Brining UU to my world – YUUP – Young UU Professionals?

After another flurry of emails in my 20s/30s group about the large group of 40s, I’ve been thinking a lot lately on UU and my generation. We are busy – I’m really at the start of my generation, The Millennials, who start with those who graduated high school in 2000 which was my high school class, and continues for around 20 years. This suggests that have more I common with the kids in my youth group than their parents, which I’ve often thought. We’ve grown up on computers (we had a personal computer when I was 5) and the internet (which I had access to in the 4th grade – before the world wide web popped up for mainstream use. I got a computer and internet access through my school, who gave all of us fourth and fifth grades a computer and a modem with access to a chat service and a message board via Prodigy.) We’re accustomed to instant communication, either via the Internet or cell phones (I was among the last of my friends to get one, as a junior in high school in 1998.) We’re busy – we’ve had busy schedules planned out for us since birth. Even with my less than normal childhood, I still had the gambit of little league sports and scouts and once I hit high school I was involved with a dozen after school clubs.)

Now that we’re entering the workforce, we’re encountering a whole set of different kind of problems than what we’ve ever faced before. We’ve gone from having scripted lives to a less than stellar workforce where often our talents aren’t being utilized to our fullest potential…and that’s really the first time that’s happened to us. All our lives we’ve suffered from high expectations, either our own or our families’. And when we don’t live up to those expectations, we see it as a character flaw.

I know, I know. I can hear the eye rolling now. That happens to everyone at that age. Get over it.

We hear that a lot. Get over it. I’ve even heard it at church before. Maybe not those words specifically, but certainly the intent, and the eye rolling, has gotten across before, even in a small group setting which really set me off from the whole small group thing.

But it’s different. At least I think it is, but I’m hardly an objective observer.

I dealt with a lot of these issues a year or two ago, but they really just blindsided my best friend, and she’s having a really hard time coping with it all. Why is that we just can’t seem to be comforted by our faith?

We need to find a way to update Unitarian Universalism, to keep our faith alive and vibrant, not forgetting our past but not letting that past dictate where the future will go. I need a faith where I can practice without having to go on Sunday morning to get my fill. Where I can practice on a flight, going out drinking with friends, or even stuck in traffic. There has to be more ways of connecting with the universe without having to maintain an austere meditation schedule, or taking days off from work to go live in the woods (lord knows I want to, but I can’t take off days like that – I’m not at that point in my career yet.)

Another thing that’s on my mind is that the main crux of the former young adult planning was centered around conferences and retreats, where someone like me who doesn’t get a lot of time off work can go to, and from what I hear, are slightly more hippie than I’d like. I guess what I want is a UU group for Young Professionals, where we can learn to make sense of the workplace, without having to take a week off to discover ourselves. Maybe I should help start a group – YUUP – Young UU Professionals.

I can still be Unitarian and love facebook, starbucks, and birthday princesses

I can still be Unitarian and love facebook, starbucks, and birthday princesses – a minor critique of UU world cover article “Home grown Unitarian Universalism” by William Doherty
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I can be a consumer and still have a soul

I finally had time to read this spring’s UU world Saturday night, on a flight from Dallas back home to Atlanta, another semi-monthly business trip. It was a pretty hectic trip as usual, although most of my thoughts were on the mess of a schedule that was waiting for me at the arrival gate. I finished up Runaway Jury for about the tenth time, and then saw the magazine waiting in my laptop bag. The cover article looked interesting, so after I read through some of the other articles (skimming over the just war article – I’m all sorts of peaced out for a while.) The writer, William Doherty, had good ideas near the end of the article and is right about a fair amount of points (and I appreciate that), but the article starts off with a premise I have issues with, and in fact, I think is telling of one of the biggest challenges Unitarians face: bringing our sometimes elitist faith into the 21st century.

“These three interrelated social pathologies of contemporary middle-class life – consumerism, time famine, and civic disengagements – are a real life curriculum, or anti-life curriculum, for our children. If we don’t find a way to counteract this curriculum, we will end up with feel-good faith formation that looks and sounds fine but lacks power and depth.”

By trying to remove your kids from pop culture and mainstream society, you will set their faith up for failure. The challenge of my generation, the “millenials” who are constantly busy and have been since we were born, is maintaining, no, adapting, our faith to fit our lifestyle. If we are taught that having deep Unitarian faith is only possible when we unplug from society and retreat back into the woods, then aside from feeling Unitarian guilt our faith will gradually disappear. We should be showing and teaching our children how to apply UUism to everyday life, and show them how they can see spirituality in the everyday – If our kids can see how they can find spirituality in Dance Dance Revolution, then our kids will grow up to maintain their faith as adults.

We can’t pretend we live in a world without pop culture and the evil “c” word of consumerism. I don’t think we can even try to set up our own little protective elitist bubble – no child wants to be the boy in the bubble. And even if we could – we shouldn’t.

One of the issues that faces our faith is what happens after someone walks into our church for the first time and bangs up against our elitism. And if you doubt UU elitism, this quote from the front-page article of our quarterly religious publication should quell some doubts – “Our me-first, materialistic, consumer culture.”

When we start our ritual criticism American society and consumerism, people, new and old alike, start to question what we’re all about. What’s the soul of Unitarian Universalsm? Is it rebellion against modern society? Is it anti-consumerism? Is it condemning our neighbor for having too many iPods? Is it peace at all costs? Is it some special interest or another?

Or is it love.

I’d rather be surrounded by the latter

And one final point:

“I’ve been working with parents to blow the whistle on one prominent example of consumer culture invading childhood: out-of-control children’s birthday parties…the frantic culture of busyness among adults and children also threatens the values of our tradition celebrates.”

That’s right, Ava (my niece), your Barbie blow out birthday is hereby banned. It doesn’t fit with my faith. On your upcoming sixth birthday, I think it would be better if we meditated on the meaning of cake. Let our chalice be your cake, and hey, it’s even got a candle!

Millenials and Political Beliefs

Pretty interesting article on political beliefs of us young folk.

Millenials in the News – Helicopter Parents

Via the AJC - An article on Millenials and Helicopter Parents

Reading this article makes me glad my mom is not a helicopter parent – I would go nuts if she was.   But there’s a more serious issue here, in my mind, than the subject of the article.  I think the AJC is unfortunatley extrapolating sterotypes about our generation through some kids who just haven’t grown up yet.  You get the feel from the beginning of the article that these helicopter parents are in a distinct minority, yet the author of this piece uses it to say this -

From the moment they were born, millenials — those born between 1982 and 2002 — have been praised, pampered, prodded and protected. Every step of their lives — from preschool to college, from band practice to prepping for SAT exams — has been structured by their mostly baby boomer parents.

“These have been the ‘Buckle Up for Safety’ kids,” said Michele Borba, an educational psychologist in Palm Springs, Calif.

They were the first group of kids required to ride in car seats and later wore bike helmets. They redefined success as accomplishments that could be measured in GPA averages and SAT scores. Their parents heralded their milestones in the window or on the bumper of their SUVs.

Cellphones, instant messaging, e-mail and other technology has reattached the umbilical cord for this group. Helicopter parents just charge right past federal laws aimed at giving students more privacy.

I think this gives a pretty negative impression of Millienals, when it’s more of the parents’ doing than the Millenials’ doing. Yes, it’s interesting to see an article in the local paper about my generation – I just wish they hadn’t made it sound like we’re all stuck up asses in no hurry to grow up.

Ok. So I’m noticing a generation x vs. millienal conflict at work

I work with someone who could be the textbook stereotype of a Gen X’er.  And she’s annoying the hell out of me right now at work.  She just doesn’t take work as seriously as I do – she comes in late, calls out with 15 minutes warning (which is the most stressful thing imaginable at my job, especially when *I* have to deal with it) and when she’s not teaching she’s on the Internet looking for jobs, for either herself or her latest boy…or she’s on the phone dealing with her financial drama for half an hour…or spending hours reading webpages trying to find age-appropriate articles…or checking her email since the internet at her apartment she can’t afford got shut off.  Today she complained in a rather passive-aggressive way that she had a kid to teach for the first session and I didn’t.  Gee!  It’s only like that in reverse every single day, and since she called out and this was one of her kids from when she missed…well duh she’s going to have her.  She complains her students get moved, but she spent over 30 minutes doing a word search with two of her kids today, a third grader and a high school junior – we do actually need to tutor and not just babysit sometimes.

Not to mention anything electronic that she touches will ultimately stop working.  I don’t know how she does it.  I leave the computer, she gets on, and somehow the wireless Internet modem thingie stops working and will not start working again.  She clamors that the copy machine’s start button is stuck or something, and she “even tried unplugging it” and it wont work.  I remember when this happened a month ago (while I was gone training nonetheless) and when I walked in she and the other teacher were complaining about the broken copier.  IT WAS OUT OF PAPER.  IT SAID SO ON THE DAMN COPY MACHINE- “Load Paper.” in a very polite manner at the top of the copy screen.  So I asked her while she went to the printer/fax thing if it was out of paper.  “No – I checked.”  So I go back there, determined to figure out whats wrong since as the designated male I am responsible for fixing anything broken, despite my lack of electronic knowledge.  And sure enough, it says “Load paper.”  I get kinda ticked off for the rather blatant lying and lack of literacy from an English teacher, and start to walk back to my desk declaring “It says load paper.  It’s out of paper.  See!  It says it right there on the copier.”  She doesn’t believe me – I point it out and then she checks the paper tray just to make sure, and alas, no paper.  She loads some and magically the copy machine starts to work.  Wow.  What great technical know-how I have.

Ok.  So that was a little bitchy rant, but if I blog it out I’ll stop obsessing about it.

It aggravates me when somebody doesn’t take something as seriously as I take it, especially when it’s a job.  There are others that take the job extremely seriously, but she’s the one who gets the teaching hours before the others…which just ain’t right.  I’m friendly with said coworker, and would be friends with outside of the job, but she’s just flaky on the job.  I can separate job and friend fairly well, but I don’t think she’d be able to.

I realize that this is something I’ll have to deal with in the workplace – but she’s asking for a raise.  And I’m about to be put into a “management”-ish role.  I don’t know how I’ll approach that situation if it arises – I certainly hope I’m not put in the position to.

And on a completely unrelated note – Florida beat Ohio State (quelle surprise) for the NCAA basketball tourney.  Same result for the BCS champion.  Would anyone else like to see somebody different and want to somehow see anti-trust allegations alleged against Florida and Ohio State?

Generations and Work

I find myself seeing things in a new light after discovering this huge body of work on generations.  I’ve been coming into some minor conflict with a coworker, who is the classic definition of a GenXer.  And today she annoyed me for a large, variey of reasons.  And a lot of it was around taking the job seriously – I’m putting a lot of work into the job, and her thoughts are on things other than work.  And I was caught off guard, since I saw it more as a genrational thing than as a personal thing.

It’s rare when we get on each other nerves, and after a few minutes we’re back to chatting, but I could tell I was getting on her nerves, and vice-versa.  And it was interesting.

Managing Millennials

Anyone in a position where they are managing Millennials [aka Generation Y or those born from 1980-2000] should read this article.  I agree a lot with what it says on how I would want to be managed, and what I’ve noticed managing others of my generation.  So I reccommend giving it a read.

A good way to start off the dicussion here at Spirituality and Sunflowers.

http://www.generationsatwork.com/articles/millenials.htm 

New Sunflowers – Generation Y/Millennials and the Quarter-Life Crisis

Two new sunflowers have been planted here at the continually evolving Spirituality and Sunflowers – I’m going to talk more about my generation, Generation Y / Millennials (I’ll figure out exactly what term I like in a future post, but I think I’ll stick with Millennials ) and part of what I can now feel comfortable saying I’m going through – the Quarter-Life Crisis.

I brought me going through a quarter life crisis [I think] at my small group and was rewarded with smiles and almost polite giggles. I felt that some people thought it was a silly idea, which hurt, but then they acknowledged later that they went through something like that in their 20s too.

Well. I’m certainly starting to feel the age different between me and the rest of our 20s/30s group – Everyone seems to be telling me they went through the same thing 10 years ago. Thats nice, but it’d be nicer if someone in my social group was going through the same thing right now, instead of 10 years ago. Some people want to change the same of our group to “GenX”ers. That horrifies me, because I do NOT see myself as part of generation X. I’m after that. So that would mean that I’m part of Generation Y, but that term is in reference to the generation above mine. Sure it shows that I’m different from Gen X, but maybe the term Millennials is better. This is from the wikipedia article I’m in the middle of reading -

Following the publication of their book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, much credit has been given to the names used for various American cohorts by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe. Howe and Strauss use the term “Millennials” as opposed to “Generation Y,” arguing that members of Gen Y actually coined the term Millennials themselves and have statistically expressed a wish not to be associated closely with Gen X. They followed up their large study of the history of American demographics with a new book specifically on Gen Y, titled Millennials Rising (2000) ISBN 0-375-70719-0.

In Generations, Howe and Strauss use the years 1982-2000 as the birth years of Generation Y, using the 18 childhood years of the high school graduating class of 2000 as their marking points. They reasoned that the high school class of 2000 received notable public attention and political initiatives during their youth that provided a contrast between Americans born before this class and those born after.^[3]

When did Kinsi graduate High School?  HS Class of 2000 baby!  I remember when I was in elementary school they talked to us about being the class of 2000!  Anyone else out there remember that horrible anti-smoking video with the song “we are the smoke-free class of 2000″

So now that I’m accepting the terms Generation Y / Millennials and the Quarter-Life Crisis, expect many-o-blog-posts about it. And notice the new blog categories!