Millennial Me

I didn’t actually know I was a “millennial” until I got to college orientation. The George Washington University – henceforth to be known as GW – my chosen alma mater, was highly recommending a book called Millennials Go to College for parents of incoming freshman, namely because A) it would drive up summer sales at the University bookstore, B) it would tell all of these crazy helicopter parents what they were letting the school in for by passing off their over-parented teenagers and C) it would give these parents something to do other than hover while their children selected their classes and tried to make friends.

Demographers are still working on a solid definition of the Millennial generation, including when exactly it starts and ends, but I’m well within the debated boundaries of its early years, making me part of the “first wave” of adult millennials trying to figure out what to make of their lives. Some generalizations about my generation include that we’re over-everythinged: over-parented, over-educated, over-exposed to (and overly-dependent on) technology and over-involved, to name a few.

That’s not to say these are all bad things. Being over-parented tends to keep our family ties more intact than previous generations. Being over-educated seems to have given us the idea that we don’t have to launch a career right away and a few “just jobs” – and maybe another degree or two – before then is fine. And being over-involved seems to also mean that twice as many of us care about doing good for others than in recent generations. There’s not a whole lot that’s positive about being over-exposed to and overly-dependent on technology other than that we’re useful at the office, great at keeping in touch (as long as it’s not face-to-face) and brilliant multi-taskers (i.e. permanently distracted), but oh well.

That brings me to my next point: where the title of this blog, “There Is No Spoon,” came from. I wanted something easily recognizable to most people aged 15 to 65, but something that clearly “belongs” to my generation in that it has the strongest socio-cultural connection to us. I played with ideas around iPods (too techie), Facebook (too impersonal), TV shows from ‘Full House’ (too wholesome) to ‘Gilmore Girls’ (too girly)…and finally hit on this. The Matrix could easily be considered too sci-fi or too geeky, but the truth is it’s one of those really strong cultural links I’m so fond of – just about any American you talk to who was alive and over the age of 10 when the movie came out in 1999 has seen it. Just about anyone who’s seen it remembers two things most clearly: Keanu Reeves’ tripped-out-sounding “Whoa!” and the quote “There is no spoon.”

And I like the potential of that statement, “There is no spoon.” There is no pre-determined reality, no ready-made, frozen dinner version of life; it’s what you make of it, yourself. I wrote a poem about that for a Latin convention in high school, on being “the architect of your own fate.” It was a pretty awful poem, but I still like the idea. Which isn’t to say that I don’t believe destiny or fate doesn’t also play a role, but that’s a subject for another time.

The point today was to tell you why I named this blog what I did, and how I fit into that name.

So there it is, I’m a millennial. And I’m working on being a grown-up. Help me out with that, won’t you?