types of article, but like any good horror movie or reality show, this article has a few surprise plot twists in store for the reader with a moderately good ending.
The Millennial Generation was brought up in a different time than the generation before them. WIth increased tragedy and the ability to see it as it is happening, parents have risen to the occasion and kept their children as sheltered as possible. In the past when children went on to achieve education beyond high school, parents considered that a step into becoming an adult. Millennial parents play taxi to any all extra curricular activities to
D’Souza’s opinions are heavily featured throughout the essay as he makes broad assumptions to convince his audience that America is humanity’s only hope. He has a tendency to group people into categories and then assign them all one common opinion. For example, D’Souza claims that Americans believe that “their country has been blessed by God, the American system is unique, and that Americans are not like people everywhere else.” America is populated by 323 million people; not all of them are going to feel that way. Philip Bump, a correspondent to the Washington Post, is an example of another writer using generalizations to make an argument. In “Why do millennials hate America?” Bump analyzes data from a 2016 Gallup poll. The poll asked Americans
The critics of the United States of America criticized millennials for not having jobs. They call millennials the lazy generation, the entitled generation, and the "me me me generation," but we aren't the "me me me generation." We're a group of determined individuals who refuse to settle because we know how great our impact can be when we find work we truly care about.
Millennials are well on their way to redefining the “American Dream.” In a world where they have to constantly exercise critical thinking to financially survive the debts the average Millennial life incurs, suggesting that their reluctance to fall into the status quo will hurt them is a stagnant, inflexible view. It only hurts those entrenched in a narrow worldview limited to one accepted lifestyle and standard of living. To this life, Millennials are thoroughly disillusioned. They’re causing all these economic ‘problems’ because they aren’t buying into the hazy suburban complacency that the traditional dream represents. It’s not just that it costs too much to get there, it’s mostly that it’s hardly achievable. Contemporary high school is less of a system for education as it is an Olympic triathlon. Students must jump through every well-nigh arbitrary hoop, competing against each other for the most scholarship money based on the right opinion said in the right words. Who was in the most meaningless clubs at the same time? Who happened to attend a school with the most extra-curricular activities or AP courses? When school – that
It is self-evident that society sees those born into the large generation of millennials as self-centered, lazy, and shallow. In the article, “Why Millennials Will Save Us All,” Joel Stein establishes this sentiment using a mix of logos and ethos, before cleverly defending the millennials by conveying his argument through a conversational tone and ethos. His initial use of statistics paints a biased picture of the typical millennial, a person on their smartphone, who lacks important social skills, the ability to make intelligent decisions, and is narcissistic to an unimaginable degree. This picture captures the millennials in the perspective of the generations before them, luring the target
The text, The Next Hundred Years, is an effective persuasive text due to the use of exigence placement, original use of metaphor, and other forms of rhetorical strategies. There are three exigencies addressed in the text, the main exigence being directed to poverty. The other two exigencies, global warming and modern weaponry, give further insight into why the world is so impoverished. The Laurates use a metaphor of destructive power to illustrate the real and terrifying power that both global warming and modern weaponry have on the world. The statement by the Laureates outlines the main issues of the world today, providing realistic solutions. The combination of both the multiple exigencies and the use of a powerful metaphor clearly
While I can certain attest to the fact that at age 25 I am far wiser than I was at age 18; I do not believe that this is the result of institutional failures. I went to a public school where I was afforded free education and electives design to help with the transition to adulthood. Like the author’s sister I too lived with my parents well in to adulthood but I contribute that to my unwillingness to advance to that next change. Students in this very institution squander federal grants by refusing to show up to class or accomplish assignment; a luxury often not found in developing nations. Hard’s economic angle lacks substance when juxtapose with much poorer countries that transition its generation Y quicker in to adulthood out of necessity. In this regard Hard’s stance on the lack of motivation being the driving force is correct but I would argue is not because of the lack of economic prosperity but the lack of urgency. Generation Y is not being drafted as 15 year olds to fight war nor are they being forced in to arrange marriage at a similar age. The factors simple do not exist that would spark such urgency, as a result this complacency is usually viewed as laziness or lacking direction. Societies pleas for millennials to grow up is usually not back up by consequences due to the institutions and social safety nets we have
In Catherine Rampell’s article, “A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much,” the idea of the younger generation, known as Generation Y or Millennials thought of as lackadaisical and indolent by older generations has been quashed by Rampell’s explanations of the differing behaviors and ideas held by these two generations, causing a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of productivity. The era of computers has especially been a major cause of such a rift, specifically the dependence on technology of which has contributed to the growth of synergistic and collaborative dispositions amongst the younger generations- behaviors once thought of as ineffectual in the workplace.
Work pressure or overload hinders people away from private life. For example, families which were irrupted by long working hours complained it was difficult for them to do housework or stay with children (Cousins & Tang, 2004). Moreover, reduced physical and psychological and lower job commitment draws depressive emotion to people, which will decrease both job and life satisfaction (Demerouti, Geurts, & Kompier, 2004; Peeters, Montgomery, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2005). More terrible consequences will happen if individuals try to put more time and energy into their work, and those effect may be past to the next generation. That can be illustrated in Gheorghiţa (2014)’s case study: Growing up with absenteeism of busy-working father, a young accountant went to work at her very early age. In order to achieve job and position commitment, may be just like what her father had done, she worked day and night with low physical and psychological conditions, dead in her late 20s because of exhausted heart attack. In this case such impacts from work to life should give individuals or organisation an alarm on how to set work task, how to treat the task, and how to keep a dynamic balance between work and
Millennials, the most narcissistic, lazy, self-absorbed, unfocused, and lastly and most important, entitled creatures of the universe, as most will readily agree. When it comes to arguing over them, where it usually ends, however is, is this really true? The reason being is because although many readily agree that millennials are entitled such as Simon Sinek (2016) and his belief that millennials were “dealt with a bad hand” (p. 4) and now corporations should pick up the slack, others are convinced that these millennials are creating a positive impact on shaping the modern-day work force. In Simon Sinek’s (2016) recent interview, he shares his view of millennials making the workforce adapt to them, rather than millennials having to adapt to