The millenial generation

Apparently there is a name for the generation that was born between around 1981 to 1995, meaning we were still in pre-college schools at the time of the new millenium, and we have been called, of course, the millenial generation (or generation Y). I happen to be a part of this generation, and have read a few articles on the characteristics that I am being lumped in as having. For the most part I agree with the assessment of this generation, either from my own characteristics or those of the majority of people that I know that are around my age.

The first attribute is that we are exceptionally tech-savvy, and I have no doubt that this is the case, mainly because we grew up with fairly sophisticated electronics and had to learn to use them. This wasn't only because we needed them, but I found that when my parents would buy a new electronic device, it was usually my job to figure out how it works because they didn't have the time or patience to deal with it. Then I would either teach them the basics or they would tell me what they wanted and I would do it for them. For the most part we have this attribute out of a need to help others more than for ourselves, although at this stage in my life I am using the skills more for myself.

Another characteristic that I found interesting was that there is a general lack of loyalty to an employer which mainly stems from the fact that we believe we are valuable enough to them that if we don't like the job we can find another employer to be valuable to. This one I blame mainly on the way we were brought up, not only by our parents, but by the public school system and the pressures they put on our teachers of how to treat us. We were the kids that got trophies at the end of the soccer season, even if we were in last place. We got awards like "most improved" and "most enthusiasm" even if we contributed the least to the team's success. It wasn't our fault, we didn't decide to reward mediocrity, it was because of the pressures of society saying every child should be treated equally. That and the fact that parents of this generation could never accept the fact that someone else's child was better than their's at anything. It's amusing to me that parents thought this was doing their child a favor by never pointing out their flaws, when in fact I expect it will be the downfall of many in this generation when their flaws are pointed out by others later on in life. I also hated losing a ball game because everyone had to get equal play time when it could have easily been won if they had sat out more, of course when I made the varsity soccer team in high school I rarely played and hated it, but we did win. Hmmm.

One attribute I want to add to the list is that we are also exceptionally good at getting wires untangled. I can't even tell you how many times in my life I've had to figure out how to get a wad of wires from a tangled mess to a nicely placed and separated set of wires. The most common occurence was with game system controllers, but this also occurs in wiring for computers, stereos, televisions, and almost anything else that has multiple wires. Now all the game systems have wireless controllers, and I expect most electronics will be using wires less and less in the future, meaning the next generations will never be faced with learning this skill. It's always fun to watch someone try to untangle wires when you can tell they have no clue as to how to go about it and all the mistakes they make that you made years ago and learned from to become the expert that you are.