Strongly Worded

The I in Intern

As much as I reject generational stereotypes, I work with college students at a Very Prestigious School (VPS), and I think that Claire Raines, author of Connecting Generations: The Sourcebook, is right on when she describes Milennials (people born between 1980-2000) as “sociable, optimistic, talented, well-educated, collaborative, open-minded, influential, and achievement-oriented. They are arriving in the workplace with higher expectations than any generation before them—and they’re so well connected that, if an employer doesn’t match those expectations, they can tell thousands of their cohorts with one click of the mouse.”

In my almost two years at VPS, I have generally delighted in our student population. I find them to be savvy, funny, ambitious, often over-earnest, and yes, impossibly ADD. It is hugely entertaining to communicate with them. They are also very self-centered, but but I attribute much of that, and their often excessive quest for self-knowledge and goal attainment to be the sum of a) What we teach them at VPS and b) What they learned during AP Mommy and Me, and at the high-powered nursery, elementary, and high schools they attended after that. I am aware that I foster this along with my co-workers, and that I encourage students to seek out the best opportunities possible, assert themselves, and ensure they are comfortable in potentially sketch situations. These are all good things when they remain in the right proportions.

Behold the case of “Adam” which is drastically simplified and condensed here for confidentiality and bandwith. Adam is an extremely talented and driven student. He completed two summer job applications, one to “Jet Bleu” and the other to “Air Train.” Air Train offered him a staid but challenging position and a tight deadline for acceptance which he tried unsuccessfully to extend. After a ton of agonizing over the freaky economy and a lot of self-talk about why Air Train would be a perfectly good option, he accepted the offer. Then, against hours of my cautionary advice, he continued the interview process with Jet Bleu, even flying cross-country for an on-site visit. When I challenged Adam on the supreme shadiness of this action, he shrugged and said that he “wanted to practice second-round interviewing skills.”

Long story short: Jet Bleu offered him a higher-paying summer job than Air Train had. Then, after more hours of advice during which I tried to impart the very serious karmic and professional consequences of reneging on a job acceptance, he tried to negotiate with Air Train for more money. This pissed off his future Air Train supervisor. After the poorly executed “negotiation,” Adam came into our office in tears. He felt “threatened” by his future supervisor and contended that he could not possibly work in such a combative environment. After much thought, he had decided to "turn down" the job. Conveniently, he had not yet turned down Jet Bleu. The Air Train guy, who accurately surmised that Adam had been using his company as a backup all along, sent him an email with the subject line "goodbye." In very polite yet strongly worded terms, it described the small and interwoven nature of the aviation community and the bite-marks Adam’s ass would bear as he launched his career. This made Adam cry all the more and ask us over and over why he was being victimized. After all, he insisted, he hadn’t done anything wrong.

Now this could be any story about any slightly entitled, slightly misguided job searcher, right? Not necessarily millennial at all, right? Except ... WAIT ... FOR ... IT...? You know it’s coming … Adam’s dad. Adam’s dad! Dear ol' dad supported the notion that Air Train was at the root of all this evil, and that despite the fact that Adam had wasted the time of a ton of people, gone back on his word, taken a job away from some runner-up student who would have happily taken it had Adam turned it down in the first place ... it was an airline acting in good faith that needed remediation.

He suggested that Adam contact the Air Tran supervisor's manager. Because that, my friends, would have really made this truly awesome.

I’ve been reflecting on this a lot, and realize that it's Adam et al's parents and teachers that sowed the seeds for the entitled self-centeredness milennials are charged with. And it is therefore unfair to blame them entirely. Also: I’m contributing too, by teaching some of the wrong lessons. It's not just that unprofessional behavior might eventually damage your career. The more important point is that it's not OK to advocate for or explore your own interests at the expense of other people's. Apparently, this is not an obvious point.

In the end, Adam will have spend a fun, enriching, and lucrative summer at Jet Bleu. The Air Train guy will probably find himself a Plan B intern and forget about this whole matter. Adam's career will probably go on just fine. The scary, strongly worded "goodbye" email will live on in Adam's inbox and prevent him from pulling such shenanigans in the future. But the challenge to myself and my co-workers is to make Adam see the role he played in the internship search implosion, and to shake off daddy's comforting assurance that he did the right thing. After all, he's been pushed out of the nest already.

It's time to fly, and he better start flying right.

Posted by Dori at 10:04 PM