Pampered College Nitwits

Hat tip Jack M

Guest Post by Tom Purcell

Too many college-age kids are unable to care for their most basic needs, which doesn’t bode well for my future.

Peter Gray, Ph.D., a research professor at Boston College, writes in Psychology Today that increasing lack of resilience among today’s college kids is causing educators all kinds of problems.

“Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life,” he writes.

He cites some worrisome examples.

At one major university, emergency calls to the counseling department more than doubled over the past five years.

In one case, a female student felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch.”

In another case, two students “sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment” – after they panicked and called the police, who set a mousetrap for the startled students.

Such needy students are forcing faculty to do more hand-holding, and to lower academic standards, so as to not challenge the fragile little nitwits too much.

Why?

Because if professors do challenge them, the whiners will go to online professor-rating sites and give the professors lousy reviews.

Where did this unresilient, needy generation come from?

Gray says it is rooted in the way children are being parented over the past few decades and the decline in “children’s opportunities to play, explore, and pursue their own interests away from adults.”

These kids were raised in an era when everyone gets a trophy and a star on their forehead – regardless of effort or results. They are accustomed to their “helicopter parents” solving all of their problems.

“We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems,” writes Gray. “They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention.”

The result?

“Young people, 18 years and older, going to college still unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, still feeling that if a problem arises they need an adult to solve it,” writes Gray.

It’s bad enough that so many of today’s unresilient, needy, gritless kids are woefully unprepared to support their own future, but what’s worse is that they’re not going to be able to support mine.

Consider: Our government has racked up $18.2 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office says that in a few years, entitlement costs are going to soar. We either cut the bejeezus out of government spending or ratchet taxes way up.

Regardless, a reckoning is coming and it is going to be ugly. Today’s college kids are likely to experience runaway inflation, higher taxes and, as a result, an anemic economy that will make it even harder for young people to get jobs and pay their considerable bills.

But if today’s pampered little wusses aren’t able to deal with a mouse in their off-campus apartment, how on God’s Earth are they going to be able to deal with the pain that awaits them?

See, after years of being taken – busting my hump as a self-employed writer for the pleasure of cutting big, fat checks to the IRS – I have plans to become a taker. I hope to retire in 15 years, pay zero taxes and sit back fat and happy, collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Which worries me.

How will I rely on today’s pampered college nitwits who panic and call the cops when a lousy mouse is in their off-campus apartment?

Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s Childhood” and “Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!” is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc.

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Stephanie Shepard

Hey Baby Bomers and Gen Xer parents: You broke em’, you fix em’.

robert h siddell jr
robert h siddell jr

My nephew sent an email asking how he can go to school, study, do his job, have a social life and get 8 hours sleep. I said just like your granddad, dad, three uncles and four male cousins did. Cut the social life except after your weekend rest. How much experience in life do you need to figure that out? This coming generation is worse than you imagine.

ace
ace

Best thing I ever did was drop out of high school. Got kicked out at 16, got a job and learned how to work to survive. And that was a far better education than comes from a school.

Backtable
Backtable

“Survey finds more in U.S. avoid hands-on projects or repairs”

“Many Americans simply do not work with their hands anymore, whether it’s to tackle a hobby for pleasure or to handle a necessary household repair. Young people essentially have no role models when it comes to fixing things or taking pride in building something,” said Gerald Shankel, Fabricators and Manufacturers Association president.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/79067122.html

Add this to the misery of present-day youth. Not only are they “unmotivated” but they’re technically inept.

I remember taking apart damned-near everything as a kid just to see how it worked (the fact we had no TV, in the middle of nowhere, made me a very curious lad). Nowadays, there’s “total electronic immersion” for youth, and the price to be paid, particularly in the not-too-distant future, may be extremely high indeed.

anarchyst
anarchyst

Many people have lost their sense of what it means to be an AMERICAN. Of course, this started with those of the “baby-boomer” generation, at least those who did not perform military service. The results of this are evident today.
In the “old days”, one was expected to fight back against an attacker. This attitude was replaced with “give the criminal attackers what they want and they will leave you alone” and “your valuables are not worth your life”. These two well-meaning, but flawed concepts are pretty much ingrained in today’s human psyche and are totally un-American. Quite often attackers will murder the victim, even after gaining their possessions.
The college students who passively accepted their deaths are a case in point. Why didn’t anyone have the “gumption” to mount an attack on the gunman, especially during the time that he was reloading?
Distraction, such as throwing something at the gunman or rushing him could have meant many lives saved. If you are in danger of being shot, why not mount a resistance.
Forty or fifty years ago, the response that these college students gave would be very different. Our American attitudes on defense have been bred out of (many of) us…
This whole concept of “gun free zones” is a recipe for disaster and announces to the “bad guys” that there will be no armed resistance–insanity at its finest.

Rise Up

anarchyst says: The college students who passively accepted their deaths are a case in point. Why didn’t anyone have the “gumption” to mount an attack on the gunman, especially during the time that he was reloading?
——————————
There was one who did–and got shot 7 times, yet survived. He was a veteran. God bless him.

ragman
ragman

My grandmother(Hungarian) knew how to deal with mice: she put the little fuckers in a cotton sack and drowned ’em! I don’t know whether to believe this or not. I can’t quite believe that young men in this country are a collection of pussies unsurpassed in world history. I keep looking for the “onion”.

TPC
TPC

Do you guys remember the time Ron Paul spoke at a liberal black college?

The kid who challenged him, reading from his iPhone?

Paraphrasing here but, “I want a nation that protects me, that helps me, that gives me a hand when I need it.”

The list goes on. In essence, he wants a nation that behaves as his parent, tending to his boo boos and making sure the world doesn’t harm his delicate sensibilities.

Now we have Sanders, who runs on that exact same platform and its taking the damned Millenials by storm. He will win in a landslide vote.

Oh well. I’m competent, and there really aren’t that many Xers to compete with, so when Boomers retire/move up the ranks the pool of talent is so shallow that I shine like a damned star.

I owe my Mom’s abusive X a drink I think.

TE
TE

We are told, blatantly and implied, that we HAVE to see an “expert” for everything.

From our food supply, to colds or minor cuts and scrapes, to oil changes and replacing drain pipes.

Nothing is not the domain of some academic, or board licensed, expert.

In my son’s town, even replacing a garbage disposal requires a permit, the city in your home twice, and a “licensed” electrician AND plumber. And, yes, the town is going derelict as people can neither afford the experts, nor do they want the inspectors in their homes. At least they are that smart.

When China slows or stops our supply chains, the real pain of these multi-generational short-sighted policies will quickly become apparent.

Many believe the meek shall inherit the earth. Ha!

Those that can sew clothes, fix drains and heal their families without “experts” will.

They will be the only ones left.

TE
TE

Ps, @Stephanie, you are 100% correct. The problem is we don’t have enough members of those generations that have the know how themselves.

THIS is how the dark ages occurred and centuries of human technology and knowledge was lost until (historically speaking) recently.

Spinolator
Spinolator

During school my social life was to hang out with like minded friends and study or do homework. We’d joke around and talk a bit but stayed focused to get things done. That kept me/us from feeling isolated and we were able to help each other if we had doubts. If given the chance, I’m sure most would have preferred to do something else, but we were driven to get it done.

Backtable
Backtable

My father, now in his 80’s, did two tours in Vietnam the mid-60s as a military surgeon. When he came home in the late 1960s, I was probably 8 or 9, but I learned very quickly that he had absolutely zero tolerance for complaints about, “pain.”

“Life is pain, son. Get used to it and things get a whole lot easier.” He was a great doc, and father, but was absolutely “no-bullshit.” If you broke a bone or required stitches, something my four brothers and I all did several times in youth, we understood it wasn’t going to kill us, and remaining calm was one of the fastest ways to alleviate the pain, or at least minimize it.

It’s odd because as I watch youth today what I recognize is that by-and-large they have an incredibly undeveloped threshold not just for pain, but for even just discomfort. It’s astounding and disconcerting. It makes you wonder how well they’ll adapt to any serious disruptions to their expectations of, “comfort”?

People adapt, sometimes miraculously so, but some of these kids today? I am not so sure…

Stephanie Shepard

“Ps, @Stephanie, you are 100% correct. The problem is we don’t have enough members of those generations that have the know how themselves.”

Maybe we should blame Dr. Spock and Freud for all the butthurt.

AnarchoPagan
AnarchoPagan

@T4C, strong contender for the HR Manager from Hell award; thanks for the laugh.

Hope
Hope

Most of the “college” graduates I interview for jobs these days could not pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel.

They have the critical thinking ability of an oyster, the emotional maturity of a newborn orangutan, the coping skills of a wet cat and a sense of entitlement that requires a radical rethinking of the nature of time and space.

Oh, and they are like $65K in debt for a degree in some shit like “Gender Dysfunction in the Early Works of William Shakespeare”. **cue eyeball rolling***

Sheeit, once in college, I replaced the catalytic converter on my Datsun B210 in the parking garage of my apartment building with nothing but an apartment set of tools.

These are the future Zombies of the future.

TJF
TJF

Idiocracy seems like a a tongue in cheek satire of society to us, but apparently to a whole bunch of younger folks they take it as an instructional how to video.

Desertrat
Desertrat

TE, the meek might inherit the earth, but they ain’t gonna get the mineral rights.

Probably get little plots 3’x8’x5′. 🙂

Lysander
Lysander

And let’s not forget how cocky most of them are. Not just the spirit of youth, or a touch too much overconfidence, but the arrogance of the ignorant. They don’t know shit and are proud of it!

Fucking millennials. Fucking Neil Howe.

robert
robert

Many young people I know cannot even change the batteries in a TV remote or flashlight on their own. They have trouble preparing microwavable foods. Car maintenance is a mystery, yardwork is seen as punishment comparable with prison, and even sewing on a button that fell off is too much effort. Volunteerism is non-existent.
They are doomed.

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