Kids these days

As many of the readers of the Indiana Daily Student know, writers like myself actually get paid for the articles we submit each week. It’s a small incentive to keep writers writing, and it lets me boost my ego slightly by being able to call myself a “professional writer.”

However, what most people don’t know is what we get paid. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it’s not exactly a livable wage. It’s because of this, and because of that fantastic out-of-state tuition I have to pony up every year, that I had to get a full-time job.

Now, I have no problem working the job I have. I know times are still tough for some people and we live in a society that necessitates the trade of labor for financial gain. Cash rules everything around me and all that.

The thing I’ve been having a little trouble with is the amount of people I know who are finding out I now have a full-time job.

These people are usually older than me, and the conversation almost always comes back to how useless my generation is.

“Good for you!” they’ll say, slapping me on the back. “It’s good to see young people taking initiative! You see, that’s what’s wrong with this generation. No
work ethic.”

Statements like these irritate me, mainly for two reasons.

First of all, they assume that my generation is the first to be called lazy, apathetic or just generally less than the one before it. This, of course, is completely untrue.

Even Plato ragged on the generations that came after his. Despite being one of the fathers of logic and reason, Plato still fell prey to youth bashing. He said young people “ignore the law” and “disobey their parents.” He even noted that “their morals are
decaying.”

Decaying morals, huh? Sound familiar? If you were to go back and search newspapers from every year for the past 100 years, I guarantee that at least once a month an article could be found decrying the decay of “traditional morals.”

And while the fact that people generally ignore information like this is seriously annoying, it isn’t what really gets me.

What really irritates me is that this whole idea assumes that my entire generation is the exact same, which couldn’t be further from
the truth.

Sure, my full-time schedule might make me seem hardworking when compared to slackers, but what about the 22-year-olds who work two jobs to help their families? Am I lazy because I don’t work 60 hours a week?

And what about the German teen who recently devised a solution to a mathematical problem that baffled Sir Isaac Newton? Hell, he’s accomplished more by 16 than most people have by 40.

My point here is that thinking an entire generation is or isn’t lazy is ridiculous. Plato’s complaints obviously didn’t mean much. If morals had been destroyed in his time, what would Fox News be able to shout about every other week?

So, don’t lump my entire generation together, expecting us all to be the same. I’m neither a sinner nor a saint for working full time. I’m just trying to pay some bills.

­— kevsjack@indiana.edu