Exploring Generation Y

“First Digitals,” “Echo Boomers,” and “Millennials” are an example of the various terms used to describe those born between 1981 and 1997, the date range, however, is debatable. Generation Y, as this generation is most popularly referred to, is the largest generation since the ‘60s (Leung). The creative terminology is reflective of the digital world in which this generation has grown up in. In Sophia Yan’s “Understanding Generation Y” she characterized Generation Y as being Generation X on steroids.
Generation Y makes up nearly a third of the U.S. population, and they spend $170 billion a year (Leung). Therefore, as it is to be expected, corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars on products aimed specifically at the Echo Boomers. For instance, in 2005 Toyota peddled its then new $15,000 cars by sponsoring events like street basketball and break dance festivals (Leung).
As Rebecca Leung puts it, “Echo boomers are the most watched-over generation in history.” And although older generations recognize the sophistication and the advanced technical skills that Generation Y possesses, Leung’s observation leads to the perception that Generation Yers lack work effort and realistic views regarding the real world. “They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief you can, take your job and shove it,” (Safer). “You do have to speak to them a little bit like a therapist on television might speak to a patient. You can’t be harsh. You cannot tell them you’re disappointed in them. You can’t really ask them to live and breathe the company. Because they’re living and breathing themselves and that keeps them very busy, (Salzman qtd. By Safer). There is an opinion amongst older employers that because Generation Yers have been “babied,” “cushioned,” “over-protected,” and “sheltered” growing up that within them lies a naivety about what it really takes to succeed in the workforce. As Safer explains, when companies are faced with new employees who “roll into work with their iPods and flip flops” around noon, but still want to be CEO by Friday, they are forced to realize that the previous work era is dead (Safer).
However, there is a different opinion regarding Generation Yers. Each generation faces its fair share of monumental events but Generation Y has arguably faced the most numerous, and monumental events in our nation’s history. Including but not limited to, the September 11th terrorists attacks, the Columbine Massacre, the Virginia Tech Massacre, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Oklahoma City Bombing, Y2K, anthrax scares, the SARS epidemic, The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the O.J. Simpson trial, Hurricane Katrina, and the death of Princess Diana. Yan mentions that these various events that occurred during the lives of Generation Yers may lead to this generation being identified as cynical, skeptical, and pessimistic, at least comparable to past generations (Yan). Yan then goes on to quote a January 2006 newsletter of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, where it mentions that increases in antidepressants, prescription medication and other behavior-altering drugs, such as Ritalin, are making Generation Yers the most medicated generation in history. Also, as more prescription drugs have begun to circulate, abuses of such substances have also increased (Yan).
There are obviously opposite opinions about what the experiences of Generation Y have been and what affect they have had on said generation. On one side there are those who feel that these tech savvy youngsters have been over-protected and sheltered throughout their lives, and thus are unknowingly unprepared for the realities of real life. On the other side of the fence you have people who believe that Generation Y has actually experienced quite a bit, and are therefore are cynical and pessimistic.
Neither is a very flattering light to be placed in, but I feel that the result that is best accurate depends a lot on the circumstance of each individual Echo Boomer. Social class and ethnicity have a lot to do with whether you grow up sheltered, or if you grow up experiencing a great deal. “They have climbed Mount Everest. They’ve been down to Machu Picchu to help excavate it. But they’ve never punched a time clock. They have no idea what it’s like to actually be in an office at nine 0’clock, with people handing them work,” (Crane qtd. By Safer). The previous quote is relative to whether or not you grew up in a world where you had the financial means that would allow you to travel, and not have to work a regular nine-to-five. If you don’t have money, then you may have never travelled outside of your hometown, and you’ve probably held down a job since your early teens because you didn’t have a choice. In that instance a Generation Yer wouldn’t have had the luxury of a sheltered life, and also that individual would indeed be knowledgeable about the realities of real world work. In addition, that individual may be somewhat cynical like Yan described. In contrast, a Generation Yer who grows up with financial wealth would have the opportunity to remove themselves from reality, or be removed by parents, and not have to work until they decide they want to. Therefore, they may enter the workforce with the naïve mindset that the world that they’ve grown up in is the reality, and that everything will be handed to them on a silver platter, as it has been so far. And since social lines usually run parallel to racial lines, ethnicity can, and does affect the experiences that Generation Yers have and the mindsets that they end up with.
It is unwise to lump all Generation Yers, Echo Boomer, or whatever you prefer to call them, into one big box. Each individual’s experiences and circumstances determine who they will ultimately become, no matter what the generation. One thing is for sure however, this generation has had the privilege to have been immersed in some of the world’s greatest technological innovations. With being surrounded by so much technology, Generation Y is bound to go on to create some innovations that we can’t even yet imagine.





Works Cited

Leung, Rebecca. “The Echo Boomers.” CBS News. 4 September 2005. 25 April 2009. <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/01/60minutes/main646890_page2.shtml>
Safer, Morley. “The ‘Millennials’ Are Coming.” CBS News. 23 May 2008. 25 April 2009. <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/08/60minutes/main3475200_page3.shtml>
Yan, Sophia. “Understanding Generation Y.” The Oberlin Review. 8 December 2006. 25 April2009. <http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2006/12/08/features/Understanding_Generation_Y.html>

Quiz

Are You a Good Girlfriend?

A. You are on your way out with your girlfriends, and your boyfriend calls you and asks you to come over. What do you do?

4.) Drop your girls and go right over, your man comes first.
3.) Promise him that you’ll come right over as soon as you’re done hanging out with your girls.
2.) Tell him that you already have plans, but if you have some time later on you’ll try to stop by.
1.) Tell him that you already have plans, he should have called earlier, and you’ll see him when you see him.

B. It’s your birthday and your boyfriend just loss his job, he has no money to buy you a gift but he still wants to spend time with you. How do you feel?

4.) You’re not upset at all; material things don’t matter to you. All you need is his time.
3.) You’re a little disappointed because you were looking forward to the gift, but whatever, spending time with him is more important.
2.) You are very upset; he doesn’t have a gift for you? Well you’ll still hang out with him, but he might get a little attitude.
1.) WHAT, NO GIFT? He better not call you until he gets a job and gets you a gift.

C. Your boyfriend’s car just got impounded, and he needs help getting it back or else he can’t get to work or school. But you had your eye on a Louis Vuitton clutch, what do you do?

4.) Immediately shelf your purse idea and give him the money he needs, your LV can wait, his car is more important.
3.) Agree to give him half of what he needs now, that way when you get paid next week maybe you’ll still be able to get the Louis Vuitton.
2.) Get your clutch now, and the next time you get paid you’ll consider helping him out.
1.) Immediately get your purse, he won’t get any help from you, he better figure something out.

D. Your ex calls you and wants to get together for lunch, just to catch up. You tell your boyfriend about it and he hates the idea and doesn’t want you to go. What do you do?
4.) Well that’s that, you don’t go. If your boyfriend doesn’t want you to go then that’s the end of the story, your ex shouldn’t have wasted his opportunity.
3.) You don’t see the big deal, but if your boyfriend doesn’t want you to go then you’ll respect that. You tell your ex that maybe you two can catch up another time.
2.) He’s completely overreacting. You’re still going to go, you just won’t tell him about it, after all what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
1.) FORGET HIM! You tell your boyfriend that you’re going to go anyway, whether he likes it or not. Who does he think he is?

E. You get a job opportunity to work in Paris for 6 months; you’ve always wanted to live in Paris! Then you find out that your boyfriend just had a death in his family and he’s taking it really hard. What do you do?

4.) You don’t go, how can you leave him right now? Paris will always be there later but your man needs you right now?
3.) It’s a tough decision, but you decide that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and you have to go. But first, you make an arrangement with your boss so that you can come home once a month, and you promise him that you’ll call every day.
2.) You feel bad for him but you still go, but you promise to call.
1.) You don’t give it a second thought, that’s too bad about his family member but this is Paris we’re talking about! He’ll be fine.

F. You hear a rumor that your boyfriend cheated on you, but the girl that you heard it from is obviously jealous of you and he’s relationship. What do you do?

4.) You don’t even give it a second thought. You know that your boyfriend would never cheat on you, plus this girl is jealous. You disregard it and don’t even bother bringing it up to him.
3.) You don’t believe it, but you figure that it’s worth asking him about it. He denies it and you immediately let it go, you didn’t think so.
2.) You can’t believe it! You confront him and he denies it and but you don’t really believe him, he’s such a liar.
1.) HE THINKS HE CAN CHEAT ON YOU! You immediately break up with him without asking him, what’s the point, why would she lie?

G. It’s Thanksgiving and your boyfriend really wants you to spend the day with him so you can meet his whole family, but you know that your mother will be upset if you don’t spend Thanksgiving with her and your family. What do you do?

4.) You spend Thanksgiving with him and his family. Your mother will get over it, plus you see them every day.
3.) You decide that you’ll spend half the day with his family, and the other half with your family. That way everybody wins.
2.) You tell your boyfriend that it’s important that you be with your own family so you can’t go with him. But you tell him that you’ll think about Christmas.
1.) You are not spending Thanksgiving with his family, you don’t know them. Your family is the most important.

H. It’s your boyfriend’s birthday, what do you do?

4.) You go all out. You get him a lavish gift, make him a romantic dinner, take him out and spend the whole day together.
3.) You get him a lavish gift, take him out and spend the day with him; you won’t even attempt to cook though.
2.) You get him a pretty nice gift, but you don’t have the time to cook, take him out or spend much time with him.
1.) You don’t do anything. What’s to celebrate?

Add up the numbers that correspond to your answers.

Your Results:

32-27:
You are a great girlfriend! You are loyal and dedicated to your guy and he is lucky to have you. You make his wants and needs a top priority, you trust him, and care a lot about him and that’s very important. However, don’t forget that even though your dedication is great, your wants and needs are just as important as his.

26-21:
You are a good girlfriend. You are pretty loyal to your boyfriend, but you don’t forget about yourself either. While you are important too, don’t forget that relationships are all about compromise. Sometimes you have to put your own wants aside for the greater good of the relationship.

20-15:
You are an okay girlfriend. You can be loyal at times, but at other times you can be somewhat selfish and inconsiderate. Remember relationships are about two people, not one. Compromise can be hard but if you care about your boyfriend it is necessary.

14-8:
You are not a very good girlfriend. You are pretty disloyal and selfish. You may actually care about your guy but you do not show it very well. If you do indeed care than you need to work on being more considerate or else he is bound to find someone else. If you do not care, then let him go and let him move own. Relationships are two-way streets.

Podcast Script

The Human Health Show

Complete Show Length in Minutes: 6 minutes

Episode 1: Topic: The Wayne County Babies program

Intro Music Clip: Title: “Tell You Something” (Instrumental) Time: 30 seconds

Intro: Introduction to The Wayne County Babies program Time: 45 seconds

Hello, I am Paris, and welcome to the Human Health Show! In this segment we will discuss a program that has been instituted in the Detroit area, it’s called Wayne County Babies. This program is part of the Wayne County Health Department, it focuses on providing low-income mothers with vital resources and information in an effort to prevent infant mortality and promote healthy babies. This seems like an excellent program and today we’ve invited one of its influential participants and workers, Michelle Jones. Ms. Jones is here with us and she will explain in detail what this program entails and perhaps answer some questions.

Segment Music Clip: Title: “Superwoman” (Instrumental) Time: 15 seconds

Segment: Michelle Jones summarizes the Wayne County Babies program Time: 4 minutes

Paris: Welcome to the Human Health Show Ms. Jones

Michelle: Thank you, it’s good to be here

Paris: I’ve heard some about Wayne County Babies, but why don’t you explain what the program does for our listeners.

Michelle: As you stated Paris, our program is set up to work with low-income mothers living in Wayne County. There are six of us in my office and one of the things we do is home visits. We visit our mothers and educate them on various aspects of motherhood, such as the importance of their prenatal visits. Once the babies are born we are continuing that education in regards to the babies’ welfare, doctor’s visits, and safe sleep habits. I have a clientele list of about thirty mothers. What I do is schedule home visits with the mothers and, or, the babies and I educate them on various forms of information depending on the mothers’ stage in pregnancy. Also, I schedule the mothers for their various appointments and meetings. We stay with the moms and the babies until the babies turn one-year-old. Our primary focus is safe sleep, and so we educate the mom on what safe sleep is, what safe sleep habits are and so on. Our goal is to make sure that that baby reaches his or her first birthday. Michigan has an extremely high infant mortality rate and that’s where we come in to help lower those numbers. In addition, African-American babies have a higher death rate than Caucasian babies. That is due in large part to services available. Incomes are usually drastically different; therefore if income is low, the availability of necessary resources is less than that of a family with a higher income. Also, babies of low-income mothers tend to not eat properly. When mothers are faced with the choice of keeping the electricity on or buying the baby formula, they will often give the baby whole milk and put the extra money toward the electric bill or various other bills or household necessities. That is why the infant mortality rate is higher in urban areas.

Paris: It sounds like you are doing important work Michelle. What are the qualifications in order to be serviced by the program?

Michelle: Thank you, but yes our program is very necessary because we are reaching a lot of families that would never come across this information otherwise. The only qualifications to participate in the program are that the mother be low-income, that is making $12,000 or less, and live in “out Wayne County”, meaning anywhere in Wayne County besides Detroit.

Paris: Why don’t you service Detroit?

Michelle: The reason that we do not service Detroit is because Detroit has its own large health department. We found that the surrounding cities did not have a location such as the Detroit Health Department where they could get various services; therefore, our program was organized to service those areas.

Paris: Well you have provided us with some very important information today, if people wish to get more information on Wayne County Babies what should they do?

Michelle: Yes, if you would like more information on the Wayne County Babies program you can visit waynecounty.com or call our offices at 313-537-1708.

Thank you to Michelle Jones for stopping by and giving us this valuable information, and thank you to our listeners for tuning into The Human Health Show. This is Paris and I’ll be here the same time next week, thank you and have a great day.

Ending Music Clip: Title: “Amanda” Time: 30 seconds

Podcast Assignment: Interview Questions

My aunt Michelle works for the Wayne County Health Department as part of a program called Wayne County Babies. The program works to provide low-income mothers with vital resources and information in an effort to prevent infant mortality and promote healthy babies. I will interview her and these are the questions that I intend to ask her in an effort to get more information about her job:

1.) Where were you born, where did you grow up?
2.) Was there any experience during your childhood that you believe influenced your decision to participate in the Wayne County Babies program?
3.) How would you explain the objective of the program?
4.) What does your job particularly entail?
5.) Have you ever done something that you felt was necessary, even though it was above and beyond the call of duty?
6.) What would you consider to be the most satisfying aspect of your job?
7.) What would you consider to be the least satisfying aspect of your job?
8.) What is the most disturbing thing that you have seen or experienced while working as part of the program?
9.) Why do you feel that the Wayne County Babies program is an important program?
10.) Is there something that the program does not do that you feel would be necessary and helpful? If so, explain what this is and how you think it should go about being performed?

Pollution in the Great Lakes

The 94,000 square miles filled with 6 quadrillion gallons of water make up the largest fresh water system on earth, known as the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes provide drinking water, as well as fish and other resources, for millions of people (The Great Lakes). We Detroiters have always been told that we have the cleanest drinking water in the country, although hundreds of years of bad behavior has polluted the Great Lakes with hazardous materials that could be potentially disastrous for wildlife and humans.
The polluting of the Great Lakes began during the 18th and 19th centuries because of the misconception that water could dilute any substance. Industries and individuals often used rivers and lakes as garbage cans, dumping raw sewage and animal carcasses into the waterways. This behavior began to change in the 20th century when people became aware of the fact the clean water is important to health. However, as more industries and people began to move into the Great Lakes region, the more the rivers and lakes became polluted. The pollution of the Great Lakes and its connecting rivers gained national exposure after the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland, on its way to Lake Erie, caught on fire because it was so polluted. The 1969 incident increased water pollution controls, which led to the Great Lakes Water Quality Act and Clean Water Act in the 1970s.
Pollutants enter the Great Lakes in many different ways, but the main three entryways are point source, nonpoint source and atmospheric pollution.
When pollutants enter the waterway through a specific point, as with a drainage pipe that drains directly into a river, it is called point source pollution. Point source pollutants can include many different potentially harmful substances, such as waste and toxic metals. Point source pollution can be traced to a specific discharge point and owner; for that reason, it has been the easiest source of pollution to control and regulate. Since the Clean Water Act of 1972, nearly all of industrial plants use control measures to reduce their toxic discharge. Also, the number of sewage treatment facilities has doubled.
Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution comes from many different sources and is therefore extremely difficult to regulate and control. Because NPS is so difficult to pinpoint many experts feel that it is the top hazard facing the Great Lakes. NPS pollution is mainly caused by runoff. When rain and melting snow move over the land, they pick up pollutants along the way, eventually dumping them into the lakes and rivers. Common NPS pollutants include; pesticides, oil, grease and salt from highways, and animal and human waste.
Atmospheric pollution is another form of nonpoint source pollution, though instead of polluting via runoff, the pollution literally falls from the sky. As water moves through the hydrologic cycle, it falls as rain or snow and then evaporates into the air from land and surface water. Pollutants emitted into the air, such as through smoke stacks, follow the same path, and can be carried through the atmosphere and deposited into waterways. Acid rain is the most common and well-known form of atmospheric pollution. Major sources of atmospheric pollution include coal-burning energy plants and waste incinerators.
Water pollution affects the health of organisms living in and around the Great Lakes, including humans. The deteriorating health of fish and wildlife speaks volumes about the need to clean up the Great Lakes. Heavy metals such as mercury and lead, as well as pesticides, biomagnify as they move up the food chain. Which causes tumors and death for predatory animals, such as trout, herring gulls, and humans, who are at the top of the food chain. Toxic pollutants can also alter genetic makeup, resulting in either death or extreme deformities, such as three-legged frogs (TEACH: Water Pollution in the Great Lakes).
Water pollution can have equally tragic effects for humans. Sheila Kaplan wrote an article that exposes the efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and the International Joint Commission to block the publication of a study called Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern. The CDC’s efforts to prevent the publication of this study is because of the potentially “alarming information” that it contains. The study warns that more than nine million people living in areas such as Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee, may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants. Researchers found evidence of low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated deaths from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer in these areas (Kaplan, The Center For Public Integrity). Humans who are at risk of health problems due to contaminated fish consumption are those with weakened immune systems, including children, pregnant women and the elderly (TEACH: Water Pollution in The Great Lakes).
Pollution of the Great Lakes greatly affects all organisms that inhabit the area. We have to save these truly great lakes, as well ourselves. We have the potential to do so, but it is us who have to take the first step and actually do it.

References:
“Overview.” The Great Lakes. http://www.great-lakes.net/lakes/
“Water Pollution in The Great Lakes.” TEACH: Water Pollution in The Great Lakes. http://www.great-lakes.net/teach/pollution/water/water1.html
“Great Lakes. Danger Zones?” The Center For Public Integrity. Sheila Kaplan. http://projects.publicintegrity.org/GreatLakes/