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I was happy for both the editor and the journalism graduate in Emily's story of a freelance assignment in the profession they both love. It emerged after her chronicle of the tough job market for newly-hatched graduate students, just as their fields are contracting. Since they are young, at least these earnest potential leaders have time to ride out the bad economy. Megan McArdle writes today on the Atlantic's website that workers over 55 who lose their jobs usually do not get rehired, ever. White collar workers, such as executives and journalists, whose salaries are inflated by years of seniority, find the experience they bring to a job, though useful, is no longer cost-effective for their organizations. The resulting layoffs and buyouts have rendered many able baby boomers unemployable way before their children's educations are fully paid for. These men and women of a certain age must use their well-learned skills to reinvent their professional identities just when they were hoping to coast into retirement. I know the kids will be ok. They are resilient, sharp and still free of the expenses of a family. The older workers need to be more resourceful as their specialized knowledge gets rebooted and rebottled. They won't have the jobs they expected to have, but they can still think for a living. Fortunately, as we mature we learn to adapt. As much as I want to see the next generation of leaders find platforms for their strong ideas and their wondrous inventions, I am eager to see what last best contributions the b-generation will offer the commonwealth before they take their elderly parents' places at the condo pool.
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Your question is valid, Jessica; comfort indeed breeds complacency, but that's not all bad. Your cohort has benefited greatly from movements and legal challenges brought by your mothers and grandmothers, and the indignities you did not suffer afford you a deep sense of security in your rights and opportunities (not to mention safe, sterile abortions). Your forebears' storm-the-barricades protests resulted in the confident, educated, creative, and self-aware women of your generation. Lacking belly fire on issues you consider long-settled does not mean that you are a bunch of wimps, however. Boomers are entirely too invested in their own methods. You will fight your ideological battles in your own style, bringing cool-headed aptitude and intelligence to challenges that, inevitably, will need to be overcome.
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Emily, I can't reconcile the conflict your freshly minted Generation Y (is it Gen Z now?) has embraced of eschewing privacy, which you all seem happy to do, yet expecting, even demanding as you wrote, "complete control over the private information we make public." The uncomfortable truth is you can never remove all traces of the past. That said, your general forthrightness and candor about your own lives shows a trust and wonder missing during my cohort's coming of age. My pre-alphabet age group of former flower children thought ourselves bold and experimental, but we only flirted with the openness and lovely acceptance members of your on-beyond-zebra generation typically show one another. Each of you inhabits her own skin so comfortably and displays such cheerful self-confidence, it does your elders proud. We third- and fourth-wave Facebook users now crowding your playground are grateful for your gracious reception, but Emily, you are also at the age when you come to realize we can't control what people know about us. We live in a public environment and people like to observe one another. You can't hold a megaphone and then tell people not to listen, nor take pictures of yourselves, post them, and expect the images to remain unseen. Despite the harsh trade-off, I say, go for it. Create as many online personae as you wish to, express yourselves honestly and sincerely, and enjoy the marvelous digital era you were lucky to be born into. Although you do not control who sees what you post nor what they do with it, remember, you will always have absolute power over what you say next.
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