Very rarely on this blog will I suggest you click back to read something that I didn’t publish in the last year, but thanks to WordPress’s “related posts” feature, I couldn’t help but click to this post about non-profits. I wrote this in August 2008, shortly before going to start college. This was entirely before any influence at Penn, before I would get thrown into the sphere of influence that is Wharton or think about APA identity or meet any of my closest friends now, or graduate and start work and live in New York. In other words, it was a lifetime ago. But to my surprise… I sound pretty much exactly the same, although there’s an idealism in it that’s almost bleeding and guilt-inducing to read — I had the idea of what kind of ideal non-profit I would build, thought it was a pretty solid idea with pros and cons, and then proceeded to act on exactly 0% of it. I’m kind of embarrassed and flabbergasted, but also in love with my past self for being so stringent about posting and keeping up with this through the years. The exact reasons I detailed for why writing is so crucial and valuable to add to a non-profit youth programs is exactly what I tell friends and acquaintances today about the benefits of blogging, even just for personal records. This blog is going to be one of the greatest things I “make” in my life, and I’m so excited to keep going with this. That’s right. I just got a pep-talk from my past self to encourage me to keep writing. I might need to go back now and fill in some of the entries I wanted to write in the past 3 months but totally set off to the side.
As an aside, this post was also a bit of a helpful reminder to not think that teenagers are idiots now that I’m not one, since it was really not that long ago and I was clearly lucid back then (ha). I’ve recently been seeing a lot of literature about this “Generation Z” (like this Sparks & Honey speculative/real-time updating culture pulse; the Mary Meeker internet trends of culture [and I just totally made that attribution up on the spot, sorry]) and it’s kind of a blow to see: 1) This generation is supposed to outperform our current one, and 2) I’m not a part of it! Apparently Generation Z kids are born after 1995. I suppose I’m on the cusp of it (…ish), but it is true that when I entered college, my seniors felt like they lived and valued things differently than the freshmen/sophomores I see in college now. Even taking Penn Apps as an example: it was small and puny and no one heard of it when I was a freshman, and now the entire school is pivoting around innovation and programs like Penn Apps and product design courses are proliferating. It’s just the zeitgeist (fuck yeah, I used it in a sentence).
All that is to say I know the #1 annoying thing is to hear 20-somethings complain about how old they are, but there’s actually some founded reason for it here — we were so used to being the babies, the kids getting special treatment and being told by the “adults” that our social media networks would change the world, that it’s hard to see that there’s a younger cohort than us. It’s a little bit like the “older sibling” effect when you realize that there is more in the world besides you, and you are really not that special. It’s always a little sad to be removed from that bubble (and some people never leave it), but I’m finding it a little relieving in a way. I just told my friend Mansi (who is interning at a law firm in NY in her 2L summer from Stanford Law) this, that living in NY for the two years after graduating and just working helped me grow up a lot (unexpectedly), and I feel like most of those gains were in the past half year. It makes me more amenable to receive reports like all this stuff about Generation Z. I feel more ready to pass on the mantle, and the idea of a settled down life in my 30s with a house and family is not something that makes my jaw drop anymore. And there’s also the liberating concept of grasping that there is more in the world besides our tiny lives. The new guard is here to challenge us, but we’re also finally starting to get some of those gains from wisdom that comes with age.
Final closing note: I really did feel old when an intern felt compelled last week to explain to me why Instagram and Twitter are more “relevant” social networks than Facebook among the “hip young crowd”. Do my pants LOOK like mom pants? Do I HAVE an Asian mom perm? Dude, I started using Twitter in 2006, I know what these things are — calm yo’self, child!!! How do I review an intern for impertinence? [Answer by Asian Mom: get me the paddle.]
Filed under: Personal Tagged: blogging, creative writing, generation theory, generation z, getting old, growing up, lessons from the past, letters from my past self, therapeutic Image may be NSFW.
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