The "Weaksauce" Generation

I joke about it, but on some level, I'm not just getting old, I'm becoming crochety. The other day I found myself in a conversation about how "kids today just aren't right." Even with a meager 25 years of existence under my belt, I definitely think there's something to the statement. The culture of self esteem and entitlement delivered in schools ( and you can see if on their myspace profiles) is producing a generation of people who expect to be rich and famous because they were told they can do anything they want,and along the way, but someone forgot to mention all the hard work and bootstrapping it'll take to get there.

This is really scary because combined with the huge dropoff in the amount of engineers, scientists, mathmaticians etc, we are going to end up with a shortage of americans who can perform certain jobs when the boomers leave the workforce, and a glut of college educated kids with no marketable skills. At least McDonalds will have an endless supply of drones competing to ask if we "want fries with that." Forty to fifty years ago, people respected vocational education for skilled trades, now it's seen as laughable to be trained to ach as a plumber, carpenter, or technician. Ah well, something had to give sometime, but at least the world still hires engineers.