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20 | quarterly mag 012 | 12

SUCKS TO BE US FAIRWEATHER FRIENDS OUT OF THE CITY, INTO THE WILD A LESSON FROM THE MAN IN BLACK A BOY NAMED SUE CAREER WILDERNESS RAMBLIN

BRAVE THE THE CAREER WILDERNESS IN A DOWNTURN WHO SAYS THE MAN IN BLACK DIDN’T HAVE A GOOD A FEW GOOD IDEAS?

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WHY RAMBLE WHEN YOU CAN SETTLE DOWN WITH A GOOD HEARTED EMPLOYER FOR THE ULTIMATELY LONG HAUL?

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transmit magazine 012 | 20 12 |

DEPARTMENTS 17

a boy named sue Ours isn’t a generation that will give you just one adjective to describe our hurt.

By

Willie Nelson

19

21

career wilderness ramblin on A college degree is still valuable in today’s world, at least for those who can manage it.

By Merle Haggard

College instruction more closely resembles a musical performance than an auto assembly line. Although information technologies have yielded some productivity growth in academia, instruction still takes place largely as it always has.

By Woody Guthrie

34

By Noreen Malone

When the going gets tough the not-sotough get going.

By Brian Bell

41

Nearing graduation and making plans for the job-searchingfuture that lies ahead.

By Pat Wilson

Lessons to be had from a Tennesse legend.

By June Carter 20 transmit magazine 012 | 12 | f eatured

a lesson from the man in black

They’re screwed, coddled, selfabsorbed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation.

out of the city, into the wild

30

fairweather friends

sucks to be us

FEATURES

46

17

a boy named sue

A Boy Named Sue

Ours isn’t a generation that will give you just one adjective to describe our hurt.

It might be hard, in fact, to create a generation more metaphysically ill-equipped to adjust to this new tough-shit world. Yet some of us, somehow, are dealing pretty well.

“Son, this world is rough And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along”

Our generation is the product of two long-term social experiments conducted by our parents. The first sought to create little hyperachievers encouraged to explore our interests and talents, so long as that could be spun for maximum effect on a college application. (I would like to take this forum to at last admit that my cosecretaryship of the math club had nothing to do with any passion for numbers and much to do with the extracredit points.) In the second experiment, which was a reaction to their own distant moms and dads, our parents tried to see how much self-confidence they could pack into us, like so many overstuffed microfiber love seats, and accordingly we were awarded clip-art Certificates of Participation just for showing up.

The finite supply of actual brass rings meant that the first experiment would never pan out, but the second was a runaway success. Self-esteem among young people in America has been

rising since the seventies, but it’s now so dramatically high that social scientists are considering whether they need to find a different measurement system—we’ve broken the scale.

Since we are not in fact all perfect, this means that the endless praise we got growing up, win or lose, must have really sunk in. (Meanwhile, it’s this characteristic that our parents’ generation—which instilled it in us!—so delights in interpreting as “entitled.”)

I’ve got a working theory about what’s happening as our selfesteem surpluses collide with a contracting world. A big chunk of our generation, the part David Brooks a decade ago collectively labeled the Organization Kid, more or less happily embraced very hard work within the system. (Brooks was focused on elite students, but I think the term applies equally well to your typical first- and second-honor-roll strivers.)

If you were an Organization Kid and have prospered despite the economy, landing one of those jobs that come with an embroidered gym bag, you’re obviously fine. The big change is that when you describe yourself as lucky—a word that comes up a lot with friends I know like this—you may actually mean it more than you would have before.

Social Survival

“Son, this world is rough And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along.

So I give ya that name and I said goodbye I knew you’d have to get tough or die And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”

18

You’d better move away,You’re standin’ too close to the flame.Once I mess with your mind,Your little heart won’t beat the same.Lord, I’m a ramblin’ man, Don’t mess around with any ol’ ramblin’ man.

19

Life Coach career

wilderness

Career Wilderness She’s in love with a good hearted man A college degree is still valuable in today’s world, at least for those who can manage it.

The numbers show a conflicted yet striking pattern.

Real earnings for men, 25 to 34, with bachelor’s degrees are down 19 percent since 2000, and for female college graduates of that age they are down 16 percent since 2003.

Yet the wage differential between college graduates and high school graduates — the college premium — is growing. Thirty years ago, college graduates made 40 percent more than high school graduates, but now the gap is about 83 percent. Even a cashier with a college degree makes more than a cashier without a college degree.

This mix of facts suggests that our institutions of

higher education will have a harder time supporting themselves, precisely when they are needed to improve the quality of the American work force. Admittedly, the marginal student perhaps cannot successfully negotiate today’s community college system and complete the degree, but that suggests we need to improve K-12

preparation. It’s now common that a fire chief has to have a master’s degree. That may sound silly and it would be easy to think that a master’s degree has not very much to do with putting out fires. Still, often it is desired that a firefighter is trained in emergency medical services, antiterrorism practices.

21

Market Awareness

ramblin on

Ramblin On

She loves me despite my Mickey Mouse ways.

College instruction more closely resembles a musical performance than an auto assembly line. Although information technologies have yielded some productivity growth in academia, instruction still takes place largely as it always has.

To recruit professors, universities must pay salaries roughly in line with those made possible by productivity growth in other sectors. So while rising salaries needn’t lead to higher prices in many industries, they do in academia and many other service industries.

Because universities are already rushing to use technologies for improving faculty productivity — for example, Web-based review sessions and homework evaluation subsidy reductions won’t encourage much additional progress against Baumol’s disease. But there’s a second major source of tuition growth that universities are less able to ameliorate on their own: the escalating competition for academic prestige.

This phenomenon is rooted in the growing disparities in graduates’ starting salaries, which resemble those we’ve seen for the country as a whole. After adjusting for inflation, starting salaries for most graduates have remained essentially stagnant for several decades,

For the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than it’s parents.

is not our fault CLARE: ok, you know what i always think about when i think of our generation? i read the david brooks book, “the social animal” and while it was only mediocre, he had this one really great bit

ME: sure (10:28) CLARE: our generation is: delayed afraid immature (10:29) independent fame and glory hungry (ambitious?) weirdly apathetic when it comes to things outside of the internet (10:32) ME: delayed

(10:24 p.m.) CLARE: how about they just call us SAA self-absorbed assholes ME: booo CLARE: we need a Dto make it really good SAD—self-absorbed delusionals ps(10:26) can i send you a cover letter right quick

S TO

Th gr se re

SUCKS TO BE US.

By Noreen Malone

he reality that faces today’s college raduates: they’re screwed, coddled, elf-absorbed, mocked and a surprisingly esilient generation.

22

e grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible (10:37) we had a PC education—people tried to hide from us as long as possible that not everyone is equal

(10:34) but it is the digital connectivity, that proximity to these people, that makes us think that perhaps we will succeed as well (10:35) ok, i’m done (10:36) no i’m not here’s why the recession is so devastating to u

(10:33) the cold truth is that not all of us are brilliant we are not all big thinkers. Not everyone’s TED talks will change the world some of us will just dissipate into the ether

that really stuck with me—the Greek ideal of “thumos”, which is the lust not for money or success (in the conventional sense) but the lust for glory we want glory through our ideas-we want to know we matter

It might be hard, in fact, to create

social scientists are considering whether

a generation more metaphysically

they need to find a different measurement

ill-equipped to adjust to this new

system—we’ve broken the scale. Since we are

tough-shit world. Yet some of us,

not in fact all perfect, this means that the

somehow, are dealing pretty well.

endless praise we got growing up, win or

—OUR GENERATION’S lose, must have really sunk in. (Meanwhile,

Our generation is the product of two long-

it’s this characteristic that our parents’

term social experiments conducted by our

generation—which instilled it in us!—so

parents. The first sought to create little

delights in interpreting as “entitled.”)

hyperachievers encouraged to explore our interests and talents, so long as that

I’ve got a working theory about what’s

could be spun for maximum effect on a

happening as our self-esteem surpluses

college application. (I would like to take

collide with a contracting world. A big

this forum to at last admit that my co-

chunk of our generation, the part David

secretaryship of the math club had nothing

Brooks a decade ago collectively labeled

to do with any passion for numbers and much

the Organization Kid, more or less happily

to do with the extra-credit points.) In the

embraced very hard work within the system.

second experiment, which was a reaction to

(Brooks was focused on elite students, but

their own distant moms and dads, our parents

I think the term applies equally well to

tried to see how much self-confidence they

your typical first- and second-honor-roll

could pack into us, like so many overstuffed

strivers.) If you were an Organization Kid

microfiber love seats, and accordingly

and have prospered despite the economy,

we were awarded clip-art Certificates

landing one of those jobs that come with an

of Participation just for showing up.

embroidered gym bag, you’re obviously fine.

The big change is that when you describe

The finite supply of actual brass rings

yourself as lucky—a word that comes up a

meant that the first experiment would never

lot with friends I know like this—you may

pan out, but the second was a runaway

actually mean it more than you would have

success. Self-esteem among young people in

before. (Before, it would have just been

America has been rising since the seventies,

codespeak for “privileged.”) If, though,

but it’s now so dramatically high that

you set track records and made summa cum

“I have a lot of regret about going to college” Sam, the person in my highschool class who’d been most obsessed with getting into a good college, now says. “If I could go back again, I think I’d try… not going to college”

laude—if you earned praise not just for

that just to afford housing and groceries.

effort but real achievements—only to land

So I’m screwed now, unable to enjoy young

back in the same bedroom where you drilled

adulthood in the way that- I feel I was

for the SATs, then you are unmoored. Your

promised, and screwed for the future.”

less-decorated peers, feeling the love

Then there is my friend Sam (not his real

regardless of results, came to believe

name, because he felt that if I used his

they’ll always be appreciated. Whereas

real name, he’d truly be unemployable). In

you have had your worldview kicked in.

high school, Sam was the sports captain

You become a little like my friend Lael

who set all the curves in calculus. I used

Goodman. “The worst thing is that I’ve

to call him up the night before physics

always gotten self-worth from performance,

tests to figure out what I should know.

especially good grades. But now that I can’t

Sam went to the best college he got into,

get a job, I feel worthless,” she says.

for which he took out $50,000 in loans. He

ULTIMATE BLASPHEMY. Lael, who is 27, was the valedictorian of her high school and did very well in college too. Unable to find a position that paid a decent wage using her English degree, she got a master’s at the University of Michigan in environmental studies. She does technically have a job, for now, filling in for a woman on maternity leave at a D.C. nonprofit, but it’s not one that prevents all her go-getting from seeming for naught. Lael feels like she’s stranded on the wrong rung. “All the articles in the newspaper say that investing in an IRA now means I’ll have hundreds of thousands of extra dollars down the road, so I should just scrimp and save,” she says. “But I can’t scrimp and save because I’m doing

24

(10:28) CLARE: our generation is: delayed afraid immature (10:29) independent fame and glory hungry (ambitious?) weirdly apathetic when it comes to things outside of the internet (10:32) ME: delayed is not our fault

(10:24 p.m.) CLARE: how about they just call us SAA self-absorbed assholes ME: booo CLARE: we need a Dto make it really good SAD—self-absorbed delusionals ps(10:26) can i send you a cover letter right quick ME: sure

i am filing your comments in my file. (10:43) i think your cover letter is good! CLARE: i thought it was ok (10:47) but I am, to be honest, expecting a rejection.

we were told we all have a fair chance of making it that’s just not so and we’re starting to realize that (10:39) are you even listening to me anymore? (10:41) ME: hi sorry (10:42) i was writing an email

signed up for some abstract-math courses, was cowed by classmates who worked theorems for kicks, and majored in poetry writing rather than fall short in the subject he’d built so much of his identity on. After graduating, he took a job as a woodworker’s apprentice, not the expected outcome for a grade-grubbing gunner, but also not all that unusual back in the days before every decision about which major to sign up for or job to take started to feel make-or-break. One thing about being the boomers’ heirs growing up in boom times was that it used to be okay to take a life-enriching sabbatical.

There was no reason to think you wouldn’t eventually be able to get back on track.

Sam found out that woodworking turned out to be mostly vacuuming up wood chips, and so after a few months, he moved on to a series of other gigs, none of them exactly a career. When he finally got sick of bouncing around in his broken-down $200 car and living with his parents—who kept pressuring him to revisit his mathand-science aptitude—he got himself a $25,000 bank loan, which he used to cover expenses while enrolled in continuing-ed classes in engineering at one of the U.C. schools. He ran out of money pretty quickly. He then found a job working in urban education, but was laid off after a year and a half. “That was the point in my life where I was like, I need to get a career, I need to make that move,” he told me over the phone, in the mellowed-out East Bay patois that had crept into his voice since I last spoke with him. These days, he’s going to networking events and desperately applying for jobs in the tech world, hopeful that landing something very entry-level will put him back on a navigable route to success. He’s had creditors calling him at all hours. He is rather earnestly worried that he might end up on the street.

His brothers are managing to stand on their own feet, and he can’t bear to move back home.

Sam blames himself for his predicament, not the economy, mostly. But other people in similar straits are coming to see their personal hardships as the product of broad inequalities.

How many young people will put themselves into that category is a big test for Occupy Wall

“I have a lot of regret about going to college” Sam, the person in my highschool class who’d been most obsessed with getting into a good college, now says. “If I could go back again, I think I’d try… not going to college” Street. One of its advocates created a Tumblr, “We Are the 99 Percent,” to collect accounts of being screwed by the recession. The posts from twentysomethings take stories that sound something like Lael’s—“I worked hard (40 hours a week during most of my education), for what? Tell me what I need to do to get ahead, because I did everything right!”—and make them a call to arms.

The unions, we know, are heeding that call, but a broader youth movement has yet to materialize.* The Obama 2008 campaign was the high-water mark for twentysomething political involvement. The activism it entailed felt like work—not a turnoff for us. Dialing your way through spreadsheets of get-out-the-vote phone numbers is something you can add to a résumé; getting escorted off the Brooklyn Bridge in those plastic handcuffs is not. But we’re done with that kind of engagement, for now: While this is by some measures the most politically progressive generation ever, young people have never been more disillusioned, as a group, about their ability to bring about meaningful change through the electoral process.

Sam Graham-Felsen was the Obama campaign’s chief blogger last cycle and now lectures about youth activism all over the world.

When we spoke during the early days of the protests, he wasn’t convinced Occupy Wall Street could make activism cool for kids again, a factor he views as a key difference between the U.S. and places like Egypt. “Even just the physical style, the types of chants, the stuff that they’re eating, the granola—it’s just so derivative of the sixties,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Guys, let’s do something that’s more our generation.’ ” What’s not clear is exactly what that might look like. It’s not that this is a generation that doesn’t want to improve the world—been to a college activity fair 26

in a backpack and keep a current

settled which was the superior

passport always on hand.) They are

economic and political system,

unabashedly, feverishly upset.

leaving youthful calls for

Their words practically sweat

revolution to be shouted in the

clammily. Our generation tends

context of gay rights and women’s

to prefer our dystopian news

rights and pro-Palestinian-

delivered with the impish smile

hummus-in-the-campus-cafeteria

of a Jon Stewart. (I turn the

demonstrations, which are really

channel when it’s time for

about improvements to the status

scowling, ranting Lewis Black.)

quo, not a wholesale overthrow.

Reared to sponge up positive

In the sixties, that generation’s

reinforcement that requires only

protesters wanted a blank slate,

a positive attitude as a buy-in,

economic and political chaos

we are just not that into anger.

out of which they could build

I spent the summer listening to

something new. We’ve got that

Helplessness Blues, an album

chaos, and all we want is a way

by Fleet Foxes.

to get back to the structured

and comforting and hated by a

prosperity that preceded their

certain kind of music snob, and

marching. It’s hard to build a

it was unexpectedly popular. The

potent counterculture when some

band, fronted by a 25-year-old,

of the people it’s meant to appeal

owes much to the sounds of groups

to are just hoping for the chance

like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,

to put on a tie and report.

but if such a thing is possible,

“Maybe I don’t have to make

Fleet Foxes makes those older acts

a splash. Maybe I’ll be okay

sound hard-edged. The folk music

with just keeping afloat.”

of the sixties was protest music,

It is sweet

but there is nothing remotely If you look at the people on

political about this. Instead,

the left who have painted the

the preoccupations are inward-

darkest picture of what the

turning, the title track serving

economic downturn means, they’re a

as a gentle generational anthem:

generation ahead: Matt Taibbi, for

“I was raised up believing / I was

one, or Ken Layne, the publisher

somehow unique / Like a snowflake,

of Wonkette, whose ironized blog

distinct among snowflakes / Unique

prose mixes strangely with his

in each way you can see,”

incredibly bleak reading of the

it begins. “But, now, after

economy and culture. (Layne told

some thinking, I’d say I’d

me, in an e-mail of ambiguous

rather be / A functioning cog in

sincerity, that the main advice

some great machinery / Serving

he would give a recent graduate

something beyond me.”

(10:34) but it is the digital connectivity, that proximity to these people, that makes us think that perhaps we will succeed as well (10:35) ok, i’m done (10:36) no i’m not here’s why the recession is so devastating to u

involvement. The Cold War sort of

(10:33) the cold truth is that not all of us are brilliant we are not all big thinkers. Not everyone’s TED talks will change the world some of us will just dissipate into the ether

was to own only what would fit

with that really stuck with me—the Greek ideal of “thumos”, which is the lust not for money or success (in the conventional sense) but the lust for glory we want glory through our ideas-we want to know we matter

COPING WITH HARSH ECONOMIC REALITIES-METH. lately?—but ours is a fractured

CLARE: ok, you know what i always think about when i think of our generation? i read the david brooks book, “the social animal” and while it was only mediocre, he had this one really great bit that really stuck

27

CLARE: ok, you know what i always think about when i think of our generation? i read the david brooks book, “the social animal” and while it was only mediocre, he had this one really great bit that really stuck with

(10:28) CLARE: our generation is: delayed afraid immature (10:29) independent fame and glory hungry (ambitious?) weirdly apathetic when it comes to things outside of the internet (10:32) ME: delayed is not our fault

(10:24 p.m.) CLARE: how about they just call us SAA self-absorbed assholes ME: booo CLARE: we need a Dto make it really good SAD—self-absorbed delusionals ps(10:26) can i send you a cover letter right quick ME: sure

i am filing your comments in my file. (10:43) i think your cover letter is good! CLARE: i thought it was ok (10:47) but I am, to be honest, expecting a rejection.

we were told we all have a fair chance of making it that’s just not so and we’re starting to realize that (10:39) are you even listening to me anymore? (10:41) ME: hi sorry (10:42) i was writing an email

we grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible (10:37) we had a PC education—people tried to hide from us as long as possible that not everyone is equal

It’s not just the bearded

and co-created by Michael

In the early days of the

dudes in flannel;some of our

Patrick King, whose Sex

recession, I was secretly

angry-sounding musicians,

and the City prerecession

a little jealous of friends

it turns out, are just

fantasia ran on a constant

who’d lost their jobs.

seeking affirmation. On the

loop in college girls’ dorm

When you’re young enough,

song “Radicals,” rapper

rooms in the mid-aughts as

from the outside a layoff

Tyler, the Creator snarls,

we put on our heels and

can look confusingly like

“I’m not saying just to

going-out tops and drank

liberation. It seemed like

go out and do some stupid

vodka from Solo cups. The

an opportunity to do more

shit, commit crimes. What

show is neither very good

of the semi-sanctioned

I’m trying to tell you is,

nor very accurate in its

and semi-scripted fucking

do what the fuck you want,

portrayal of what it’s

around that goes with

stand for what the fuck

really like to be a broke

this decade of life. But

you believe in and don’t

girl living in Williamsburg

it stops feeling like a

let nobody tell you you

(hi!), but it does get one

fun, sexy choice when it’s

can’t do what the fuck you

big thing right. It centers

not, in fact, a choice,

want.” Then the kicker:

on the sardonic heroine Max,

and what income you’re

“I’m a fucking unicorn,

played by Kat Dennings, who

fortunate to have is highly

and fuck anybody who say

beneath her surface armor

nondisposable. It’s hard

I’m not.” Today’s fucking

is hamstrung by faltering

to fully enjoy avoiding

unicorn is yesterday’s

self-confidence after, we

maturity if you’re worried

“Fuck tha Police.”

are meant to imagine, being

that it’s more like

unable to get anything

maturity is escaping you.

Television writers, a lot

better than her waitressing

of them young themselves,

gig. Her co-worker foil,

Amid all the jumping around

are starting to offer

Caroline, the spoiled, newly

between jobs and among

their own expressions of

destitute daughter of a

beds, the twenties are, for

our generation’s shifting

Madoff-esque figure, refuses

a lot of people, the time

sensibility. Pre-crash, we

to wallow despite her fall

to figure out whom you

had the creamy male fairy

from privilege, and dreams

want to settle down with.

tale of Entourage. Now HBO

up a cupcakery as a way to

The economy has pushed

serves up How to Make It in

split the difference between

back that rite of passage:

America, a slightly grittier

the waitressing grind and

The median age of first

prequel to the good life

the life she had coming

marriages has crept up by

that implies simply being

her way. Obviously, a vegan

about a year since 2006 a

marginally in the mix of

falafel truck would be a

statistically huge increase—

a certain kind of scene—

much more 2011-appropriate

and the overall marriage

it’s no longer necessary

start-up scheme, but never

rate is at an all-time low.

to have ascended to the

mind: Their attempts to deal

top—constitutes “making it”

with adult disappointment,

today. And CBS is enjoying a

to find a new path, now

hit with 2 Broke Girls, set

make for a plot with a

in a diner in Williamsburg

lot of mileage in it.