Chapter 1. Echo Boomers: Understanding Todays College...

Short Description

FFrom the moment they get up in the morning, technology like cell phones, iPods, and the Internet connects todayís college students to a global community. Nick and Andy, college seniors and editors of their schoolís newspaper, note that todayís college generation is over-achieving, over-managed, and pressured.

Long Description

From the moment they get up in the morning, technology like cell phones, iPods, and the Internet connects todayís college students to a global community. Nick and Andy, college seniors and editors of their schoolís newspaper, note that todayís college generation is over-achieving, over-managed, and pressured. From early childhood, their lives have been carefully scheduled by parents who believed that their children needed structure and a sense of mission. Pediatrician Mel Levine states that todayís college students have been heavily programmed. Their time has been scheduled and their lives reflect compliance with what adults have told them to do. Rules have replaced rebellion. Convention has won out over individualism, and studentsí values tend to be conventional. Protected since childhood, they do not know what to do when left on their own. Nick and Andy note that everyone is “above average.” Every college student is used to getting a trophy at the end of the year. Parents, claims Levine, seem to feel their children are fragile. They inflate their childrenís egos and fight their battles. Because children are rewarded for participation and not achievement, they do not have a good sense of their own strengths and weaknesses. When todayís young adults arrive in the workplace, claims Levine, they expect to be immediate heroes and heroines. They want to be told they are doing a great job. Furthermore, they have difficulty thinking long range. Rewards need to be immediate. Levine refers to the phenomenon as visual motor ecstasyóthat is, anything that does not produce immediate gratification is boring. A group of college students admits they have come to expect outcomes to be immediate. At the same time, the group is proud of who they are.

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