Why Catholic Millennials Need These Four Urgent Life Skills

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Yes I have noticed that as well. In my state they’ve just begun a new program that helps guide high schoolers to get the right high school diploma and to help plan better for their futures. There are 3-4 different graduation paths they can chose from. So it seems that they are finally realizing the usefulness of trade schools.
 
“Adulting” classes? Shoot me now. That horrific mess of a word is worse than “gifting.” Resist!!!

No one who put the word “adult” into gerund form ought to be allowed anywhere near adult education.

Scheduling: Young people now are more scheduled (and in my experience, more adept at juggling a schedule) than anyone was when I was their age. They don’t need to be taught scheduling. They need learn you can’t have it all and that some things are not worth their time. Prayer needs to be in the “pay yourself first” slot that savings get when they teach budgeting. Pay God first.

Reading: They are not illiterate. They just don’t carry around hard copies of books any more. Yes, they ought to be encouraged to read entire books, but that does not require a class. If anything, they need to be convinced that reading a book does NOT involve writing endless clever notations in the margins for a grade. High school literature teachers sometimes teach an entirely false sense of what reading a book entails. This is a work of rehabilitation, not education.

Failure: Again, I don’t think learning how to make the most of failure takes a class. What could help is to raise the next generation with a lot less relentless assessment and a better idea of what assessments are supposed to do for them. Someone needs to let the truth out: once you get out of high school and you have your financial aid packet, nobody cares what grades you got. The only thing that matters is what you actually learned. This is true of your college grades as soon as you either gain acceptance to the next phase of your education (graduate school, law school, medical school) or else you get your career going. After that, no one wants to know what marks you got.

Prayer: This is actually an area where there are skills to be learned. The problem is that there are “methods” out there that aren’t rooted in the lessons the Church has learned over the ages. Even in this area, I think of Pope St. John Paul II’s quote (which I cannot find) in which he said that the method one uses to pray is far less important than that one DOES in fact pray. Like playing music, you have to do it to get it.
 
Angel_Gabriel said:
Yep…Gen Xer here and my parents are both Boomers…I always had the “get a degree, you’ll get a job” talk. Well, I got the degree…and ended up in a job that had nothing to do with it…they didn’t even care that I had a degree. It was admin assist. work so nothing big. I couldn’t find anything with my degree since I had NO experience and didn’t know the right people… sigh … Years later I returned to trade school for a fraction of the cost and am now actually using that certificate…right out of school.
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A lot of us boomers got degrees that have nothing to do with our careers. I have a degree in history and work as an Executive Assistant 🤷‍♀️
 
The problem, as I see it, isn’t this generation. It is the fear of winding up working in the wrong part of the economy. Why is that?

We have a whole class of people who work very hard to do the manual labor necessary to keep our society running, and yet instead of getting the dignity due to those who work with diligence they are paid and talked about as if they are failures. Now the reality that has been their lot for a generation or more is moving up into those who went into debt up to their eyeballs on the theory that a college education–any college education, it doesn’t matter which one!!–is some kind of an immunization against the fate of the “unskilled” and we all of a sudden have a national emergency on our hands.

This is what St. James had to say about a “standard of living” that was for the few at the expense of the many:

Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries.
Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten,
your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you;
it will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days.
Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud,
and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.
You have condemned; you have murdered the righteous one; he offers you no resistance.
James 5:1-6

We need to fix our economy so that people who do the work are compensated. If that lowers the “standard of living” for some of us, so be it. It is only justice.
 
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This is why religion is important. I am embarrassed of my life and this generation, and how it took me a while to see the value in talking to people, showing vulnerability and accepting criticism from authority.

Even as an adult, religion is not just about working hard or praying many rosaries. One needs to meditate on scripture… think about wwjd?

I am sad to say, but I don’t think I understood what religion was about, since no one at church cared when I was a child. I didn’t see any role models.

Rather than focus on what my peers and atheistic are doing I should be reading spiritual books and praying.

The rosary does help, when I beg God to help me carry my cross, and if I dare mention not to forget the sacrament of communion.
 
Why is adult being used as a verb? Aren’t these classes just what used to be called home economics? Use that term instead. Adulting just sounds like a meme that was never funny but is not allowed to die.
 
Sleep in a hammock… change the world.
I bet that’s a book too… by someone.
 
A lot of millennials, especially most people I see at college are all into the “spiritual but not religious” which doesn’t even make logical sense. Perhaps the heresy of our times
 
redbetta said:
Why is adult being used as a verb? Aren’t these classes just what used to be called home economics? Use that term instead. Adulting just sounds like a meme that was never funny but is not allowed to die.
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Apparently, the word “adulting” is used to mean “performing acts required of an adult,” especially when those tasks are mundane or tedious. This is apparently an matter for self-congratulation for those who were not raised with an appreciation of the fact that winning independence from their helicopter parents would also win the tasks of doing their own laundry, cooking their own meals and generally attending to all the unpleasant things that they’d been preserved from doing for their entire lives.

I’m pleased to say that a great many people of the generation are rebelling against the term!
(These are presumably the ones who were not surprised, alarmed nor self-satisfied to have merely out-grown the solicitude of their mothers.)
 
The people in college now aren’t technically millennial. Depending on the definition.
When I taught a college class about a year ago the students were adamantly opposes to being part of the millennial generation and looked up data to prove that it ended before they were born. 😎
 
I think once a person uses the term “adulting” self-referentially, he or she is incapable of it.
 
GospelOfMatthew said:
A lot of millennials, especially most people I see at college are all into the “spiritual but not religious” which doesn’t even make logical sense. Perhaps the heresy of our times
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This is based on a limited number of people I actually know who self-identify in this way, but I’d say, generally speaking, it means (a) unaffiliated with an organized religion but (b) at least open to the idea that the spiritual life is not a mere act of imagination. It usually includes recognition of the existence of a “higher power” of some kind. Sometimes, it means “I like to think I’m on good terms with God, but I have released myself from all sense of religious duty.”

Not infrequently, though, it means that the person adheres to a spiritual practice, such as when someone spends daily time in meditation. In cases when their meditation is prayer aimed at God, in that case they don’t consider themselves a member of any congregation greater than their congregation of one.

Yes, I’d say the idea that a Christian could ever be “spiritual but not religious” is a heresy. A Christian has to have a connection of love and duty towards the Body of Christ, whether that is being fulfilled or not.
 
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PetraG said:
In cases when their meditation is prayer aimed at God, in that case they don’t consider themselves a member of any congregation greater than their congregation of one.
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Not to mention Matthew 18:20

”For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
 
I don’t know why, but St. John Bosco comes into mind! He saw that there were many young adults who did not learn any skills to support themselves, so he taught them on how to use the machine or other “life skills” as we know of now.

This is a problem in my country, too. Many Korean young adults live in their parents’ homes, even if they have jobs. I actually moved out of my home and lived with a homestay family for education when I was 16. It was hard and it can be hard for anyone. I lived alone in college years handling all the finances, payments, residence fees, contracts… it’s basically to ‘adult’, lol.

But there are many support for young people nowdays so if only we could encourage them to take a leap of faith and show them that it is not hard as they think once you step out into the world.

It’s also important to have emotional support for them, like youth groups and counselors. Many people around me told me of loneliness, financial burdens, etc… so support is highly needed for all young people who start living on their own.
 
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I find it odd how people are so quick to blame a generation rather than look at how our culture has changed. What worked 40 years ago doesn’t work anymore. Our economy, our business structure, the way we communicate and think about things have all changed.

This isn’t my grandfather’s time anymore. The tactics my grandfather used isn’t going to be helpful to people these days. (Just go to work driving a milk truck - I can support a family of 4 with that one income!)
 
blackforest said:
Yes! The younger generation is always a product of the older one. We have ourselves to blame. Are you familiar with this famous article? How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic

Whoever creates the messes needs to help clean them up.
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I think a great many young people with no life skills either (a) had parents with jobs and very little time who felt is was quicker to do chores themselves than to teach their children to do them or (b) had parents who wanted their children to devote more time to some competitive pursuit that would make them a great success, such as school, a performance art, or a sport the parents imagined their child could make into a profession. (Sometimes, parents tried to give their children time for two or even three of those at the expense of developing everyday life skills!!)

In other words, Mom did all the housework so that the children would have a better chance of getting into Harvard or medical school (or major league baseball or the Boston Symphony Orchestra…)
 
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I’m giving this a like.

However, there are some issues unique to millennials (and perhaps Gen Z) that we Gen Xers didn’t have to deal with (even us 40 year olds who are just barely members of Gen X).

What I’m talking about is cell phones.

I’m 41. I graduated high school in 1995 and college in 2000. When I was a freshman in college, no one had cell phones. By the time I was a senior, a FEW started to buy cell phones once the first digital plans came out. But still, very few had them. And we never used texting.

However, once you get to the Millennials, almost all of them had cell phones in college, they were texting up a storm, and also using things like MySpace and eventually Facebook as college students and eventually high schoolers.

The older Millennials (like my 33 year old sister) had cell phones in college (if not high school), while the younger Millennials (the ones who are still in their late 20s) most likely had cell phones while in high school.

The cell phone and texting esp has contributed to some Millennials having difficulties interacting with Gen X and Baby Boomers.

So yes, the helicopter parenting has been HORRIFIC, but also, some major changes in society have had some negative effects on the Millennials too.
 
Rhubarb said:
I find it odd how people are so quick to blame a generation rather than look at how our culture has changed. What worked 40 years ago doesn’t work anymore. Our economy, our business structure, the way we communicate and think about things have all changed.

This isn’t my grandfather’s time anymore. The tactics my grandfather used isn’t going to be helpful to people these days. (Just go to work driving a milk truck - I can support a family of 4 with that one income!)
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People still need to do their own laundry and most need to cook their own food if they’re going to use their income responsibly. I cannot tell you how many honor students I have met who do not know how to do the most basic tasks of home- and self-maintenance. All the attention was given to book learning.

It is a shock when they leave home and especially when they leave the dorm, let’s just say that.
 
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