Glamorous v. prestige
Our previous class discussion (the one before our guest speaker) in which we read the article about the diminishing prestige and popularity of becoming lawyers and doctors really got me thinking. As I watched Mark Zuckerberg, 23 years old, CEO of Facebook, being interviewed on 60 Minutes, I thought to myself, “Why couldn’t I do that?” I mean, here’s a guy who is only one year older than me, and he’s in charge of his own company in comparison to me, a soon-to-be college graduate, a soon-to-be in debt and unemployed college graduate.
One thing that I connected with this interview was the idea that pursuing a career as a doctor or lawyer requires years of schooling, which requires money (to pay tuition) and hard work (to receive good grades and graduate). Who wouldn’t want to skip years of schooling and still succeed. Many people pursue higher education to obtain a better job. Zuckerberg, a Harvard drop out, has, in my opinion, an ideal job – a company of his own design and millions of dollars. Zuckerberg is not the only success story; Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the country, and Matt Damon, the 2007 sexiest man alive, also dropped out of school, obtained careers that brought them fortune and fame.
I believe this connects very well with what Abbey mentioned in class, that with our generation “Everyone’s special.” Wouldn’t we all like to believe that we are in fact so special we don’t need further education and within ourselves are ideas for companies and we’d become rich or famous?
One thing that I connected with this interview was the idea that pursuing a career as a doctor or lawyer requires years of schooling, which requires money (to pay tuition) and hard work (to receive good grades and graduate). Who wouldn’t want to skip years of schooling and still succeed. Many people pursue higher education to obtain a better job. Zuckerberg, a Harvard drop out, has, in my opinion, an ideal job – a company of his own design and millions of dollars. Zuckerberg is not the only success story; Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the country, and Matt Damon, the 2007 sexiest man alive, also dropped out of school, obtained careers that brought them fortune and fame.
I believe this connects very well with what Abbey mentioned in class, that with our generation “Everyone’s special.” Wouldn’t we all like to believe that we are in fact so special we don’t need further education and within ourselves are ideas for companies and we’d become rich or famous?
posted by spoehner at
4:10 PM
2 Comments:
You make a good point about how our generation is always thinking that we are "special." One area where I think that our generation really focuses on being "special" is the choice of which college to attend. So many students choose private, extremely specialized, very expensive colleges, and then get a "typical" degree. I don't understand why students pay thousands of dollars to obtain a degree from a private school when they could have attended a state school and recieved the same degree. It seems to me that if the job one is obtaining will never be able to pay back the education loans then choosing a cheaper school may need to be seriously considered. In fact, those extremely successful people, like the facebook guy or Bill Gates, who are colleg drop-outs made a mature decision, in my opinion, by going in a different direction without wasting excessive amounts of time money.They knew what they wanted and went after it in the most efficient way.
By no means am I suggesting that we should all drop out of college!
In my Journalism Media class we had to watch something on 60 Minutes regarding our generation’s attitudes toward the work place. I found it very interesting that so many companies have to hire outside help in order for CEOs and other top executives to deal with our generation. The clip drew on the idea that people like Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood told every last one of us that we were special. So our parents ran with this idea telling us that we can be whatever we wanted to be when we were younger. This of course takes us to the guy who created Facebook. I’m sure he watched good old Mr. Rogers and he heard the same thing we did, that we were “special”. His parents probably told him he could do whatever he wanted when he was younger, and now look at him. He’s capitalizing on this new industry that is only going to get bigger.
I also found it interesting that these baby boomer bosses are going to have to change their approach in how they talk to us; instead of being a boss to us they have to be our coaches. I think since a lot of students don’t normally take jobs until they are in college, it’s harder for them to become adjusted to the idea of having someone telling you what to do and when it should be done by. (Granted this is what college is for, but we can usually get some wiggle room with certain teachers depending on the assignment). Many of the other schools at Indiana University don’t normally recruit companies to come in and help students find jobs like Kelley does. I think this also promotes the whole” babying” idea because if they don’t have to “search” for a job, what makes you think they are really going to go out and do a greater amount of work for you? It doesn’t matter what your degree is in, at one point we will be searching for jobs, and hopefully our employers will be able to deal with our attitude of “we don’t take no as an answer” and that our family and friends come first over our job. If that’s the case then I feel like it would be a win-win for both parties.
At the end though, one of the people said it might be great now, but later this might hurt our economy. What do you guys think about that? Do you think our generation can handle the pressure of what the baby boomers left up to us? Only time will tell though…hopefully my job will make me feel “special”…cause my parents yeah…not so much!
Here is the link if any of you wanted to watch it:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3486473n
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