Recently, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed that young adults are spoiled and “think work is a four-letter word,” right before blaming our iPods, televisions and cell phones for making us reliant on “instant gratification.” Basically, we’re a bunch of brats.
Way to appeal to your potential voter demographic for 2008, Hil. That’ll have 18 to 24-year-olds really rushing to the polls this time – if they can tear themselves away from their iPods and the latest episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Clinton’s questionable political strategy aside, comments like that are another indication of how everyone seems to hate the youth of America.
I’d like to take this opportunity to defend my generation – and not with firearms, tattoos, punk music, or whatever you think people my age use to challenge authority.
I’ll admit that the campus culture doesn’t always put us in a good light. At about 2 a.m., the Res Quad morphs into Loyola’s own Sodom and Gomorrah as wobbly students return home from a night of binge drinking. And who knows what immorality goes on inside the dorms. Let’s just say that you’re not at “Critical Thinking University” anymore.
Maybe we don’t always exemplify Jesuit ideals to the fullest extent, but I still refuse to believe that we’re as depraved as people say we are.
We only engage in these activities because we can. We don’t have full-time jobs or children yet, and our young bodies are still capable of handling hard liquor, second-hand smoke and late-night junk food binges. Let us enjoy the collegiate utopia before we’re thrust into the real world, where we’ll spend our late 20s overweight, disillusioned and destitute.
Professors love to talk about how we’re all a bunch of heathens. They think it’s hilarious to slip in clever little comments about our weekend activities (“Too hungover to be on time for class, eh?”), and then proceed to dismiss anything we say if it’s not up to par with their intellectuality.
Professors: we’re obviously not as smart as you. That’s why you have Ph.Ds and we work at the mall. Forget our immoral weekend activities for a second – we want to learn if we made it to your class. We don’t deserve this.
And believe it or not, when we’re not busy causing the decay of society, we’re doing some good. LUCAP kids wake up every weekend gutting houses and feeding the hungry. Muslim students, although surrounded by temptation, still fast during Ramadan. And considering that the vices they abstain from constitute the college experience for most people, that’s impressive.
Give us some credit. We may not have advanced decision-making abilities or the sharpest mental acuity just yet, but that’s why we’re in college.
We could just skip college if we were born with the intelligence and sensibility it takes to earn six-figure salaries, but we weren’t. College – and the hangovers, bad grades and weight gain it brings – has the potential to mold us into effective adults. You just need to deal with us until we get to that point.
