JIM:
I recently received an email attachment, entitled "8 Career Practices Millennials Can Learn From Baby Boomers," from an outfit with the address www.onlinebusinessdegree.org. Unexpectedly, I agreed with most (but not all) of these bits of advice:
1. Know your value. My dad would have said, "Don't sell yourself short." That's a tough precept to pursue in hard times. Unpaid internships abound, because employers know that Millennials will do most anything to build their resumes. I don't recall my friends and I ever having to do that. The jobs were there when we graduated, partly because a lot of our contemporaries went (voluntarily or not) into the armed forces.
2. Embrace change. I like to bill myself as a journalist, a lawyer and a teacher. Truth be told, I'm a jack of all three trades, master of none. But in combination, my university-counsel job, my freelance-writing business, and my adjunct -teaching gigs add up to a decent enough living. Most of my friends have had to re-invent themselves at least once. Like me, a bunch of them went to law school a little late in life. By contrast, my parents' generation - the one Tom Brokaw calls "The Greatest Generation" - took jobs and launched careers, after winning World War II, and mostly retired from those positions. Most of us didn't enjoy that luxury and neither will the Millennials.
3. Be optimistic. That's a tall order. It was both easier and harder in my day… easier because opportunities abounded… harder because of the Vietnam War and the Selective Service System's draft. The best I can offer here is that the end of the world has always been just around the next corner… nothing new in 2012.
4. You are not entitled to anything. This one I just ain't buying. Au contraire, on June 28th the U.S. Supreme Court said that we Americans are entitled to decent health care. And our Millennial kids, who don't have health insurance through their employers, can stay on their parents' policies to age 26. Say… that might be a reason for optimism. Do you think?
5. Integrate self and career. This is a tricky one. It took me more than half my life to master it. Today, at 64, I have no bucket list. There's nothing I like better than my career. (My apologies to anyone waiting in the wings for my job.) It wasn't always that way. My days as a well-compensated serf in a big law firm lacked this sense of integration. Finding the right fit is a predicate to putting the puzzle pieces of your life together snugly.
6. Demand flexibility. Maybe it's those Germanic genes I inherited from my mom… but I actually like a regular schedule: up at 5:00, off to work at 6:00, out of the office and over to the gym at 5 p.m., home for dinner by 7:00. Saturdays and Sunday, I write stuff like this plus a lot of law books. Not too flexible, huh?
7. Practice integrity. If we raised you right, you shouldn't need to practice. Paul Simon had me in mind when he wrote, "First to admit it, last one to know." Call it Catholic guilt, if you will. I work really hard at telling the truth. Clarence Darrow said it best, "Chase after the truth like all hell, and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails."
8. Be a self-starter. My Coast Guard drill instructor, Boatswain's Mate First Class Green, put it a bit more crudely, "Get up every morning and stomp on your *****." He meant, stay mad. Attack the day, don't let it attack you.
CLAIRE:
I agree with most this advice, too. I just have a couple of things to add…
1. Know your value. The last time someone asked me my minimum salary requirements, I was being paid to water my neighbor's plants while they went on vacation. This advice is difficult to apply when you have such a small frame of reference.
2. Embrace change. I have trouble changing my clothes on a daily basis (I work from home, after all). I don't like change. When I was eight years old, my cousins stayed over at my house for New Year's Eve for the first time ever. We made s'mores and wore glittery top hats, and it was all very much fun until my cousin George announced that he didn't want to watch the ball drop in Times Square. Instead, he wanted to watch a car drop in a junkyard on some Spike TV show. I was inconsolable - watching the ball drop in Times Square had been my lifelong tradition ever since my parents started letting me stay up for it the year before - and we ended up witnessing the new year from separate rooms. Some people never change, but I'll try to work on this one.
3. Be optimistic. I'm incredibly optimistic. How could I not be, having graduated at one of the worst times in recent history to be looking for entry-level employment? Everything seems like a step up to me.
4. You are not entitled to anything. I hear this constantly, and it feels a little like the Boomers doth protest too much. I'll let it slide because two of them raised me, plus I'm hoping they might throw me a little something from their social security someday. After all, I'm not entitled to anything, so social security might be cut altogether by the time I'm old enough to collect. But it's nice that you entitled folks have it now.
5. Integrate self and career. Well, I'm writing this article on a Tuesday night from my bed, I spend most of my days working from the living room couch in my pajamas, and last Sunday I spent the entire day proofreading a manuscript for work while "Six Feet Under" reruns played in the background. I feel like I've fully embraced this whole "integration" thing. The only way I could take it a step further is if I started holding Skype meetings from my bathtub.
6. Demand flexibility. Not for nothing, but I have friends who endured three or more preliminary interviews for a single job. I have friends who were strung along for weeks - "It's down to you and one other person!" - before hearing back about jobs only to discover that they picked the other guy. And those are the lucky ones, because most of us never hear back after sending our resumes out into the ether. So I'm not sure I recommend making demands once you've finally gotten your foot in the door.
7. Practice integrity. The Supreme Court recently ruled that it is an "unconstitutional infringement on free speech" to make it a crime to lie about having earned a military decoration. The Illinois Senate rejected a measure that would have forced schools to crack down on bullying, because it might compel kids to be nice to gay students, which is in some way also unconstitutional. It seems like "integrity" and "insanity" are awfully chummy these days, but best of luck to those who can navigate through it all.
8. Be a self-starter. I'm hoping to buy one of those coffee makers with a timer so that someday the smell of coffee can rouse me from bed every morning. Until I can afford to move out, though, or at least buy a coffee maker, I guess I'll continue to rely on my mom.