Recent Conversations, Part Deux

If you're new here, please read the first part of this post before this one --  it's called Recent Conversations and was posted on 2/24/24, and focuses on how today's college students and student-athletes are different from previous generations.

I shared that post on my Facebook and LinkedIn pages (thanks to those who shared!) and engaged in some great discussions with many different types of people (thanks for commenting!).  College professors, parents, teachers, social workers, college coaches, high school coaches, and former athletes reached out to me in various ways to discuss these recent conversations I've been having, and they offered some great feedback and observations.  So first, let's discuss those:

1. Decrease in critical thinking in K-12 classrooms
• A former college classmate mentioned this one -- and, I have to agree that our national education system over the past 20 years has focused more on test-taking than it has on critical thinking skills.  I've sat in on many a conference session about this.  There's a great (possibly dated) documentary called Race to Nowhere that addresses many of the issues my previous post touched on.  Part of the issue here relates to social policy -- funding for schools is often tied to test scores, with higher-scoring schools getting more funding than lower-performing schools, meaning that the end-all-be-all is answering the test questions correctly.  (An aside, wouldn't it make sense to see the lower-performing schools as needing more help, thus providing more funding?  Just thinking out loud.)
2. Lack of purpose
• This one was really interesting.  Perhaps our current student-athletes are doing what they are doing (beginning at an early age) because they are trying to fulfill someone else's dream.  People in college today were born into a society of play dates, baby classes, and club sports.  Before they really had the opportunity to say what they wanted to do, they may have been put into activities that their parents saw as beneficial, and they never had the opportunity to develop their own "why".  Then when they get to college on a sports scholarship and they're asked "Why do you play?  What's your why?" the only thing they can think of is "To make my parents proud" or "For my parents".  Now, that's admirable, sure-- but that doesn't really convey joy in the activity, or purpose.  
3. Distractions
• My students will tell you that in basically every one of their classes I talk smack about TikTok.  While technology has eased a lot of burdens in society, I think that some tech just exists for the sake of tech (like social media, with all of its dopamine-inducing dings) and causes more distraction and harm than good.  If you don't agree, check out the documentary Social Dilemma.  Biggest takeaway from the film:  Big Tech execs don't let their kids have screens because they understand their (on purpose) addictive qualities.  Interesting.  Are there positives about social media?  Sure.  It allows me to stay connected to my family members who are far away, and it allows people who feel alone or different to find a group of people they can relate to.  But, research demonstrates that it makes us lonelier and grumpier in the long run.   
4. Burnout 
• I know a few people personally whose kids have been playing sports in the club world since they were younger than 8.  From a physiological standpoint, specializing in a sport so early is not great for body development and can lead to early and long-lasting injuries.  For example, Tommy John surgery, a common surgery for pitchers in the major leagues, is much more common now in younger players (like teens) because of the stress on their still-developing bodies.  It also affects athleticism factors as well -- people who are multi-sport athletes can build up different muscle groups so that they are better protected from injury.  Thinking about burnout from a mental and emotional standpoint, rushing kids off every weekend to games, practices, and tournaments is exhausting.  If a parent is exhausted from all of that travel and they're not even playing the sport, imagine how a kid who doesn't have a fully developed brain feels.  And if it's during the school year, they've also got to focus on their academics.  I've spent some quality time in the summer at lacrosse recruiting tournaments -- thousands of families, temps on the field in the 100s, games beginning at 8 am and ending at 8 pm, hotel stays, all with the added pressure of being watched by college coaches who may or may not recruit you based on what they see during a 20-minute period.  I'm sure the same is true for every other sport.  Then, once they get recruited, they may realize all that time and effort made them actually hate the sport they once might have loved.  Burnout is real.  
5. Work-Life Balance
• Many kids today see their parents working long hours to pay bills, especially during and after the height of the Covid pandemic when things just kept getting more expensive (including those bills for club sports and hotel stays) and those kids are quietly deciding they don't want to participate in "the grind".  They see social media stars raking in salaries that are higher than their parents (and certainly higher than their teachers and coaches) and they wonder why they should work so hard when they might not have to.  This goes back to my classroom of complainers -- "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean".  Because of the stress of academics, burnout from their sports, and being constantly distracted by social media, they ARE overworked, tired, and in need of a break.  These are people who are constantly "on" without having a break.  I think this could be in the back of kids' minds when they realize how hard college athletics is.  
6. Focus of society 
• We live in a society that promotes having more, doing more, and showing off more.  We see ads every day to encourage us to buy more stuff because we think it will make us happy, we are inundated with emails promising free shipping, discounts, and feeling better about ourselves, and we are assaulted on social media by people who have better bodies than us, better houses than us, and better jobs than us.  On top of that, we also pay people who work in jobs that are important for society - teachers, social workers, nurses - salaries that demonstrate the jobs are actually not important for society.  Say what you want about capitalism -- I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, too -- but when we as a society prioritize businesses over people, profits over well-being, then obviously there are going to be some tears in our social fabric.  I think this sentiment leads to support the idea that "Nice guys finish last".  If you're kind, empathetic, and hard-working, then you might not ever achieve the goals you want to achieve.  So why do that?  

I think another part of this discussion is the fact that every generation has voiced opinions about the generation below them-- the "kids these days" argument is not new.  This article from Forbes (2012) talks about the sentiment going back as far as before the "Greatest Generation" was so-named.  George Orwell even said "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it" in 1945, but the rest of the quote that's not usually shared is that we should all continue to hold onto our own world-views because they are formed from experiences that others have not had.  

Those of us who are 30 and older have certainly had some major life experiences -- but traditional-aged college students and student-athletes experienced several major life events during a time when their brains weren't fully developed.  All of these kids were born after 9/11-- they don't remember a time when you didn't have to remove your shoes at the airport.  Why does this matter?  I think since 9/11/01, we're just lacking hope in general in our country.  For those of us who remember how terrifying that day and the following days, months, and years were, we should also remember how things completely changed.  Ideas about the American Dream shifted, and things that were always truths - planes don't fly into buildings and kill hundreds of innocent people - had to be redefined.  Since then, we've had tons of school shootings and shootings at places that used to be considered "safe", a housing crisis, a recession, inflation, a global pandemic that disrupted every aspect of our lives, another (more minor) recession, more inflation-- and now college graduates are moving back in with their parents because housing is too expensive.  What is there to look forward to?  Where can this generation hang their hope?  This group of individuals is one we expect to "figure it out" and "buck up" and "deal with it the way we did."  But here's the truth:  we didn't.  We didn't have to deal with any of this stuff.  Columbine happened my junior year of high school ('99), and I'd say that's probably when some of my hope was dimmed... but not that much.  I was sad, and shocked, and scared for a few days, and then I went back to "But that kind of stuff doesn't happen here."  Then 9/11 happened during my sophomore year of college.  I think that might have been when my worldview changed... my ideas about my own safety became more pronounced, and my hope was dimmed a bit more.  But I was an adult when that happened -- not someone with a fully formed brain (that happens at 25) but someone who had coping skills, who had critical thinking skills, who understood my purpose in life, who really wasn't distracted by anything outside of where I was physically.  Think of all of the world events that have happened just in the past 10 years... and because of everything above, we can't say "figure it out" because we haven't taught this generation how to do that.

So, like it or not, this is our reality.  These are the people we are dealing with.  And we have some options:  

• We can say "Eff this, I'm out" and find a new job.  
• We can say "Eff them, they've got to buck up and my expectations aren't going to change because I did all this stuff, too."
• We can say "Eff me.  I didn't really consider the differences in their experiences compared to mine." 
• We can say "Eff, this is serious.  How can I work well in this reality?"

If you're choosing the third and fourth options, great!  My next post, Recent Conversations - Tools, will give you some ideas and suggestions for working with student-athletes in a way that is good for them, AND you.