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Lunch » Tags » Books » Reviews » Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties » User review

Good God, The Entitled Generation

  • Apr 25, 2008
Rating:
-1
Pros: The book addresses the issues that many college graduates face.

Cons: It whines on and on and on and gets boring.

The Bottom Line: There are valid points brought up, but the examples are monotonous.

I picked up this book because one of my daughters mentioned that she was having a "Quarterlife Crisis." I'd never heard the term before and really thought she made it up. I found that it was coined by the authors of this book.

I started reading and I thought that this would be a great resource for my recently graduated daughter and my daughter that graduates from college in two weeks.

I very soon got very bored.

I've read (and reviewed) another book by Alexandra Robbins. It was engaging and kept me going until the end.

This book ended up like nails scratching on a black board.

The book certainly addresses the feelings of many of our recent college graduates. It looks at the hopes and dreams that they aspire to and seems to persistently slap them down because things didn't work out like they expected.

The book is broken up into logical chapters that explain the difficulties that "twentysomethings" face when they move from the comfort of home and family to the groove of college and then beyond.

Yes, we grow up. Yes, the world is hard. I got very annoyed at the continued whinefest presented here. I know that my generation is different. I have been observant while my children have matured and gone to college.

The interviews with the young adults in this book do present a clear picture of the fact that life isn't necessarily going to go along with the way they think it should in order to reward them for their time in college.

This book addresses goals and expectations. It looks at disappointments and resentments.

This book looks at job dissatisfaction. People that are interviewed talk about the fact that they can't get a job teaching art, or being a stockbroker, or a screenwriter or an author and the ways that they are disillusioned.

The book looks at the jobs that these same young people have to take to either get by until they can fulfill their dreams, or because they have to do SOMETHING to pay student loans, or getting by on the sufferance of parents who can afford for their child to sit on the couch and watch TV and gripe about how mean the world is.

The young people express their dissatisfaction with changed social lives. It's not a frat party every night and one has to get up and go to work which is just not near as much fun. One moves to another city where there are not known friends and can't seem to make a single friend in a year and a half.

Shoot, when I was in that situation, I went to social sorts of places to meet people. I made friends all over. I still love and adore people that I met 30 years ago when I lived far away from home. I'm grateful that I know them. One has to be a friend to have a friend.

There are angst filled partings from boyfriends or girlfriends. Darn. I had a hard time there. We break up with boyfriends or girlfriends. That's how we weed out the unsuitables in favor of finding one that's a keeper.

It explores the feelings of young adults as they move to an unfamiliar community to their disappointment at staying in the same home town.

I understand the angst of being young. I was young once.

What wore me out about this book was the repetitive nature of reports of young adults being unhappy because the world didn't work the way they wanted to. DARN.

I always told my personal children that life isn't fair and anyone who tells you that it is might be selling something. (or lying)

This book is a good collection of interviews with young adults who express their feelings about leaving the security of college and familial support. I just found it incredibly repetitive and whining. It is hard for me to bear story after story after story of someone who says that they didn't immediately get the job of their dreams and they had to settle for the real world. (Sorry, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.)

This book does address some real issues. The real world doesn't often work out as the worlds we dream of. Yes, it's pretty easy to get depressed behind this. I had the same issues 30 years ago. I didn't wallow in it.

When I started reading this, I thought that I would pass it on to my older daughter and encourage my younger daughter to read it also as a help transitioning from college to life after college. I don't think so.

My older daughter may be having her own "quarterlife crisis" but her issues are only minutely addressed in this book. She's got a good job as a teacher and is making almost as much as I am. She's got a lot more disposable income than I do. She may not want to keep in the profession and she may want to do other things. That's okay. It takes time to make changes in a responsible manner. (One should pay off student loans) The book doesn't address the issue of making responsible changes as much as it does whining about not having the great high paying jobs right off the bat to afford the luxury of being dissatisfied.

I was late to college graduation. I had all four of my kids first and I worked three jobs to feed them while attending school full time. It was hard. The chance to just work one qualified professional job that paid me enough to take care of my children was a relief, not a burden.

As a teacher now, I deal with "the entitled generation." My students feel that I should give them a hundred for showing up. I'm an art teacher and I'm offended daily by children who think that substandard effort should be rewarded by a perfect grade. Seriously, I have kids that think I should give them a hundred for drawing a smiley face on a piece of paper because "they tried."

I was disappointed in this book. The premise is good. There is certainly a need to explore the feelings of our young college graduates and help them address the issues they face in entering the "real world."

This books spends too much time showing how miserable they are because the world doesn't revolve around them.

I love young adults. That's why I teach high school. I know they have issues and I give my time to help young people get by and strive for success in the "real world."

I think the interviewed audience was often overprivileged young adults of some resources. Many of us do not have that advantage. Some of us really do work for a living. Whether we be chasing the class of 2025 around and making them bathe or thinking about getting in some more school while we wrestle the ankle biters, we do what we have to do while we take care of ourselves and our families.

This book is too one-sided and geared toward folks that have bigger support networks than most people.





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About this book

Wiki

Through interviews and anecdotes about money, jobs, and living arrangements, Robbins and Wilner discuss the unique problems that face 20-somethings after they leave the comfy auspices of their universities and enter the craggy world of real life.

Contents:
Why Worry About a Quarterlife Crisis? --
How Do You Recognize a Quarterlife Crisis? --
What Do You Do About the Quarterlife Crisis? --
How Am I Supposed to Figure Out Who I Really Am? --
"So, What Do You Do?" --
What Now? --
Compromising Positions --
Finding a Passion --
Keeping the Faith --
Trial and Error --
Changing Their Minds --
Job-Hopping --
Constant Evolution --
What If I'm Scared to Stop Being a Kid? --
End of the Innocence --
Are We There Yet? --
The Parent Trap --
Inescapable Influence --
The Times They Are A-Changin' --
What If I Fail? --
Ready, Set, Fail --
Going After the Dream --
Abort Mission --
Plan B --
Advice from the Pros --
What Do All of These Doubts Mean? --
Doubts and Questions --
Working Problems --
Social Adjustments --
Overwhelming Factors --
Anchors Aweigh --
Dashed Expectations --
Paradise Lost --
Trying Out Therapy --
Brushing It Off --
How Do I Know If the Decisions I'm Making Are the Right Ones? --
Moving Right Along --
How Do I Know If I'm Sure About Somebody? --
Gut Instinct --
Gray Matter --
Going with It --
How Do I Work Out the Right Balance Among My Career, Friends, Family, and Romance? --
Stuff Happens --
Work Won't Make You Coffee in the Morning --
When ...
view wiki

Tags

Books, Psychology, Adulthood, Twentysomethings
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Details

ISBN-13: 978-1585421060
Author: Alexandra Robbins
Genre: Self-Help, Business & Economics
Publisher: J P Tarcher
Date Published: May 01, 2001
First to Review

"Good God, The Entitled Generation"
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