Post by dylantooflycrow on Aug 3, 2011 11:18:55 GMT -5
Who doesn’t want their child to be an over achieving, athletic, career driven, smart, et cetera… Mutant, person, thing. Character. For me, this is an odd thing for an adult to be complaining about. My generations parents have some of the highest expectations of all time. And not only that, we (for the most part) respect them and do our very best in every part of our lives, not only because our parents say so but because we want to succeed… and he’s complaining about this?
Brooks clearly has a goal in this essay and that’s to say that perhaps working as hard as possible all the time, and pushing our bodies and minds to their limit 24/7 is not always the best way of going about our lives. I somewhat agree because I do think that downtime and social life are important to keep a person sane. However, there is obviously a stronger chance of great success if you are constantly trying your hardest and working to your strongest potential.
One point he brings up is that there is little time in some cases for a student to have a social life in college. Specifically, a relationship with another person- boyfriend/girlfriend kind of thing. He says, “Sometimes they'll have close friendships and "friendships with privileges" (meaning with sex), but often they don't get serious until they are a few years out of college and meet again at a reunion—after their careers are on track and they can begin to spare the time.” This doesn’t bother me. People don’t need to get married until after college anyway. College is not about going away to find your sweet heart. It’s about learning and discovering what you want to be and preparing yourself to be a contributing member of society.
He suggests that the repetitive, organizational method of our habits is destructive to the importance of human nature. He says, “They're so clean, inside and out. They seem like exactly the sort of young people we older folks want them to be. Baby Boomers may be tempted to utter a little prayer of gratitude: Thank God our kids aren't the royal pains in the ass that we were to our parents.” It seems that he would want us to be able to explore other possibilities other than perfect. That sounds good to me. Perfect is not always what it seems. I disagree that we shouldn’t strive all the time to do our best. But I would agree that we should have the ability to take a step back from our ‘perfect’ selves and re-evaluate.
In conclusion, Brooks has some good ideas. I still think that he should not be complaining about our generation working to it’s full potential as much as possible. But I can understand the need to take breaks every now and then from our ‘perfect’ attitudes and take things more slowly. Ultimately, I think that our generation has the ability to do some great things and it’s because of our ability to balance our lives no matter how intense our schedules may be. And many of us know how to take a step back from it as well. Yea, we pretty much rock.
Brooks clearly has a goal in this essay and that’s to say that perhaps working as hard as possible all the time, and pushing our bodies and minds to their limit 24/7 is not always the best way of going about our lives. I somewhat agree because I do think that downtime and social life are important to keep a person sane. However, there is obviously a stronger chance of great success if you are constantly trying your hardest and working to your strongest potential.
One point he brings up is that there is little time in some cases for a student to have a social life in college. Specifically, a relationship with another person- boyfriend/girlfriend kind of thing. He says, “Sometimes they'll have close friendships and "friendships with privileges" (meaning with sex), but often they don't get serious until they are a few years out of college and meet again at a reunion—after their careers are on track and they can begin to spare the time.” This doesn’t bother me. People don’t need to get married until after college anyway. College is not about going away to find your sweet heart. It’s about learning and discovering what you want to be and preparing yourself to be a contributing member of society.
He suggests that the repetitive, organizational method of our habits is destructive to the importance of human nature. He says, “They're so clean, inside and out. They seem like exactly the sort of young people we older folks want them to be. Baby Boomers may be tempted to utter a little prayer of gratitude: Thank God our kids aren't the royal pains in the ass that we were to our parents.” It seems that he would want us to be able to explore other possibilities other than perfect. That sounds good to me. Perfect is not always what it seems. I disagree that we shouldn’t strive all the time to do our best. But I would agree that we should have the ability to take a step back from our ‘perfect’ selves and re-evaluate.
In conclusion, Brooks has some good ideas. I still think that he should not be complaining about our generation working to it’s full potential as much as possible. But I can understand the need to take breaks every now and then from our ‘perfect’ attitudes and take things more slowly. Ultimately, I think that our generation has the ability to do some great things and it’s because of our ability to balance our lives no matter how intense our schedules may be. And many of us know how to take a step back from it as well. Yea, we pretty much rock.