In today’s Chronicle of Higher Education (pay site – sorry – day passes available), this Student Affairs column looks at the terms used to describe different generations at any point in time. Here are some that made the list.
The Lost Generation
Joe College
The Rioting Mobs
The Grinders
The Veterans
The Beat Generation
The Uncommitted
The Disaffiliated
The Underachievers
The Silent Generation
The Me Generation
The Collegiates
The Vocationals
The Nonconformists
The Disengaged Generation
The Shopping Mall Generation
The Organization Kid
Generation X
Generation Y
Generation O
The Draft Dodgers
The Digital Generation
Effete Corps of Impudent Snobs
The Bums
The Young Radicals
The Pampered Generation
The Searchers
The Hip-Hop Generation
The Sandwich Generation
The Echo Boomers
The Tidal Wavers
The Woodstock Generation
The 13th Generation
The Boomers
The Slackers
The Numb and Dumbers
The Ritalin Generation
The Twentysomething Generation
The Millennials
Gen Next
The Consumers
Generation Jones
The YouTube Generation
The Rock the Vote Generation
The Baby Boomers
The Whiners
The MTV Generation
The Dot-Com Generation
The War Babies
The Third Wave Feminists
The Greatest Generation
I can recognize more easily the terms that that don’t apply to my age cohort than those that do. I know I’m not a Boomer, War Baby or a member of the Greatest Generation, Beat Generation, or Silent Generation. I think I’m Generation X, but I did wear Pampers as a kid, I went to college, I sometimes whine or disengage, I remember the early MTV VJ’s, have grinded, uncommitted, shopped at a mall, searched, eaten a sandwich and danced a little hip hop (ok, maybe “The Worm” doesn’t count).
The categories aren’t clearly circumscribed, but they reflect a point someone wanted to make about how life experience at a particular place and in a particular time shapes human attitudes and behaviors.
More interesting that what label fits is what kind of human being each of us chooses to be. Here, now, today.
-Bridget Crawford
