Millennials have a ways to go before they get my job

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, April 29, 2006

Tiffany Myrick thought I was helping her out. Read on, you’ll see that the reverse is true – she helped me out. I have the 17-year-old to thank for today’s column.

A couple weeks ago, the Lake Stevens High School senior contacted The Herald’s executive editor, Stan Strick.

“My dream in life is to one day have my own column in a newspaper,” Tiffany wrote in her e-mail, which found its way to me.

Wow, she wants my job. She isn’t shy about asking how to get it. My first thought? Tiffany has more nerve than I ever had at her age.

I’m not the only one saying so. A recent article in the Denver Post offered a broad-brush portrayal of the generation that reporter Tom McGhee calls the “Millennials” – those born between 1981 and 1999.

The Denver Post story, which quoted employment experts and young workers, pegged Millennials as “confident, hardworking and technologically fluent but lacking the resourcefulness, independence and, in some cases, basic literacy skills that marked earlier generations.”

Aha, I thought – using baby-boomer resourcefulness – why not invite Tiffany to spend an afternoon with me? She’ll get a job-shadow experience, I’ll get a real-life Millennial take on stereotypes being slapped onto her generation.

“I’ve never heard of that label, I’m drawing a blank,” Tiffany said Wednesday. She spent the afternoon at The Herald, looking over my shoulder and discussing her aspirations.

I hadn’t heard of Millennials either, and I’m not convinced the tag will stick. I do, though, see some traits listed in McGhee’s article in my own Millennial children.

The story mentions “comfort with technology.” What an understatement. Tiffany agrees her peers have an unceasing “need to be contacted.”

“We’re text-messaging and surfing the Web,” she said. “You’ll go to a party with friends, and people there will get on the computer. There you are with flesh-and-blood people, and they’re leaving messages for the people who are there.”

Tiffany occasionally enjoys a break from constant contact. “When I go out to Camano Island and lose cell phone service, I like that,” she said.

According to the Denver Post article, employers appreciate their young workers’ ease with technology, but do see drawbacks. A recruiter for Enterprise, the car rental company, is quoted as saying young workers are taught at orientations not to answer personal cell phone calls while with customers.

Tiffany fits the “hardworking” label. She holds down a part-time job at a clothing store at the Seattle Premium Outlets complex on the Tulalip Reservation. “It’s a job, not a career,” she said.

She plans to start her career quest this fall at Everett Community College, where she hopes to be involved in the campus newspaper. After EvCC, Tiffany wants to move on to a four-year university and earn a degree in English or journalism.

Asked about the Post article’s assertion that Millennials lack literacy skills, Tiffany said that “for most of my generation I’d agree.”

She sees herself as a reader and a writer. She carries a journal wherever she goes, and has a long list of favorite books and authors, among them Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden. She’s a fan of writers Ray Bradbury, George Orwell and Haruki Murakami. She uses a thesaurus and a dictionary – in book form.

“The only time I ever watch TV is when my little sister has it on,” she said.

I recognized something of my much younger self in Tiffany. I loved to read, loved to write and wasn’t sure what on earth to do with those loves.

With the frighteningly high costs of housing and of living, Tiffany worries about the future. She’s discouraged by politics, the war in Iraq and the state of the world. If you ask me, those worries aren’t generational. We’re all worried, Tiffany.

She is also a bit insulted by labels or stereotypes of any kind.

“Millennials, that’s just like the baby boomers. We’re not necessarily all the same. Most of us are different,” she said.

At the end of our time together, I put her on the spot. If she had a column to write for tomorrow’s newspaper, how would she approach it?

“I wouldn’t write it right away,” she said. “I’d spend a couple hours figuring it out first.”

Good answer, she’s a quick study. Putting it off is an indispensable art.

There’s a bit more to it than that, but Tiffany has plenty of time. She has years and years – before she can have my job.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.