Final Examination Readings
WRC 1013 and 1023
Fall 2012
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Please write your name on the packet of readings you have downloaded from The
Writing Program website.
o Bring this packet to the final exam.
o You may underline, highlight, and annotate the readings.
o You may not bring thesis statements, outlines, prewriting, or drafts in any form to
the exam.
You may bring a standard English dictionary, in print form, not electronic form, and The
Little Seagull Handbook to the final.
Be sure to bring this Works Cited page to the final.
No class time will be allotted for discussion of the readings
o You may, if you wish, discuss the readings outside of class with your classmates.
o You may not discuss them with your instructor.
If you haven’t done so already, turn in 2 blank blue books to your instructor.
o You will write your final essay in these blue books.
o Your instructor will return them to you on the day of the final.
Remember to write on only one side of each page.
Write “Final Draft” on the cover of the blue book(s) you want your instructor to read and
evaluate.
After completing the final essay, turn in to your instructor
o the reading packet
o all blue books, even those that are blank.
o the prompt
Your final exam will be in the same room as your semester class has been held.
Be sure to confirm the day and time of your final. You can
o Check your syllabus
o Check postings around campus
o Check ASAP
o Ask your instructor
o Check outside The Writing Program office, NPB
o Check on The Writing Program website: http://www.utsa.edu/twp/FinalExam.htm
Are You Enabling “Academic Entitlement” in Students?
By Sarah D. Sparks May 27, 2012
Does this scenario sound familiar? After test results come out, a student approaches the teacher after class,
arguing, "I come to class every day; I deserve at least a B!"
Students' sense of academic entitlement can reduce their effort in class and lead to irritating (or even aggressive)
confrontations with teachers, according to research by Tracey E. Zinn, a psychology associate professor at James
Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. Moreover, teachers may be unintentionally feeding that sense of
entitlement, she said at the Association for Psychological Science conference here this weekend.
Zinn and James Madison colleagues Jason P. Kopp, Sara J. Finney and Daniel P. Jurich are researching ways
to measure academic entitlement and how it develops. Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found the college
students they studied were most likely to show "serious instances of incivility" right after academic assessments,
be they test results or mid-term grades.
There were a few clear symptoms of a student developing a sense of entitlement, including the beliefs that:
• Knowledge is a "right" that should be delivered with little effort or discomfort on the student's part;
• A high grade should come, not from mastery of material, but in return for non-academic aspects of education,
such as the student showing up to class, or the student or her family paying tuition or taxes which go to the
teacher's salary; and
• If a student didn't perform well on a test, it is a sign that the test was too difficult, not that the student did not
understand the material.
Zinn and her colleagues found that students that scored high on an assessment of academic entitlement were less
able to regulate their own learning and had less sense of control. Moreover, students with a high sense of
entitlement were found to have a history of "executive" help-seeking—for example, asking, "Can you tell me the
right answer?"—while students with a low sense of entitlement were more likely to have sought "instrumental"
help, i.e., asking "Can you help me understand this concept?"
While Zinn has not found direct cause and effect between specific teacher behaviors and student entitlement, she
said the research suggests there are some potential ways teachers can cut down on the whine, such as providing
clear expectations for students and assignments, in which the effort put in is clearly related to the grade a student
will receive.
"We often think students walk into class agreeing with you or knowing what is the right thing to do," Zinn said,
"but it's important to explain why you have particular policies ... and explain the value of the task you ask them to
do" as opposed to letting students get in the habit of thinking assignments are "busywork."
Moreover, she urged teachers not to respond to student requests for "the right answer," but rather help students
to understand the concepts and to think through their own problem-solving.
Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes
By Max Roosevelt February 18, 2009
Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes
at the University of Maryland.
“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor
Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”
He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.
“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they
will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said
that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the
required reading.
“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen
Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality,
Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure,
competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.
Aaron M. Brower, the vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offered
another theory.
“I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test
preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.”
James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often
confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a
high grade.’ “
In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students
surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in
their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.
“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than
the effort that you put in?”
“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and
reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be
getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then
something is wrong.”
Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings
and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”
At Vanderbilt, there is an emphasis on what Dean Hogge calls “the locus of control.” The goal is to put the
academic burden on the student.
“Instead of getting an A, they make an A,” he said. “Similarly, if they make a lesser grade, it is not the teacher’s
fault. Attributing the outcome of a failure to someone else is a common problem.”
Additionally, Dean Hogge said, “professors often try to outline the ‘rules of the game’ in their syllabi,” in an effort
to curb haggling over grades.
Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that students must “read for knowledge and write with
the goal of exploring ideas.”
This informal mission statement, along with special seminars for freshmen, is intended to help “re-teach students
about what education is.”
The seminars are integrated into introductory courses. Examples include the conventional, like a global-warming
seminar, and the more obscure, like physics in religion.
The seminars “are meant to help students think differently about their classes and connect them to real life,”
Professor Brower said.
He said that if students developed a genuine interest in their field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and
intrinsically motivated learning could take place.
“College students want to be part of a different and better world, but they don’t know how,” he said. “Unless
teachers are very intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.”
Thoughts on the “Entitlement Generation”
By Andria Woodell, Social Sciences
There has been a lot of buzz in the academic world about entitlement. Recently, there was an article by Professor
Marshall Grossman published in the NY Times titled “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.” In his
article, Grossman discusses some of his experiences with entitled students and explanations behind this “new”
trend. Like many other professors, I can identify with Grossman’s discussion. Some of us have encountered these
situations more often than we would care to count. While I believe it is not new for students to focus on grades, it
is surreal when a student is arguing they deserve an A despite scoring 70-80s on their assignments. It is also
frustrating when they refuse to listen to why they have received those scores or suggestions to improve their
grades. This becomes even more unsettling when a student turns hostile towards a professor because the
professor stands firm. In the end, it is a no-win situation for both the student and professor. The student feels as if
they were unfairly treated and the professor walks away a little more pessimistic about their students.
What is interesting is that when I hear people discussing entitlement today, it is directed toward the younger
generation. Jean Twenge’s book ,Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive,
Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before, supports the assumption that people from their teens to their 20s
are plagued with entitlement . However, if you read the article “The New Me Generation,” the entitlement
generation consists of everyone born in 1970 and beyond. Doing the math here, this includes people who are 39
years or younger. The average age of retirement in the US is currently 63, so the majority of students and workers
(including myself) are now part of this entitlement generation! Therefore, the description of entitlement as a
generational shift is not entirely accurate. Instead, it appears to be more of a societal shift. The looming question is
whether entitlement is always bad. In the “The Me New Generation,” the author describes the entitlement
generation as “smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.” They are the
“co-workers who drive you nuts.” On the flip-side, he goes on to state these individuals are also free-thinkers who
are willing to break the status quo and pursue their dreams. Their confidence is what allows them to accomplish
great things and can keep companies progressing. So where is the problem?
From an academic standpoint, I see entitlement hurting work ethic. Others might disagree with me here, but there
seems to be a pocket of individuals who equate effort with mastery. When we hear, “there is no A for effort”, this
is true. I have yet to see a grading rubric with effort as one of the graded requirements. Bottom line, if you do not
complete the main components of an assignment, you will lose points, no matter how much effort you put in. As
one professor has described it, “If your doctor works very hard at removing your appendix and it turns out you only
needed your tonsils out, you are not likely to say “Hey! It’s ok! You worked very hard!”. The other problem is that
individuals who have never been told no or have yet to overcome significant academic challenges seem to
experience a high level of anxiety at even the thought of not being perfect. I have seen students work themselves
into a frenzy over this, even when they were passing with strong B’s. This is problematic because according to the
frustration-aggression hypothesis in social psychology—the more frustrated a person becomes the more likely
they may become aggressive. It of course does not explain ALL aggression, but it can explain why a student may
resort to rudeness, harassment, slander, or even indirect or direct violence towards an instructor because they
were blocked from a goal and they are not sure how to resolve the issue constructively.
So what is the solution? Apparently, that is the hot research question right now. Grossman mentions that at his
school they are retraining students on the purpose of education. COCC sponsored a speaker to educate faculty on
the qualities of the new incoming students and how to resolve problems. There are also new policies in place that
protect both students and faculty from harassment. Others (myself included) have resorted to detailed syllabi
explaining class policy and how to behave. However, I find it unfortunate that my syllabi grew from 3 pages to 8
over the years because I have to explain how not to be disruptive and why a person should not text message in
class. I have no answers at the moment. I personally hope we end up in the middle, with professors who can teach
freely without having to invest so much energy defending themselves from unreasonable demands and with
students who can be free thinkers, push the envelope and earn their grades rather than simply expect them. I am
an optimist, but we will have to wait and see how it all unfolds.
The New Me Generation
By Jake Halpern September 30, 2007
Nicole Mirabile, who is just 15 years old, has a clear vision of her future, and it doesn't involve a boss. The prospect
of working at a Fortune 500 company – and landing the sort of well-paying job that Americans once regarded as
the benchmark of success – holds zero allure for her. "It would be hard compromising with a lot of different people
whom I might clash with," she speculates. Mirabile, a sophomore at North Quincy High School, would be far
happier running her own company. "I have the time, I have the brains, I have the patience to do it, and I am not
going to give up if I fail once," she vows.
Alan Chhabra, who is 31 years old, shares a similar sensibility even if, as it turns out, he does report to a boss.
Chhabra works at Egenera, a computer-server manufacturer based in Marlborough, but he is not the sort of fellow
who puts too much stock in old-school notions of corporate protocol. As he puts it, "I have no problem knocking on
the door and walking into the CEO's office or the CTO's office on a whim – interrupting their schedule – and saying,
'I need to talk to you.'" Chhabra says that ever since he was a kid, he has been "knocking heads with basketball
teachers, track coaches, teachers, and girlfriends. If I felt that I was right, I wouldn't back down."
What do Alan Chhabra and Nicole Mirabile have in common – besides a great deal of chutzpah? They are members
of the so-called Entitlement Generation, the upstarts at the office who put their feet on their desks, voice their
opinions frequently and loudly at meetings, and always volunteer – nay, expect – to take charge of the most
interesting projects. They are smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.
And since a new crop is graduating from Boston's high-powered colleges and universities every year, chances are,
one may be heading to your office soon.
Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, says that this includes virtually everyone born
after 1970. According to Twenge, these young people were raised on a daily regimen of praise and flattery from
their baby boomer parents and from teachers who embraced a self-esteem-boosting curriculum that included
activities like the Magic Circle game. Never heard of it? In this game, one child a day is given a badge that says "I'm
great." The other children then take turns praising the "great" child, and eventually these compliments are written
up and given to the child for posterity. This constant reinforcement, argues Twenge, is largely responsible for those
young co-workers who drive you nuts. At the University of South Alabama, psychology professor Joshua Foster has
done a great deal of research using a standardized test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The NPI
asks subjects to rate the accuracy of various narcissistic statements, such as "I can live my life any way I want to"
and "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place." Foster has given this personality test to a range of
demographic groups around the world, and no group has scored higher than the American teenager. Narcissism
also appears to be reaching new highs, even within the Entitlement Generation, among American college students.
Another national study involving the NPI, conducted by Twenge, shows that 24 percent of college students in 2006
showed elevated levels of narcissism compared to just 15 percent in the early 1990s.
All of this would seem to suggest that this generation, which is flooding into the workforce, will create chaotic,
unpleasant, and utterly unproductive work environments that will drive many a good business directly into the
ground. But there's another very real possibility. It may be that this much-reviled generation will revitalize the
economy and ensure the prosperity of America for years to come. Painful as it sounds, in the not-too-distant
future, we may owe a debt of gratitude to these narcissists.
The concept of narcissism is an ancient idea that dates to Greek mythology. According to legend, Narcissus was a
beautiful Grecian youth who fell madly in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to avert his eyes
from the image of his own face, Narcissus knelt too close to the water, fell in, and drowned.
Michael Maccoby is a psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and business consultant based in Washington, D.C., who
works with CEOs who want to become more-effective leaders. He is also the author of Narcissistic Leaders: Who
Succeeds and Who Fails. Maccoby has spent the last seven years writing and arguing – quite convincingly – that
what the American economy needs right now is a generation of brazen, brash, narcissistic innovators. Within the
business world, Maccoby's theory is something akin to blasphemy. For the last five or six years, the bible of
corporate management has been another book, titled Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . .
and Others Don't, by Jim Collins. In his book, Collins studies the inner workings of 11 mega-companies – including
Wells Fargo, Gillette, and Walgreens – and determines that truly effective CEOs are often actually "self-effacing,
quiet, reserved, even shy." Maccoby, for his part, argues that such CEOs may get the job done in old-fashioned
companies that focus on retail, manufacturing, and cutting costs, but that businesses that rely on innovation, new
technology, and globalization require far bolder leaders who can take risks, shrug off conventional wisdom, project
confidence, formulate hyper-ambitious plans, and charm the pants off investors and underlings alike, so that they,
too, will make a leap of faith and believe in the next cold-fusion-powered car or the iPod that pays your bills and
runs your household.
"Generally, it is very rare that people accept new ideas," Maccoby says. It takes a person with "strategic
intelligence" to push a new idea successfully. Such a person must have foresight, the ability to partner with others,
and the charisma to motivate an entire organization to succeed. This, Maccoby says, is "productive narcissism."
When a person with this combination of traits emerges – and arguably this will happen fairly often when you have
an entire generation of young narcissists – great things can happen.
Take the example of Yael Maguire, the 32-year-old chief technology officer of ThingMagic, a Cambridge-based
company he cofounded in 2000 that designs and manufactures radio-frequency identification systems, commonly
known as RFID. "I think we are an entitled generation, but by feeling entitled, we also feel empowered to do great
things," Maguire says. "I grew up thinking if you were confident in yourself and you took a chance, you could do
whatever you wanted. The thought of working my way up the corporate ladder had absolutely no appeal to me."
Interestingly enough, one of the pivotal moments in Maguire's career hinged on his not listening to superiors. One
day, when Maguire was in grad school studying quantum computers at MIT, he began chatting with a protein
biologist about a hypothetical device that could detect whether a given protein was binding with a receptor. Such
information is vital in drug research. Maguire became fascinated by this challenge, even though, he says, "I didn't
know anything about biology other than what I knew from high school." He designed a device using technology
that is traditionally used in wifi. This device, Maguire boldly proclaimed, could determine whether the protein was
present. The biologist and Maguire's fellow students were skeptical. So he built the thing, and, sure enough, he
was right.
It is precisely this style of thinking that has enabled Maguire, as CTO, to pioneer new technology.
And now that he's at the top of a 50-person company, he says he plans to keep hiring other young, passionate,
"freethinking types" – the sorts of upstarts who won't be afraid to tell him, on occasion, that he is dead wrong.
Just a few miles due south, roughly a dozen teenagers – including 15-year-old Nicole Mirabile – have gathered in a
dreary classroom at North Quincy High School in the hopes of figuring out how they might launch highly successful
start-up companies of their own. The students are participating in a program known as Biz Camp that is sponsored
by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. At the front of the classroom is Jacky McDonough,
director of business partnership for My Turn, Inc., a youth development agency. McDonough seems to embody the
iconic Whole Foods customer – willowy figure, sandals, and flowing hair.
"We cannot reiterate this enough," McDonough says to her students, who range in age from 15 to 18. "It's not
what you say, it's how you say it." To demonstrate her point, McDonough smiles, puffs up her chest, and says with
gusto, "CATS ARE VERY SPECIAL!" She then pauses a moment, steps backward, slouches, and says quite meekly,
"Cats are very special." The students in the classroom nod their heads comprehendingly. A few scribble down
notes.
"So," says McDonough, "can anyone tell me what role confidence plays in starting up a business?"
A shy giant of a boy at the back of the classroom raises a hand sheepishly and then begins to talk. "You get your
confidence . . ." McDonough interrupts and tells him to show his confidence. The boy stands up, nods his head, and
begins again. "You get your confidence by knowing what you are going to do," he says. "You have all your ideas,
and if you are confident, nothing is going to stop you. You are going to succeed, no matter what."
"Without confidence, you can't take risks," adds another student, who takes the initiative to stand up on his own.
"And in a business, you have to take risks."
"Beautifully said!" exclaims McDonough. "Let's give them a round of applause!" The students applaud politely.
During a break in class, I have a chance to speak with Mirabile. She is dressed in blue jeans and a magenta T-shirt.
From the start, Mirabile appears to be the prototype of the self-assured, self-empowered teen. "I am always
confident in myself because it will lower my self-esteem if I'm not," she says. Mirabile quickly adds that she doesn't
let failure or naysayers get to her. "Even if I do badly in a class, I know I can do better next time." When I ask her
what the chances are that her dreams will come true, she answers without batting an eye: "I would say about 85
percent."
At first glance, Biz Camp may seem like just another self-esteem program, encouraging young people to be overly
confident and self-centered. But unlike the Magic Circle, where kids are praised for being inherently "special," the
Biz Camps teach skills along with self-confidence. On a nuts-and-bolts level, the hope is that students like Mirabile
will learn what it takes to make it as an entrepreneur. On a deeper level, however, the hope is that this program
will encourage her to hold onto that brash self-confidence well into her 20s and 30s, when – professionally, at least
– she'll need it the most.
Management professor Edward Roberts, who has been teaching at MIT's Sloan School for decades, argues much
like Maccoby that high-octane self-confidence is a prerequisite for entrepreneurs today. "Think about it," he says.
"As an entrepreneur, you need serious chutzpah to overcome the negatives that are thrown at you on a regular
basis. And you need the stamina to overcome failure.
If you do something risky, you will fail. So what do you do once you fail? Do you give up? Or do you come back and
say, 'Damn it all. I am going to try again!'" One might argue that this country has always needed a base population
of cocky entrepreneurs. But according to Roberts, we've never needed these types as badly as we do at this very
moment. "If you went to the huge corporations and asked, 'Where are you opening new labs?' the answer would
uniformly be India, China, Russia – but not the US," he says. "And if all of these companies are going overseas,
what are we left with? From my perspective, we have nothing left to the US economy other than start-ups and
entrepreneurship."
The good news, says Roberts, is that America remains an idyllic incubator. "Studies show that in many societies –
like France, for example – once you fail, you are damned, and society will shun you," he says. "This isn't true in
America. American laws are very supportive of entrepreneurs. You can go bankrupt here, and you start with a
clean slate. We have a much more forgiving set of attitudes." What we need now, Roberts says, are waves of
young people who are willing to push their own ideas and who aren't afraid of failing. Like them or not, he
concludes, the young, brash kids with the grandiose plans are our future.
Tom Hadfield, who is 24 and a senior at Harvard, is the very embodiment of Roberts's young, hyper-confident
entrepreneur. At the age of 12, Hadfield started an Internet company from his bedroom in Brighton, England –
Soccernet.com – which ESPN purchased just a few years later for $40 million. "No one ever knew I was a kid
online," Hadfield says. "All I needed to do was spell properly, so I had Mom buy me a dictionary."
Hadfield actually made very little money on the sale of his website – the profit went mainly to his investors – and
as he puts is, "My parents still have a mortgage on their house." But this hasn't discouraged him in the least. Since
then, he has started several new businesses, managed a global environmental education program, and started an
initiative to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur. When I finally tracked him down for an interview, I reached
him on his cellphone in Zambia, where he was running a philanthropic project funded by the Goldman Sachs Global
Leaders Program. "We came here with these naive, grandiose plans to set up a micro-financing program, distribute
anti-malarial bed nets, teach English, organize health education – and do it all in one summer," he says. "A lot of
people would have said that it was naive when I was 12 to set up an Internet website like Soccernet.com – but
luckily I didn't listen." Hadfield believes that such an attitude can also create problems with "people who were
born before 1975," who are "generally running the treadmill, trying to pay mortgage payments, and buy a JetBlue
ticket to take their one vacation a year."
"Our naivete enables us to try things that previous generations haven't tried in the history of humanity," he says,
"But it often builds resentment among the older managers, who resent these young self-important kids who arrive
on the scene and want to take the fast track without putting in their time."
Twenty-year-old Lilly Deng, a junior at Harvard, was raised in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, by a single mother who
worked multiple jobs. Deng's saving grace, she says, was a teacher who taught every student to "realize the genius
in their inner self." This teacher left her feeling so empowered that Deng, who longed to be a nationally ranked
debater, wrote every single lawyer in the Collegeville phone book asking for sponsorship. Deng soon found a
patron, traveled to debate tournaments, distinguished herself repeatedly, and launched a program that teaches
the fundamentals of debating to hundreds of kids from 30 different schools in eight states. For her part, Deng
doesn't seem too surprised by her success. "I never thought anything was impossible," she says.
In recent years, aspiring Harvard entrepreneurs have had quite a bit of inspiration as they've witnessed fellow
students get rich quickly by starting companies like Facebook and Sparknotes. Last year, two undergraduates –
Mike Segal, who is now 19, and Travis May, now 20 – cofounded the Harvard Entrepreneurial Forum. The club
started off as an informal gathering of four or five students; by the end of the school year, it had more than 200
members.
According to Segal and May, many of their classmates are no longer interested in working their way up the
corporate ladder. What's more, says May, "people want to do something that makes them famous and rich or
creates some change in society."
"People like their own ideas," adds Segal. "And I think that's why so many people are unhappy at their office jobs.
Because when they ask themselves, 'Who am I doing this for?' the answer is not for themselves, but for the greater
good of the corporation. And ultimately people lose touch with their egos and themselves. Entrepreneurship is the
diametric opposite. I think it is just egomania, but in the best sense possible."
This isn't a Harvard-only phenomenon. In the basement of a barbershop in Jamaica Plain, entrepreneurs Tony
Martinez, who is 24, and his partner, Eliu Hernandez, also 25, have established what they call the international
headquarters for their business, Created by Us Airbrushing. Right now, "international" is a bit of a misnomer, as is
"headquarters." The space, which is only accessible via a trapdoor behind the barbershop's cash register, is
essentially a cramped, dingy cellar furnished with a stereo, a fan, a fax machine, and a great deal of airbrushing
equipment.
But never mind that. Martinez and Hernandez have grand plans, great talent, and a very interesting product. They
sell customized hats, sneakers, and hoodies with made-to-order designs. That way, anyone – from a boardingschool kid at Milton Academy to a punk rocker in Berlin – can go online and order the sort of street apparel that
used to be the exclusive domain of urban American hipsters.
Hernandez, who does most of the actual airbrushing, in some ways couldn't be more different from the members
of the Harvard Entrepreneurial Forum. He joined the Army instead of going to college, serving in Afghanistan. But
his outlook sounds familiar: "One thing that I can be grateful about is that my confidence kept me a little ignorant,
maybe even a little arrogant," he says. "If you start looking at everything that could go wrong – and think about
that all day long – you will never do anything!"
According to both Hernandez and Martinez, their unflappable self-confidence has been the only thing keeping
them afloat during a rocky start-up period. It is not that they feel entitled to greatness as much as that they feel
entitled to a shot at greatness, just like the other members of their generation.
But even productive narcissism is not an entirely good thing. Far from it. Michael Maccoby is the first to admit this.
He says that narcissists tend to be oversensitive to any kind of criticism and are often incapable of learning from
others. What's more, they frequently bully subordinates and don't care at all about the feelings of others.
The greatest danger, however, is that narcissists are so sure of themselves that they ignore the advice of others –
and even the dictates of common sense – and arrogantly blunder their way into serious trouble. Foster, at the
University of South Alabama, has seen this scenario play itself out many times. In one study, subjects were asked
to play a game in which they earned points by answering trivia questions correctly. Before answering a question,
subjects were allowed to wager a certain number of points. "In the study, we had many highly narcissistic people
who would get all these questions wrong, and yet they were still willing to wager that they would get the next one
right," says Foster. "Narcissists have this view of themselves as being so excellent that they say, 'To hell with the
data. Things are going to work out for me!'"
In this regard, narcissism poses quite a conundrum. On the one hand, we need plenty of young entrepreneurs who
are willing to believe in themselves in the face of skepticism from their peers, mentors, and society at large. But we
also need these upstarts to be correct in their beliefs. It does a society no good to invest in young narcissists who,
in betting on themselves, squander resources as they come up with wrong answers again and again. The key, it
would seem, is to identify the upstarts with the most potential and then – despite whatever personal qualms we
may have with them – allow them to run with their ideas.
This is precisely what the management at servermaker Egenera decided to do with Alan Chhabra. Chhabra was, by
his own admission, neither the easiest nor the most diplomatic of employees. "I think that at another company,
after some of the heated moments that I had, the bosses might have said, 'This isn't working out, Alan. It is time
for you to go,' " he says. But that's not what happened. According to Rachael Jacobson, who works in Egenera's HR
department, the company recognized Chhabra's value, and saw that he constantly needed new challenges. In a
new division, he was given wide latitude to help get operations off the ground. The division's goal was to
encourage clients to buy not just servers but also long-term customer-service programs. Perhaps the biggest
challenge was that Chhabra had to persuade prospective clients to stop using the services of heavyweights like HP
and IBM. He says: "Basically, I had to meet with CTOs who had 3,000 to 4,000 people working for them and had an
IT budget of $10 million to $50 million and – within five minutes – I had to convince them that what they'd been
doing for the last five to 10 years was wrong and that they should start buying Egenera." And this is exactly what
Chhabra did. According to the company, Chhabra and the division helped Egenera undergo an important and
profitable transformation.
Of course, there are people – perhaps even within Egenera – who can't stomach the notion of promoting someone
as strident and nervy, someone as entitled, as Chhabra. It doesn't look as if they'll get relief any time soon. "Kids
definitely feel entitled when they get out of school nowadays," he says. "They have been groomed, they've been
told that they are the best, and they've seen people from this same generation make millions of dollars just before
them. They think, 'I want to be the next Google, Amazon, or eBay. After all, these companies were founded by
young people. Now it's my turn.'"
The Young Labeled “Entitlement Generation”
By Martha Irvine June 26, 2005
Evan Wayne thought he was prepared for anything during a recent interview for a job in radio sales. Then the
interviewer hit the 24-year-old Chicagoan with this: "So, we call you guys the 'Entitlement Generation,'" the baby
boomer executive said, expressing an oft-heard view of today's young work force. "You think you're entitled to
everything."
Such labeling is, perhaps, a rite of passage for every crop of twentysomethings. In their day, baby boomers were
rabble-rousing hippies, while Gen Xers were apathetic slackers.
Now, deserved or not, this latest generation is being pegged, too — as one with shockingly high expectations for
salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company.
"We're seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work — kids who had
too much success early in life and who've become accustomed to instant gratification," says Dr. Mel Levine, a
pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School and author of a book on the topic called
"Ready or Not, Here Life Comes."
While Levine also notes that today's twentysomethings are long on idealism and altruism, "many of the individuals
we see are heavily committed to something we call 'fun.'"
He partly faults coddling parents and colleges for doing little to prepare students for the realities of adulthood and
setting the course for what many disillusioned twentysomethings are increasingly calling their "quarter-life crisis."
Meanwhile, employers from corporate executives to restaurateurs and retailers are frustrated.
"It seems they want and expect everything that the 20- or 30-year veteran has the first week they're there," says
Mike Amos, a Salt Lake City-based franchise consultant for Perkins Restaurants.
Just about any twentysomething will tell you they know someone like this, and may even have some of those high
expectations themselves.
Wayne had this response for his interviewer at the radio station: "Maybe we WERE spoiled by your generation. But
I think the word 'entitled' isn't necessarily the word," he said. "Do we think we're deserving if we're going to go out
there and bust our ass for you? Yes."
He ended up getting the job — and, as he starts this month, is vowing to work hard.
Some experts who study young people think having some expectations, and setting limits with bosses, isn't
necessarily negative.
"It's true they're not eager to bury themselves in a cubicle and take orders from bosses for the next 40 years, and
why should they?" asks Jeffrey Arnett, a University of Maryland psychologist who's written a book on "emerging
adulthood," the period between age 18 and 25. "They have a healthy skepticism of the commitment their
employers have to them and the commitment they owe to their employers."
Many young people also want to avoid becoming just another cog who works for a faceless giant.
Anthony DeBetta, a 23-year-old New Yorker, works with other twentysomethings at a small marketing firm — and
says the company's size makes him feel like he can make a difference.
"We have a vested interest in the growth of this firm," he says.
Elsewhere, Liz Ryan speculates that a more relaxed work environment at the company she runs — no set hours
and "a lot of latitude in how our work gets done" — helps inspire her younger employees.
"Maybe twentysomethings have figured out something that boomers like me took two decades to piece together:
namely, that there's more to life than by-the-book traditional career success," says Ryan, the 45-year-old CEO of a
Colorado-based company called WorldWIT, an on and offline networking organization for professional women.
As much as some employers would like to resist the trend, a growing number are searching for ways to retain
twentysomething employees — and to figure out what makes them tick.
"The manager who says I don't have time for that is going to be stuck on the endless turnover treadmill," says Eric
Chester, a Colorado-based consultant who works with corporations to understand what he calls "kidployees," ages
16 to 24.
At Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, for instance, administrators have developed an internship with
mentoring and more training for young nurses that has curbed turnover by more than 50 percent and increased
job satisfaction.
Amos at Perkins Restaurants says small changes also have helped — loosening standards on piercings or allowing
cooks to play music in the kitchen.
And Muvico, a company with movie theaters in a few Southern states, gives sporting goods and music gift
certificates to young staffers who go beyond minimum duties.
"If you just expect them to stand behind a register and smile, they're not going to do that unless you tell them why
that's important and then recognize them for it," says John Spano, Muvico's human resources director.
Still others are focusing on getting twentysomethings more prepared.
Neil Heyse, an instructor at Pennsylvania's Villanova University, has started a company called MyGuidewire to
provide career coaching for young people.
"It's a hot issue and I think it's getting hotter all the time," Heyse says of work readiness. "There's a great amount
of anxiety beneath the surface."
It’s Y Time
By Elizabeth H. Manning July/August 2007
They've been christened America's most socially conscious generation and its most narcissistic one. They seek
meaning and challenge in the workplace, but won't pay with their personal lives-- Even when they’re happy in their
jobs, they’re looking for their next-- And they're more likely than any generation that's ever come before to strike
out on their own in business, yet also most likely to live longer in their parents' homes.
Call them Generation Y, or Nexters-for postGeneration Xers-Echo Boomers, or simply Millennials. These young
adults are entering the job market in numbers not seen since the 1980s, and they're a distinctly different breed of
worker. First learning of the world through the prism of the booming '90s, coming of age in a mix of fingertip
technology and wrenching disaster, the typical American Millennial presents an unprecedented challenge to those
seeking to employ them-including the military.
Nor is the challenge simply recruiting today’s high school or college graduate or, to take it a step farther, recruiting
and retaining them. With four generation types now in the market--Veterans, Baby Boomers, X, and Y--success
means rethinking an organization's traditional structure and strategies to avoid boosting one strength at the
expense of another. Flexibility and accessibility will likely be the watchwords of tomorrow's leading organizations.
"I'm more impressed with this generation of young people than any in a long time, including my own, the Vietnam
generation," said Lt Gen John A. Bradley, chief of the Air Force Reserve. "They're more disciplined, they're more
focused, they're joining knowing we're at war. But we have to pay attention to them, we have to listen to them."
Do You Know This Person?
Many studies have tried to capture this population, which most designate as having been born in 1982 (turning 18
in the year 2000) or later. The more reputable studies note that Millennials are still young and as yet not far
removed from such formative events as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, so characteristics and trends are
best considered in a soft light.
We do know that in 2000, there were 4,051,598 Americans 18 years of age, according to that year's U.S. Census.
That number is predicted to rise each year to a peak of about 4.4 million around 2009, and taper only slightly for
the next decade. The last time the United States had so many 18-year-olds was in 1979, when about 4.3 million
were counted.
However, this generation of 18-year-olds is much more diverse in background. In the 2000 census, 14 percent were
Hispanic, a number expected to rise to 22 percent by 2020. White 18-year-olds, who currently represent 66
percent, will drop to around 57 percent. At the same time, Millennials are much more likely than their parents to
date and marry across race lines. And their mothers' education level, a marker for their own expectations, is on the
rise: only about 30 percent of those who became mothers 25 years ago had at least some college education, a
number that climbed sharply through the '90s and is now closing on 50 percent.
Carolyn Martin, Ph.D., an expert on generational differences in the workplace, noted that one in five Millennials
today have parents born outside the United States, according to a Pew Charitable Trust report. A principal with
management training firm Rainmaker Thinking, Inc., based in New Haven, Conn., Dr. Martin described for THE
OFFICER several other traits that millennials often share:
* Emphasis on education. Millennials are practiced in learning fast and adapting. "They know that the job they
have today may be obsolete tomorrow," said Dr. Martin. "They're poised to be lifetime learners."
* Sense of entitlement. Like Generation Xers, Millennials seek responsibility in the workplace--but not so much to
prove themselves, like their predecessors tended to do, but because they're confident they can handle it. They've
taken those self-esteem "you can do anything" messages of the past two decades to heart.
* Social conscience. "This generation wants to work for an organization that's socially responsible," she said.
"They'll do the research."
* Family focus. Most surveys find this age group overwhelmingly answers "my parents" when asked to name their
heroes or role models. On the flip side, Millennials are also the first children of the so-called "helicopter parents,"
who hover and swoop at the slightest provocation--a phenomenon that doesn't always stop when children leave
the house.
* Entrepreneurship. Thanks to the low threshold of many Internet-based companies, Millennials are expected to
be more adventurous than ever in business.
* High expectations. Generation Y "wants an organization that's a career store," said Dr. Martin. They want
managers and co-workers to act as coaches and teachers, and they expect feedback to be a two-way street.
For Ellen Kossek, an organizational psychologist and professor of human resources at Michigan State University in
East Lansing, the outstanding feature of Millennials is that they're "dual-centric," she said. "They equally love their
work and personal life. That's a major change from Baby Boomers. When push comes to shove, you love your
family, but Baby Boomers put work first--providing for them is how you show you love your family. Companies
need to realize that to Millennials, work is important, but they won't make tremendous sacrifices for it."
The Military View
The Department of Defense (DoD) conducts studies of Millennial-age children and young adults as well. For
example, each autumn and spring, staff with the Joint Advertising Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS)
program gathers responses from about 3,000 representative 16- to 21-year-olds via random-dial telephone
surveys. Since the inception of this format in 2001, DoD has observed four general trends, according to JAMRS
program manager Matt Boehmer:
1. The time period in which members of this age group may marry, buy a house, enter the workforce or otherwise
launch their adult lives now extends well into their 20s, a phenomenon often called prolonged adolescence or
delayed adulthood;
2. Parents, particularly mothers, have significant influence on choices regarding education and career;
3. Quality of life issues matter to these young adults, who have seen their parents put in long hours on the job;
4. The value of doing something for the larger good is rated high, but this increase is associated more with
community service than military service.
***
***
***
Works Cited
Crappell, Courtney. “Members Of Generation Me Can Do Anything! Or Can They?” American Music
Teacher 62.1 (2012): 14-17. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Halpern, Jake. “The New Me Generation.” Boston Globe. New York Times Company, 30 Sept. 2007. Web.
4 Nov. 2012.
Irvine, Martha. “The Young Labeled “Entitlement Generation.’” Associated Press. Freereupubic.com, 26
June 2005. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Lessard, Jared, Ellen Greenberg, Chuansheng Chen, and Susan Farruggia. “Are Youth’s Feelings of
Entitlement Always ‘Bad’?: Evidence for a Distinction between Exploitive and Non-Exploitive
Dimensions of Entitlement.” Journal of Adolescence 34.3 (2011): 521-529. Science Direct. Web.
4 Nov. 2012.
Manning, Elizabeth H. "It's Y Time." Officer 83.6 (2007): 37-41. Proquest. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Roosevelt, Max. “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.” New York Times. New York
Times, 17 Feb. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Singleton-Jackson, Jill A., Dennis L. Jackson, and Jeffrey Reinhardt. “Academic Entitlement: Exploring
Definitions And Dimensions Of Entitled Students.” International Journal Of Interdisciplinary
Social Sciences 5.9 (2011): 229-236.Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Sparks, Sarah D. “Are You Enabling ‘Academic Entitlement’ in Students.” Education Week. Editorial
Projects in Education, 27 May 2012. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
Woodell, Andria. “Thoughts on the ‘Entitlement Generation.’” Con Xn. Central Oregon Community
College, 28 Apr. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
References
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from Freerepublic.com.
Lessard, J., Greenberger, E., Chen, C., & Farruggia, S. (2011). Are youths’ feelings of entitlement always
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