Thoughts on Millennials Entering Workforce

http://hummersandcigarettes.blogspot.com/2008/12/trophy-kids-entering-work-force.html

Katrina's "Hidden" Race War? Are You Kidding Me?

Lately, I've read quite a bit about Hurricane Katrina's "Hidden Race War." During Katrina, Professor Kathleen Bergin and I blogged about what we saw in Houston during the "relief" effort (to be fair, some of the effort was a relief; some of it, though, was shameful beyond words). We and many, many others raised issues of race. And we were in Houston. We weren't even in Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama, where the worst of the natural and unnatural disasters happened.

We were called delusional, hysterical, unpatriotic and treated as race traitors. Three years later, it's breaking news that there is toxic deadly racism that occurred during the storm and continued in the aftermath (and continues right now, this very minute, today) in the Deep South? Wow . . .

E-mail Etiquette Revisited

I'm actually not even sure this topic qualifies as e-mail "etiquette." "Etiquette" -- to me, anyway -- seems to indicate advanced rules for playing. This is more like E-Mail Common Sense. Except that, for Millennials, this stuff isn't common sense. I've actually started including an E-Mail Policy in my syllabus at the beginning of each semester. I know that a lot of professors think that Millennial students' use of e-mail is rude, but I really don't believe it is. I say that because, when I started using this policy, the e-mail issues I noticed ground to a halt. I think students honestly didn't know that it matters whether your e-mails contain grammatical errors. It matters whether you use "smileys" in e-mails to professors. It matters whether you address someone by a title (Prof. McGaugh) or their first name (Tracy). It especially matters if the salutation you choose is "Hey."

In a future post, I'll include my e-mail policy.

In the meantime, here are some funny (and representative) e-mails sent to university professors by students. Courtesy of the Chronicle . . .

Ancient Rome, Millennial-style . . .

Like any new technology, the Internet has been a blessing and a curse in the educational setting. Computer and Internet use have been huge distractions in classrooms, according to some educators. However, they've also allowed us to do and see things that were never possible before. If you want to know how to captivate students to learn things that "every educated person ought to know," particularly when they have the option of just Googling the answer when they need it instead of storing it in their brains for a rainy day, you could do something like the Ancient Rome 3D project from Google Earth. If anything can encourage students to learn tons of potentially useless information, it's cool computer stuff.

From an e-mail I received from Google Educator:

A joint effort between Google, the Rome Reborn Project, and Past Perfect Productions, the new Ancient Rome 3D Layer in Google Earth allows users to view and explore over 6700 3D buildings as scholars determine they stood in 320 AD. If you ever dreamed of walking along the same streets as Constantine or gazing up at the Coliseum as it stood in ancient times, you'll be amazed at what you can experience behind your keyboard!

So what does this have to do with law school? Well, what if you could explore a courtroom virtually? It's pretty feasible to even do it now. For example, you could pretty easily put together a courtroom in Second Life and have students try cases virtually and record what they do before trying it out in person. It strikes me as a pretty cool way to learn the lightning-quick reflexes you need for, say, evidentiary objections. Now that would be a cool way to take a final.

The End of an Era

It's the era that I'll call "The Era of Knowing What an Educated Person Knows."

"Knowing what an educated person knows" has been the explanation given to Xer children for many years as we had the temerity to ask, "Why am I learning to recognize Beethoven's Eroica and what relevance is this ever going to have for me?" It's amazing how much Boomers and their elders value "knowing what an educated person knows." Well, I say it's just Boomers. The truth is that I'm frequently appalled by, for example, a student's admission that she never read Huckleberry Finn or that she doesn't know who Tolstoy is. I mean, there's a level of literacy that even I managed to attain.

When I give faculty colloquia or workshops, a question I get reliably is, "But if they look everything up on Google, what is their motivation to know what an educated person knows?" Of course, only Boomers ever ask the question. All of the Xers are just glad that Google came along in time to justify our lifelong apathy for what we like to call "random knowledge." (Or, to quote Ferris Bueller, "I have a test on socialism today. What do I care about socialists? They could be fascists anarchists. It still won't change the fact that I don't have a car.")

So anyway, apparently someone in England agrees that there's no need to commit facts to memory anymore. Just Google it! I like what we're saying here.

And, for the record, Beethoven's Eroica hasn't come up since I learned to recognize it in 11th grade Honors English, Mrs. Gandy.

Attorney Tips for Social Networking

Here are some tips for using social networking tools (think: Facebook). The tips are for attorneys using social networking, but this is solid advice for anyone dipping a toe into social nets.

Thomas Friedman: Boomers Ready to Atone?

Thomas Friedman talks about the bailouts in terms of the impact on Xers and Millennials.

The general pattern among the three currently-dominant generations is that Boomers did what they wanted, Xers paid the price, and everyone turned it around so that Millennials didn't pay the same price. I realize, of course, that that's a gross generalization. You also have to consider that I'm an Xer so I see the relationships between the generations through my own Xer-skewed lense. But, with those disclaimers made, I'd say that the generalization sounds about right, and Friedman's column is at least anecdotal evidence that at least some Boomers may be starting to realize it.

Here's hoping.

Demographics of Millennials

When I give presentations about cross-generational competence, I'm often asked if the characteristics of Millennials that I describe apply across race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status. Unfortunately, as this blog post indicates, when I'm talking about law students, they don't. Millennials who haven't managed to get a college education are the vast minority of all Millennials, just as they tend to be the vast minority of other generations. Likewise, when describing Millennial law students, I'm largely describing a group of white students. Not that this is highly unusual for research of any kind. Often the first research in any area is done on white men. The rest of us usually aren't included until someone cleverly points out that we aren't all white men.

Social Networking Sites Impact Future Employment

One thing that many Millennials are learning the hard way -- like this woman who was denied her teaching certificate -- is that folks in other generations don't respect the artifical barriers that many Millennials feel should surround their Internet lives. When I've talked to Millennial students about consequences for remarks or photos on social networking sights, the students have almost all considered it dirty pool for a current or prospective employer to delve into their Facebook or MySpace lives. Interestingly, the generation that lives its life in public seems to have the highest expectation of privacy.

When I've served on Admissions at different institutions, I pretty routinely Googled the prospective students and sometimes would also search for them on Facebook or MySpace. As the years have passed, I've noticed more and more that those students seemed somewhat aware that prospective law schools might be checking them out (as evidenced by the Facebook photo of one kid in a suit standing against a background of law books). However, it seems that when students are not in application mode, some seem to revert back to some risky online behavior. I'm guessing that they believe they're not on anyone's radar anymore. But once you're in law school, you're almost always on someone's radar.

Internet Bully Convicted

In the case of Lori Drew, an fully-grown adult female, bullying a neighborhood child, 13-year-old Megan Meier, until Megan committed suicide, we finally see some consequences for cyberbullying. Although Megan's suicide is, of course, the worst-case scenario, cyber-bullying has other significant consequences like serious emotional distress, loss of friends, loss of jobs, and loss of opportunities. Drew was ultimately convicted under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.

My sense is that, although the Internet provides a shield for bullies, the further we get into the Millennial generation, the more we'll see youth using the Internet for constructive rather than destructive uses. Of course, it's worth noting that Drew is an Xer. Sigh.

Millennials are Just Nicer Than Most of Us

Sure, we all do our share of good work now that we're adults. But how many women in Peru did you help lift out of poverty when you were in high school?

Potentially Clever Solution for Crushing Student Debt Load

A couple of guys have just started a web site that allows students to register as needing financial assistance with their education and allows friends, loved ones, or anyone I guess, to "sponsor" the student based on the student's grades. They say they got the idea from the charity events in which participants raise money from sponsors, usually based on a "per mile" rate.