Society is odd.  There are many things that come to mind that back this statement up, but one of the examples most relevant to me has to do with work and my generation.

It struck me the other day that it’s rather odd that my main goal in life right now is finding a job.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it just odd that I’m craving work when my current routine is checking job sites, digging around social networking sites, goofing off, riding my bike, and having a glass of wine with dinner.  It’s the easy life, and it’s driving me crazy.  I want to work!

I suppose it takes looking back the past 18 years or so to really understand what’s going on here.  In those last 18 years, all I’ve been trained to do is work.  In elementary school there was gifted and talented, which is an awesome program but could also be argued is the first jumping-off point towards college prep.  Middle school was all about preparing for high school with honors classes to get ahead and increase the school workload.  In high school, college prep focusing begins in freshman year.  My entire course layout was focused around college prep work.  I took numerous honors and advanced placement classes.  Taking part in extracurricular activities in order to boost your college-worthiness was considered a must.

As of my freshman year of college, I had a brief period where I decided I was done with the whole notion of getting ahead and separating myself from the competition.  Instead, I was going to go through and get a plain old degree and see where I went from there.  Ha.  That didn’t last long.  Two honors programs, a minor, two organizational leadership roles, racing and training with a cycling team, and a part-time job later, I graduated from college once again as an overachiever.  While I enjoyed challenging myself, there’s also the general expectation that if you have the ability to excel, you take advantage of it.

All those different forces pushing you towards achievement, and I guess it’s anything but surprising that I want to get back to working my butt off ASAP.

There’s been a lot of conversation about my generation entering the workplace lately.  We’re the first graduates that grew up with the internet from a very early age, and based on everything I’ve read people don’t know what to make of us.  Depending on who you ask, we’re either lazy, unmotivated, and needing instant gratification, or we’re smart, amazing multitaskers, and generally the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I’m not going to get into that debate, because I think depending on the individual, our generation is both.  What I do think is that my generation is entering the workforce with completely different expectations than any other generation before us.  Watching the financial rise and in many cases fall of our parents’ generation, we’re no longer expecting long careers with one company and a guaranteed retirement simply based upon the fact that we have a college degree.  We realize that a career might end up being a number of  jumps between companies just to survive.  Granted, there is a certain sense of entitlement – we’re willing to pay dues and start at the bottom, but we also want our voice heard because we bring a completely different skill set to the workforce.  We want to make a difference, and we don’t want to feel like we’re jumping through hoops just to get ahead.

Personally, I’m certainly not expecting I’ll immediately wind up in a job making executive level decisions.  That would be silly.  However, I do expect that wherever I end up, I’ll have a voice and be able to excel.  That’s what the last 18 years of schooling taught me to do, so what else would you expect from me?