"The Mellennial" Generation

I belong to a generation called “the millennial” generation.  This generation belongs to those born after 1982, also called generation Y.

 

Key Characteristics of "The Mellennial" Generation

Special:  Have always been treated as special or important.  This generation of children has been the most wanted.  Every milestone was marked with celebrations and praise.  They may carry a sense of entitlement about them and have an expectation of frequent positive feedback.   It’s been instilled in them that they are vital to the nation and to their parents’ sense of purpose.  They feel they are here to solve world problems that older generations have failed to solve.  They may claim they want privacy, but they crave attention.

Confident: they are motivated, goal-oriented, and confident in themselves and the future. Grew up in time of increasing safety measures.  They were rarely left unsupervised.  They were sheltered from having to take care of their  own conflicts as parents advocated on their behalf, and “spared” them from unpleasant experiences.  As college students, they may expect facult6yu and staff to shelter, protect, and nurture them-and resolve their conflicts for them.  Millennia’s are the focus of the most sweeping youth safety movement in American history.

Team-oriented: they are group oriented rather than being individualists. They may sacrifice their own identity to be part of the team. They prefer egalitarian leadership, not hierarchies. They are forming a tight-knit generation. While they are group-oriented within their own cohort, they may “politely” exclude other generations. They do not want to stand out among their peers, they want to be seen as part of the group. They dislike selfishness and are oriented toward service learning and volunteerism.

Achieving: grade points are rising with this generation and crime is falling.  The focus on getting good grades, hard work, involvement in extracurricular activities, etc. is resulting in higher achievement levels. They see college as the key to a high paying job and success, and may miss the bigger picture of what a college education is all about. They are pressured to decide early on a career – and have been put on a career track orientation since grade school. Their focus is more on the world of achievement rather than personal development. The Boomer generation made their mark in the humanities and arts, whereas the Millennia’s prefer math and science fields.

 

Pressured: tightly scheduled as children and used to having every hour of the day filled with structured activity. This generation may have lost a sense of pure spontaneous play. They may struggle with handling free time and time management in general. In elementary, middle, and high school, have had more hours of homework and less free time than any of the previous generations. They feel pressured to succeed. They’ve been pushed hard to achieve, to avoid risks, and to take advantage of opportunities. They may take on too much, and then think others should be flexible with them when they want to negotiate scheduling conflicts. They think multi-tasking saves time and is a smart thing to do, but aren’t usually aware of the poorer quality of results.

Conventional: respectful to the point of not questioning authority.  They are civic-minded and believe the government knows what’s best and will take care of them. They fear being considered non-conformist. Their clothing, music, and cultural markings will be very mainstream. They value their parents’ opinions very highly. They support and believe in social rules, and are more in line with their parents’ values than most other generations have been. They are trying to invite rules and norms back into the culture.

Beliefs and Values "The Millennial" Generation

Live first, work second, Social causes, Flexibility, Balance, Fun, Friends, World travel, Diversity, The value of Meaningful work-, Authenticity, Friendships/Groups of Friends, Fast access to information, Experiential activities, The ability to travel the world,

The beliefs and values that identify me are the shift from social networks to face to face community networks. Use your knowledge to improve efficiency and create social change

 

Events occurring during “The Millennial” generation

 

Key historical events that occurred the millennial generations childhood effected our generation's current beliefs and values through the key historic events that occurred during my generation.   Our generation group up in the technology age and we got more engaged in social causes.  Violence was also a big part of our generation because of all of the following events that occurred through generation y.  Through these events generation y became more globally concerned, open and accepting of diversity, tech savvy, the “knowledge worker”, concerned about safety, team players, multi-taskers, and impatient

1993      NAFTA was passed  and The north American free trade agreement was passed

1994      U.S. Send troops to Persian gulf

1995      O.J. Simpson trial was found not guilty

1996      The first version of JAVA was created

1999      Columbine shooting

2000      Hubble telescope

2001      Twin towers and pentagon were hit by hijacked plane operated by Al Qaeda

2003      Space shuttle catastrophe

2003      Uday and Qusay were killed (sons of Saddam Hussein)

2003      Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected govorner of california

2003      Saddam Hussein captured

2004      Bush was re-elected as president of the United States

The events that affected my generation the most were September 11, global terrorism, terrorism on home soil, Columbine, Virginia Tech, high speed internet, text messaging, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, environmental concerns, parents being laid-off, downsizing of corporate America, the melting pot  syndrome, plug and play knowledge, pop culture

What I Can Offer My Group

The skills that I can offer my group for our group project are my Leadership skills, Computer skills, and Proofreading Skills.

Leadership Skills: I can help organize a group meeting by setting up documents in Google drive and making sure those involved in the project have access to the document.

Computer Skills: I have the ability to create and organize the editing functions in a wiki and Google Docs that our group can use to edit, create projects, and communicate back and forth to accommodate our busy schedules.

Proofreading Skills: I can help our group by proofreading our project for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  I can also watch for discrepancies that could possibly raise a flag in the record.

A proposed code of conduct for my group would be; do not act in a manner that is deliberately hostile and insulting to other participants.

Everyone handles conflict differently to find out how I handle conflict I filled out a questionnaire on how I respond to conflict.  It states that I typically resolve conflict by collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and lastly avoiding the situation in the future. To compromise means to make a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand.  In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms-often involving variations from an original goal or desire.  To collaborate is working together to do a tasks when two or more people in organizations work together to realize shared goals.  By sharing knowledge, leaning and building consensus.  Most collaboration requires leadership. Accommodating means to bring it into reconcile or harmony by settling the problem and then competing or striving towards a goal to receive victory. 

Conflict and relationships

The way we handle conflict and our feelings affects our relationship with others.  In some cases, when we relate to others, we tend to bury our real feelings, hesitate to express them, or unleash them uncontrollably, and this is called suppressing or censoring our feelings. Healthy relationships do not consist totally of positive feelings.  Other feelings are also important.  Many of us lack the commitment, courage, and skill needed to express our own feelings, when those feelings are not positive-or to allow other people to express their feelings to us.  Many people are reluctant to work their feelings through; instead, they ignore or deny a feeling until it eventually becomes unmanageable.

For example, a time I suppressed or censored my feelings during a conflict was while I was at work.  Something I did created a conflict between me and a co-worker.  I was still new to the company and I was not sure how to fix the problem that I was having with one of the machines, and everything seemed to be going wrong for me that night and I started getting upset and frustrated.  Instead of going to my supervisor to explain the problems I was having and asking for help I decided to suppress or censor my feelings without telling others about the problems I was having I just walked off.  The result of me walking off was not only hurting production but it was also creating conflict between my co-workers and I.  Most businesses probably would have fired me due to my personality conflicts, but instead they gave us the chance to work through our differences and resolve the conflict in a positive manner.   

Our supervisor approached the conflict by calling us into the office to speak to us one-on-one to find out exactly what the problem was.  We spoke with each other about the feelings we were having and ways we can improve our behavior in order to prevent conflict in the future.  The reason I chose to speak up about the feelings I was having is because of the importance of letting others know how you are feeling and tell them about the things that are bothering you so we can prevent conflicts from arising in the future.   If the supervisor would not have approached me I probably would not have said anything and that is not good because when we suppress our feelings we become emotionally isolated or we seek to avoid situations that may require the exchange of feelings.  But becoming emotionally isolated from others can cause problems with relationships.

Handled appropriately, conflict can help each participant involved develop a clear picture of the other person and strengthen a relationship.  Handled poorly, conflict can create schisms, inflict psychological scars, inflame hostilities, and cause lasting resentments.  A conflict free relationship shows that you really have no relationship at all, not that you have a good relationship.  If a relationship is healthy, conflicts will occur regularly.  If a relationship is healthy, conflicts will also be handled effectively.  

This conflict was a low-intensity conflict which the persons involved worked together to discover a solution beneficial to all parties.  In a medium-intensity conflict each person feels committed to win, but winning is seen as sufficient.  No one feels that the opposition must be destroyed.  If conflict is not handled correctly, or there are suppressed or censored feelings the conflict can quickly turn into a high-intensity conflict which one person intends to destroy or at least seriously hurt the other.  It is also important that conflicts are approached in a calm manner by being assertive when we express our feelings and display respect for the thoughts and feelings of others.

Listening skills facts

Introduction

The video Ted Talks located on you tube describes how effective your listening skills can be if they are used correctly.  The very first message in Julian’s Treasure video is that many of us are losing our listening and that we only spend 60% of our time listening and we are not very good at it we only retain 25% of that information we hear.

Ways to listen better

Ted explains that listening means making meaning from sound and it is a process of extraction.  Techniques used to do this is pattern techniques that we us to distinguish noise from signals and then there are a range of filters down to what we actually pay attention.  Attention is very important in sound.

I agree with what he said in his main message because many of us do fail to listen to what the other person is saying and we tend to end up with a completely different meaning of what the speaker is trying to say and many tend to ignore crucial facts about what is going on around them.  By ignoring crucial facts when it comes to listening we are not only affecting our life, but also the life of everyone else around us.

Five Simple exercises to increase listening skills

1.       Silence- taking three minutes a day of silence to recalibrate in order to hear the quit again.

2.       The mixer-Go in a noisy environment listens and listen to see how many channels of sound you can hear.

3.       Savoring-enjoying mumbling sounds of one thing such as a dryer.

4.       Listening positions and filters- Move your listening position to different places using active and passive, reductive and expansive, and critical and empathetic listening positions. Filters- culture, language, values, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and intentions.

5.       Using the acronym RASA which stands for

Receive meaning pay attention to the person,

Appreciate making little noises like hm, oh, ok

Summarize using the word so is very important

Ask- ask questions after words to be sure you interpret the meaning of what is being said.

I used one of the five simple exercises in order to improve my listening skills.  I tried the mixer by listening in a noisy environment you can channel sounds you hear.  You can hear many of different sounds at once and we only take in so much of that sound at once.  So it all depends where we channel our brains.  I could hear machines and I could also hear others trying to tell me something from a distance.  I just kept on listening to what I was hearing and I then started to have many memories of life situations that I have not heard in a very long time.

Conclusion

I think that these listening habits could improve my life by getting a better understanding of what is expected of me, what others are telling me, and what needs to be done in the future.  I plan to do this by asking the appropriate questions needed in order to understand what is being said.