The Daily Riff - BE SMARTER. ABOUT EDUCATION.

Impressed with the way 20-something author, Noreen Malone, of New York magazine's cover story, "The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright," handled herself with a barrage of mainly negative-leading questions on today's MSNBC's Morning Joe.  She wrapped up the segment with a surprise statement about #occupywallstreet which has been occupying much of my attention of late-
 
Do check out the video below.  Great insight to the must-read article and very cool slide show  about how 20-somethings are managing.  Not what I thought it would be. 

Key topics:

• The two long-term social experiments that produced this generation (parents guilty, of course)
• Regret about going to college ("our generation's ultimate blasphemy")
• Why young people are just not into anger anymore ("dystopian news" via Jon Stewart)
• Pushing back life's milestones (job, home-buying)
• Not being into "stuff" (this was most interesting - Shop Class as Soulcraft)
• Having "locus control" (not depending on outside people for fulfillment vs. previous gen)

 
An excerpt from a G-chat that introduces the conversation:

So as I began to search for a single phrase that could, preposterously, describe our entire cohort, post-crash, I did what I always do in moments of crisis. I Gchatted my 24-year-old sister Clare, who happens to be living back at home with our parents while she looks for a job:

• (10:24 p.m.) CLARE: how about they just call us SAA
  self-absorbed assholes
  
  ME: booo
  
  CLARE: we need a D
  to make it really good
  
  SAD - self-absorbed delusionals
  
  (10:28) CLARE:
  our generation is:
  delayed
  afraid
  immature
  
  (10:29) independent
  fame and glory hungry
  (ambitious?)
  weirdly apathetic when it comes to things outside of the internet
  
  (10:32) ME: delayed is not our fault
  
  CLARE: ok, you know what i always think about when i think of our generation? i read the david brooks book, "The social Animal" and while it was only mediocre, he had this one really great bit that really stuck with me - the Greek ideal of "thumos", which is the lust not for money or success (in the conventional sense) but the lust for glory
  we want glory through our ideas-we want to know we matter
  
  (10:33) the cold truth is that not all of us are brilliant
  we are not all big thinkers. Not everyone's TED talks will change the world
  some of us will just dissipate into the ether
  
  (10:34) but it is the digital connectivity, that proximity to these people, that makes us think that perhaps we will succeed as well
  
  (10:35) ok, i'm done
  
  (10:36) no i'm not
  here's why the recession is so devastating to us
  we grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible
   
  (10:37) we had a PC education - people tried to hide from us as long as possible that not everyone is equal
  we were told we all have a fair chance of making it
  that's just not so
  and we're starting to realize that . . .

Let us know what you think ---