(Non-fiction) Rant from 2000
There's a new phenomenom in our society, one that has been born of education, limitless choices and hippie parents. We call it our quarter-life crisis.
See, it goes like this. When we are younger, we're forced to go to school - get an education. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we can all admit most kids would rather have continual recess. When primary school ends, we all head off to high school. Then we're sorted into groups, not always knowing whats in store for us, or realising this will affect the rest of our lives. The high school only crowd finish grade 12 and go into the workforce, usually having the same, or similar, jobs all their lives. The community college crowd are next, shuttled into job preparation courses and receiving a practical education for a decent career. Finally there's the university bound kids in pursuit of a "higher" education, whatever that means (usually a lot of pot). We got to choose majors like engineering and english, history and philosophy. Well sure, we learned to dream big and think critically and open doors to endless opportunities. So what has that really brought us? A quarter life crisis.
We graduated from university into a world with no jobs, especially for the over educated and under experienced. The baby boomers are still hard at work, and with a crappy economy there are always huge layoffs, not hirings. Add to this the fact that most of us don't know what we want to be when we grow up, since our degrees didn't really prepare us for an actual job, and that we have overwhelming student loan debts. A rather crippling start.
It begins with the realization that we don't know what we want to be when we grow up. But at 25 we are grown up. We have rent and bills to pay. We want to buy big, expensive things like cars and houses. We are trying to find our life partner. We want plenty of free time to see movies, plays and concerts, visit museums and galleries (my, aren't we cultured) and spend our weekends mountain-biking the Bruce Trail or canoeing in Algonquin Park. We want health and dental benefits because most of us had them through school and never used them, but now we want to go to the dentist. We want to buy all the books that are on our reading lists, to create our own library, we want to buy our favourite CD's and DVD's. We want to go grocery shopping and not centre the trip around the Kraft Dinner and Mr. Noodle section of the store, as we realize there is more to food than pasta.
But we can't do this because we don't have jobs, or work at coffee shops making $7 an hour and spare change as tips. That means working over a hundred hours a month to pay for rent alone.
We are not Generation X! We are the generation after X. We are the Muppet Generation. We grew up with Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. Kermit and Fozzie and Grover are our earliest childhood memories. We learned all about co-op-er-a-tion and counting to 12 and we expected thunder and lighting to follow that successful count. We envied John-John and his little chats with Kermie and Grover. We were all a little afraid of Miss Piggy and the guy with the bomerang fish.
We learned that monsters are not always scary, and that size doesn't matter, and that good friends can be black or white or blue or green or purple or have two heads. We grew up more tolerant and more hopeful than most before us. We weren't afraid of "the Bomb", we watched the Iron Curtain fall and the Berlin Wall come crashing down. We watched them Free Nelson Mandela. We grew up without a World War or a Vietnam.
We grew up through the "me" decade, Reganomics and Thatcher telling us "there is no society, only individuals and their families". We grew up with Atari and Colleco-vision; frogger and astroids. We were the beginning of the computer-literate generations that began with Commodore 64, trackerballs and giant floppy disks and tapes. We lived through a recession and the free trade deal that sent our factories south. We saw the end of the fishing industry on both coasts. We saw AIDS go from a "fag" disease to something on everybodies mind.
And now, here we are at the start of the 21st century, struggling to define ourselves, struggling to find politics we can believe in since we've watched every current system fail. Struggling to find a religion - too disallusioned by the current wars and religions fanaticism that fuels them to believe in the current incarnations of any God. We don't fully believe in science, either, since it has failed to stop the AIDS epidemic or cure cancer or mend the holes in the Ozone Layer. We are the first generation to fully realize that we humans have killed our planet and that she is dying much more quickly because of us.
We want it all, as we were taught we deserved it all during the 80's. But we don't know where to start, and no one wants to help us out. Where do we go from here?
See, it goes like this. When we are younger, we're forced to go to school - get an education. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we can all admit most kids would rather have continual recess. When primary school ends, we all head off to high school. Then we're sorted into groups, not always knowing whats in store for us, or realising this will affect the rest of our lives. The high school only crowd finish grade 12 and go into the workforce, usually having the same, or similar, jobs all their lives. The community college crowd are next, shuttled into job preparation courses and receiving a practical education for a decent career. Finally there's the university bound kids in pursuit of a "higher" education, whatever that means (usually a lot of pot). We got to choose majors like engineering and english, history and philosophy. Well sure, we learned to dream big and think critically and open doors to endless opportunities. So what has that really brought us? A quarter life crisis.
We graduated from university into a world with no jobs, especially for the over educated and under experienced. The baby boomers are still hard at work, and with a crappy economy there are always huge layoffs, not hirings. Add to this the fact that most of us don't know what we want to be when we grow up, since our degrees didn't really prepare us for an actual job, and that we have overwhelming student loan debts. A rather crippling start.
It begins with the realization that we don't know what we want to be when we grow up. But at 25 we are grown up. We have rent and bills to pay. We want to buy big, expensive things like cars and houses. We are trying to find our life partner. We want plenty of free time to see movies, plays and concerts, visit museums and galleries (my, aren't we cultured) and spend our weekends mountain-biking the Bruce Trail or canoeing in Algonquin Park. We want health and dental benefits because most of us had them through school and never used them, but now we want to go to the dentist. We want to buy all the books that are on our reading lists, to create our own library, we want to buy our favourite CD's and DVD's. We want to go grocery shopping and not centre the trip around the Kraft Dinner and Mr. Noodle section of the store, as we realize there is more to food than pasta.
But we can't do this because we don't have jobs, or work at coffee shops making $7 an hour and spare change as tips. That means working over a hundred hours a month to pay for rent alone.
We are not Generation X! We are the generation after X. We are the Muppet Generation. We grew up with Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. Kermit and Fozzie and Grover are our earliest childhood memories. We learned all about co-op-er-a-tion and counting to 12 and we expected thunder and lighting to follow that successful count. We envied John-John and his little chats with Kermie and Grover. We were all a little afraid of Miss Piggy and the guy with the bomerang fish.
We learned that monsters are not always scary, and that size doesn't matter, and that good friends can be black or white or blue or green or purple or have two heads. We grew up more tolerant and more hopeful than most before us. We weren't afraid of "the Bomb", we watched the Iron Curtain fall and the Berlin Wall come crashing down. We watched them Free Nelson Mandela. We grew up without a World War or a Vietnam.
We grew up through the "me" decade, Reganomics and Thatcher telling us "there is no society, only individuals and their families". We grew up with Atari and Colleco-vision; frogger and astroids. We were the beginning of the computer-literate generations that began with Commodore 64, trackerballs and giant floppy disks and tapes. We lived through a recession and the free trade deal that sent our factories south. We saw the end of the fishing industry on both coasts. We saw AIDS go from a "fag" disease to something on everybodies mind.
And now, here we are at the start of the 21st century, struggling to define ourselves, struggling to find politics we can believe in since we've watched every current system fail. Struggling to find a religion - too disallusioned by the current wars and religions fanaticism that fuels them to believe in the current incarnations of any God. We don't fully believe in science, either, since it has failed to stop the AIDS epidemic or cure cancer or mend the holes in the Ozone Layer. We are the first generation to fully realize that we humans have killed our planet and that she is dying much more quickly because of us.
We want it all, as we were taught we deserved it all during the 80's. But we don't know where to start, and no one wants to help us out. Where do we go from here?
posted by Deirdre at 12:31 a.m.
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