Look everyone, a new Millennials rant for us to enjoy

We had an intern at my old job who informed my boss that she was going out after work and would be late the next day because she was going to be hung over.

... and then they completely crumble when someone disagrees with them or expresses dismay at THEIR decision to bend/break/ignore the rules. A legacy of growing up with continual, un-earned praise for every damned thing they do.

[quote]Student in email: "My camera won't be repaired in time. Is it okay if I don't bring my camera the first day?" Why do they ask stuff like this? No, it's not "okay", but is there any choice? What difference does it make if it's okay or not? I told you to bring a camera, and you're not going to have one. So you want to feel less bad about this??

Well what fucking use is a broken camera?

I critiqued a colleague's work (he's 31), and he got tears in his eyes. Jesus! It's a good thing he works for the government, where they're not really allowed to rip you to shreds.

R1 this happens a lot and most millennials call in sick or late on Friday because they go out on Thursday nights!!!

They're kids and in school to learn. You're teaching then not only photography, but responsibility, manners, respect, patience, and more. You don't think you signed up for all that, but you did. Don't you remember what you were like? And your friends, in case you were perfect?

If you don't like it, there are others who will do that work. You can work at Walmart.

You are exactly what you are complaining about, OP, but consider this a learning experience and CHANGE. Don't grow old being a dufus.

They should have already learned responsiblity by now. Seriously by 8th grade at least a student should KNOW "if you don't do the assignment/didn't listen in class/don't follow the instructions/don't have the right materials" it's going to count against you, it's not OK.

They are pathetically immature. Young people are always going to be somewhat immature but by the time one is a legal adult one should know certain aspects of personal responsibility particularly as it pertains to SCHOOL, which they've presumably been going to since they were at least 5 years old.

[quote]You don't think you signed up for all that, but you did.

No, he didn't.

He signed up to teach a course on a particular subject based on his expertise and teaching ability. If the student fails to meet the requirements, then their grades will suffer. End of story.

The PARENTS signed up to teach them "responsibility, manners, respect, patience, and more."

What an awful place you live in, R8!

To be fair, I used a lot of excuses like that when I was young, and I am far from a millennial, unless you mean the first one.

I teach at a design school and one day a student's girlfriend rang to ask if her boyfriend could take a day off to go to a rock concert.

He wasn't even embarrassed about it.

I'm glad I will be long dead by the time the West is filled with these helpless, ignorant children.

These Millenial tactics are all the result of their bad parents having no boundaries. No direct instruction is anything but an opening bid to be haggled with. I would shut that shit right down, and give them the gift of an introduction to reality.

It must have been hard for professors who were WWII veterans to deal with Baby Boomer college students. Their students smoked pot, they dropped acid, they had stupid wine and cheese parties and played chess and backgammon in delapidated old houses thinking they were really sophisticated; they made fun of the military; they disrespected the president and congress; they had campus strikes so they could say "fuck," which really wasn't a huge societal improvement; they had demonstrations and took over buildings with lists of impossible demands, like big babies. They dressed in buckskin jackets and wore Indian headbands and sandals to class while students in previous generations wore slacks and neatly pressed shirts. They called themselves revolutionaries, but they were soft suburbanites.

But profs had to deal with it. They didn't fail every student who came to class spaced out. They didn't get to expel every student who ranted about something stupid in class

If they could deal with that huge change in manners without getting nasty, then I don't see how college professors today can't deal with the societal changes of today. Students are messy, sometimes smelly overgrown kids who are away from home for the first time. They don't know how to behave. They don't even know how to do laundry.

Look at that manager in the jalapeño Mac n cheese video. That idiot student ranted, cursed, insulted him and pushed him. The manager never stopped to his level because he knew he was an adult dealing with an inexperienced teenager who didn't have a ficking clue. He stood back and let the kid carry on with his temper tantrum. Why? Because it wasn't worth it to engage yet another immature student in something stupid. He calmly repeated the rules to him.

And that's what you do with young people. You let them make mistakes. You deal with it calmly because you're an adult who knows these kids aren't used to organizing schoolwork, meals, laundry, dealing with roommates, getting from one place or another without a highly structured system planning their lives for them.

Why bother getting all hot under the collar about stupid things ?

One day I went to class to take a statistics exam. I forgot my calculator. I sat like an idiot. I waited until everyone left, went up to the prof and told him that i'd received s phone call the day before from a doctor telling me my father had cancer. I completely forgot about the exam. I could have been bullshitting. The prof probably thought there was a 90% chance I was bullshittng. But he gave me the benefit of the doubt and told me not to worry. I'd handed in homework every day and had 90-100 on my homework. When he passed out the tests the following weeks, he gave me an an A. I never forgot him. I made sure I got 100 on the final exam so he would know I wasn't a slacker.

Without the entire context how are we to know if this Millennial was irresponsible or not? WHY isn't his camera repaired on time?

It's been ages since I was in college (the 1990s) but I can recall a couple dozen times where someone else's lack of responsibility (usually a uni non-faculty employee or fellow student, sometimes a store or professor) was blamed on me because I was a college student and it was the assumption we were all babies who couldn't handle real life. If this kid was at the mercy of a repair shop then what's the point of whining that "it's not okay?"

I'm one of the first to bitch about Millennials on here but god damn, I think professors are worse, all told.

R14 They SHOULD used to organizing school work by the time they are in freaking COLLEGE. That's what they should have been learning how to do in their first 12 years of school. If they didn't, then their parents suck, which is absolutely not the responsibility of the professor. At what age are these "young people" actually expected to take responsibility, which includes the consequences for their inability to be ready on time, follow instructions, etc, etc?

Also R15, I don't think he's complaining that it wasn't repaired, it's that they just expect that it won't matter and if they just go "Hey I'm not ready, is that OK?" well of course it's perfectly OK. That's what all the examples given were about wanting a little pat on the head because they asked nicely if it was OK that they fucked up basically.

I want to know why a camera would be required in class the first day (or any day, for that matter). I've had 2 undergraduate level photography courses and one grad level class. The profs never asked to see our cameras.

If I were the professor, I would have turned it right around on the kid and said, "What do you think the boss at your first photography job would say if you didn't have your camera in working condition? That's a prerequisite for this course. You aren't prepared, so take my class next semester."

And, no college professors are not babysitters, and they are not there to teach responsibility. A college age student should have had all of that guidance by their parents by high school graduation. Kids like that don't belong in college, and they are a waste of a professor's time.

R16, It's not just the parent's responsibility. I'd like to think the education the kid has BEFORE they get to college plays a huge role in how they function in college. If you went to great schools all 12 years before you got there you should be fine. If you didn't, there may be issues. I was a Straight A, "advanced" student all through school (and no one ever helped me with my homework and honestly the kind of work I was doing in school was light years beyond what my parents learned) but college was a whole different ball game. I didn't even know how to study because I never had to before.

You could say it's the parent's responsibility to get the child into a good high school or even a private school but not everyone can afford that and not everyone wants their kid to have that kind of an education - especially if the nearest "good" school is a Catholic school, etc. Also distance and teacher quality are issues.

College is also about learning how to deal with people who aren't from where ever you grew up and learning how to be an adult. You should know that before you get there? Few 17 year olds do! People who are learning often make mistakes because that's how they learn. I had a great Professor make a snide remark to me when I was late to a group conference with her. I told her I was late because I had to walk because literally every bus was full. It was a game weekend. Her response was, "What do you think the rest of us did? Fly?" I remember being gobsmacked by what she said in front of my group mates but I got over it and I was more careful in the future. She didn't treat me horribly. We made jokes and had fun at that meeting after and she clearly wasn't being rude but instead letting me know I screwed up. I should have left earlier than I did (although I did leave early) or better yet I should have called ahead to let someone know I'd be late.

I took any class she taught every year I was in school. She was honest, but never mean. She knew when I needed help and she knew when I was being lazy. If I turned in something late, she docked me. When showed up to an exam with the flu, she sent my butt right back home because I looked like hell and she let me make it up a week later even though she said, "no makeup exams." When I needed someone to talk to about class or my future, she'd take the time to talk to me because she knew she was helping me and she didn't have an issue with that.

Four years later after the first incident we were hanging out and having drinks at a bar. A decade later, she and I are still good friends. She turned out to be one of my favorite teachers and I ended up going into the same profession she taught. She didn't *just* teach me how to be an adult she also taught me a lot about life and I think there are a few good professors that take that responsibility on, even though they don't have to, and there are probably some people out there who are better for it.

Other generations suck.

[R14] I think you have it wrong about many of the boomers and their profs. My professors were a part of the anti-war movement. We drank beers with them, called them by their first names and were invited to their homes for small roundtable discussions, at least the group I was in were invited. My professors were like steel, tough, and they didn't let us get away with anything, and we respected them for that. We also caught a couple of them smoking weed on campus, and all of us smoked, too. But they put us through extremely tough courses and demanded the best from us, while we were taking full course loads and putting out an nationally award-winning daily newspaper. I can't thank my professor enough for turning us into the most hard-working students on campus. At the same time we respected our professors so much that to fail them in any way was unthinkable.

You need to read a little more about politics on college campuses in the late 60s and 70s.

Don't get mad at the millennials, get mad at the parents who raised them.

I can't even tell you how many 30/40/50 year olds who still act like teenagers. So it's not a surprise that their kids have no idea what being an adult truly means.

But then again, there's a reason why their parents are a mess.

Personally I blame TV/movies for romanticizing youth and high school culture. Seems like a lot of people are in a perpetual state of adolescent and they think it's cute. it's not.

Ugh, I'm an old boomer but this "pick on the younger generations" just makes people sound bitter and raggy.

[quote]they asked nicely if it was OK that they fucked up basically

Yeah, but your camera going tits up on you doesn't necessarily mean YOU fucked up.

I love how the ranters like R6 still can't manage to figure out when something is a repost from a facebook and when someone is complaining.

It's like my grandfather who thinks when he gets voice mail that "this lady" won't tell him how to get through to the person he's trying to reach.

I am a prof. What we notice is that probably all students in all eras go through a process from being irresponsible and scattered, undisciplined, unadventurous, and insecure - intellectually and in their academic responsibilities, to being better thinkers and workers when they graduate.

What is different now is that what the OP says - they act like it's Jr. H or HS, and it's ok to be a slag off. You explain to their face to step up their game to the required standards, and it doesn't compute. They attempt the same shit 2x, 3x.

This isn't everyone, thank god.

I don't remember anyone of my friends or myself trying to pull such self-centered and lazy nonsense on professors when I was in college.

I should say, they may have tried to pull it, but the prof will correct them and that was the end of the story.

[quote] We had an intern at my old job who informed my boss that she was going out after work and would be late the next day because she was going to be hung over.

At least she was honest.

This comes down to email and students having electronic access to professors at all times.

I had plenty of dumb, lazy, entitled kids with me in college but --

We could ONLY talk to professors/teachers in class or at office hours. If we had a dumb question or were going to miss class or be late with an assignment THERE WAS NO WAY TO CONTACT THE PROF to whine or ask if it's "okay to not do what I'm supposed to do?"

Believe me, plenty of students still did it, but they had to do it in person so it wasn't as easy. BUT THIS MINDSET IS NOTHING NEW - It's the easy electronic access that's new.

Should have put that I'm Gen-X at R29.

Here's what irks me about people complaining about Millennials;

WHO RAISED THEM to be like this? They didn't make themselves like this, THEIR PARENTS DID - so blame that generation.

It's like people who bitch about "kids and their participation trophies." Hey, those kids didn't invent participation trophies, THEIR PARENTS DID. Don't get mad at the kids for shit their parents created.

Oh shut the fuck up R14, with your tiresome blather.

R14 posted over five years ago, dipshit r32.

How can anyone on DL not know that we have a troll bumping threads from 2015?

When I was in grad school, a friend emailed our instructor to tell him her car won't start and she won't be able to make it to class.

He wrote back, "Take a bus. See you at 6."

I (born early 1980s) teach students born abound 2000.

Yes, I get emails like the OP.

Who the fuck cares? I have more important things to spend my outrage on.

R6 Modern kids are in college to protect their family's social status. They aren't there by choice and they aren't there to learn.

Since you said this is a millennial and not Gen Z, then I assume this is college or grad school. If so, then fine: the student is paying money to participate in higher education, and their participation will determine what they learn and how far they get. If I were the professor, I'd just generally tell students that I expect the best from every one of them, they are paying a lot of money, their effort and the quality of their work determines how successful they will be, and they will determine their success or failure; my only job is to teach and guide.

A big shift in teaching college students these days is the ubiquity in helicopter parenting.

In my own department, we have fielded calls from parents complaining that little Madeyson or Aeydin has received too much homework. One parent took exception to having any assignments due after they came back from spring break. Heaven forbid little Eaystin do anything but party in Panama City that week.

Millennials were born between 81-96. I don’t think some of you are talking about Millennials.

* the ubiquity OF helicopter parenting (at r38)

Bump

Why is Davida bumping shit from 2015 again? Is there more bad news for the Repugs?

This thread didn't age well not that most millennials are out of college. These complaints are now Gen Z-specific.

R38, in that parent's defense, it [italic]is[/italic] annoying when teachers and professors give students assignments to complete during holiday breaks.

I'm increasingly grateful for getting my undergrad experience from a school that would fail you for 3 absences (15 min late was an absence), the critic/instructors would regularly rip students new assholes for poor presentations (one guy was infamous, and he'd shut off your projector if you were presenting crap, and regularly left students running for the bathroom to cry in private). If you got a C it was a fail for the class. More than two classes failed and you were cut. Worked well to instill a lot of good habits going forward.

During my grad program, that university had an actual day to formally escort all parents off the campus (some would actually live in the dorms for a bit until their babies were set up). It was hysterically sad, once when I was trying to put money on my student account- there was a mom, no student/child with them, grilling the work-study student behind the counter over how her son would be able to find the school resources to buy a computer or their books. It was ALL on campus (hated that aspect of it, too insular), I'd think that student would have benefitted from overcoming the struggle to find the school store.

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omg, that sounds like literal violence r21

you were basically r@p3d r21, i hope u sue

I see we're bumping threads from 2015 again

Miss r48 is so intelligent for her unique ability to read dates. Let’s all applaud this rare ability she possesses!

Hi Davida!