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By Aisha Sultan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A friend knew his college-age daughter's generation was screwed when he attended her fifth-grade graduation.
The entire class sang a song about how special and great they were for matriculating from elementary school.
"Seriously?" he wondered. "You think you're so great for graduating fifth grade?"
I've wondered how the Self Esteem generation is handling 10 percent unemployment.
All those years of pats on the back can make a kick in the pants feel a whole lot worse.
Unlike those of us who grew up through a recession or worse, the kids who've grown up in boom times, coupled with so much ego stroking, unsurprisingly, have an unreasonable sense of entitlement.
I asked a friend who works closely with college students how they are dealing with slim job prospects. "They aren't," he responded. "They're living at home complaining that they can't get $100,000-a-year positions." Or they're headed to graduate school. Or doing one- or two-year service tours to find self-realization or to pad their resumes. Not all of them. But many.
Have we bred survival of the fittest out of our children with our unrelenting praise?
Is this lousy job market the first time they are being told that they aren't good enough?
Randa Kuziez, 23, is working on her master's degree in international affairs at Washington University. She has a yearlong fellowship from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to work on getting college students involved in addressing the issue of malaria vis-a-vis their personal or communal faith.
She's seen lots of bruised egos.
"A lot of my friends are in that experience. I'm surrounded by these incredibly intelligent young people who have these huge degrees and are not able to get jobs," Kuziez said. "It's truly bad for one's morale, especially when we've been told that we are going to make such a big difference in the world."
She remembers living with her parents when she graduated from St. Louis University in 2007 and didn't have a job. She found projects she wanted to work on outside of her field.
"At the same time, it wasn't easy," she said.
But she doesn't necessarily blame the self-esteem boosting movement force-fed to so many of her peers.
"It was important because it created a lot of young optimists who felt they could make a difference," she said. She agreed, however, that these days, they're getting a dose of reality.
"It certainly isn't making the situation easier for them right now," Kuziez said. "People have such high levels of confidence, sometimes it's excessive."
I recently spoke to a high school class of journalism students. I did not paint pretty pictures or tell funny stories. I wanted them to get a clear-eyed picture of where the industry is and the uncertainty ahead. And, when I asked how many of them read a daily news source, whether in print or online, a few raised their hands. I advised the others that perhaps they should consider another career choice.
Of course, it's a competition, kids. And there are no rewards (or jobs) for simply showing up.
Perhaps, for today's young graduates, the recession has taught a much-needed lesson: Merit and excellence matter more than effort.
———
(Aisha Sultan is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Contact her at asultan@post-dispatch.com.)
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