The "millennial" generation grows up

A response to an article in this week's Newsweek:
"Generation 9/11: Children who watched the tragedy unfold are now on the brink of adulthood."


(video from the article)

I remember the Tuesday when the events of 9/11/01 happened.

I was in 8th grade. I had a Student Council officer meeting that morning at 8:15, so at around 7:50 when the first plane hit, I was eating cereal, still unaware what had just occurred. During that meeting, the StuCo advisor had vaguely mentioned that something had happened that morning, but being merely 13, I was still ignorant of world events. I didn't think much of it.

My first class rolled around when the bell rang at 8:45. It was P/AP English. I don't remember much about my 8th grade English teacher, but I do remember this: she was a bitch. Now, don't get me wrong: she wasn't a mean bitch; she was really sweet and nice. However, she treated the oldest kids in middle school (us 8th graders) like we were kindergartners. I'm sure she meant well, but damn. That bitch. Some of the students in my class tried to ask what was going on that seemed to put some of the adults on edge. Her response? "I think you should go home and ask your parents about it." What the fuck? No one was asking her opinion or perspective on anything; we just wanted to know some objective facts. Two planes crashed into two buildings in New York. That's all you have to say.

The rest of the day wasn't as memorable to me. I do recall that about a week later after not having mentioned the events of 9/11, a guy in my P/AP U.S. History class asked why we hadn't discussed it yet. My teacher immediately stopped whatever she was going to do and said, "Let's talk about it then." I really wish my English teacher was like that. I also remember the overexposure of the news that week. Call me unpatriotic, but it got really irritating.

Anyway, enough of this walk down memory lane. I really wanted to talk about the article. In case you didn't read it, here's a quick run-down:

• The "millennial" generation (those of us born between 1982 and 2004) is starting to enter adulthood around now.
• We were born in a time of relative prosperity with the economic booms of the '90s and the oncoming of the Internet and the computer age.
• We grew up confident in ourselves with little to worry about, especially with the end of the Cold War with the result of the U.S. coming out as a sole world superpower.
• But with 9/11, terror was "brought to [our] doorsteps." As much as the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War, and the Columbine shootings have shaped the mindsets of the people growing up during these events, 9/11 will ultimately somehow shape the mindsets of the "millennial" generation, although of course to varying degrees.
• We have been forced to have a more global perspective. We are (slightly [so far]) more interested in working for non-profit corporations or trying to make some type of social change when we "grow up.

So these are the key points.

Well, I'm growing up. I'm 21. I can see the altruistic and philanthropic benefits of doing something non-profit or socially-changing, but I can't say my heart is in it yet. Based on my trodden path and its trajectory, I'm looking to stay in academia and research and add to the knowledge pools of the social sciences. Of course, the social sciences are like the theoretical side of social change, which would be the more applied side. I wouldn't doubt it if, in the future, I somehow found a way to make that jump to social causes/changes for the betterment of humanity.

But the question still remains of how 9/11 affected me. Did it even affect me? I like to think of myself as above average as far as resilience goes, so I can't say that I'm really emotionally-distraught by the events of that fateful day. Therefore, the question morphs to how much 9/11 affected me. Now, to answer this, I have to think about direct and indirect effects. Directly, I can't say I'm much changed. I didn't know anyone in New York at the time, and I had never really been there. Indirectly though, the effects are arguably gigantic.

9/11 changed the world. Unfortunately, I can't escape the world. People's views, political arenas, mindsets, prominent issues ... everything (I use this term loosely) was changed. Therefore, the boxes and the environments in which I conceptualized the world were altered forever. Whatever mental patterns society was conditioning into me at the time were thrown away and replaced with these altered ones.

Uh ... so I think I'm starting to go into logical circles or I'm just repeating things said in the article that I read almost a full 24 hours ago. I think this is a good place to end for now. I will no doubt pick up the loose strings in another blog.


Unrelated: Currently listening to Sondre Lerche, a Norwegian singer. He's pretty awesome.