It's been quite some time since I rolled into work with less than six hours of sleep in a night. At least as far as I can remember. Five and a half hours of sleep is probably a dream for some of you insomniacs here on HIVE, but for me it's a potential recipe for disaster. We made it to work alive, so that is at least out of the way!
@mrsbozz decided to surprise me with a trip to the Breslin Center in East Lansing, Michigan to watch the Michigan State Spartans take on the Iowa Hawkeyes in a early season basketball game. I'll share more about that in my @bozz.sports blog today if you want to check it out.
I say surprise, but it really wasn't much of one. As she started looking for tickets on Tuesday morning she was running into some snags and she ended up having to message me to see if I could figure it out.
Now, believe me when I say that my wife is a "smart cookie". She has about a million plates spinning at any given time, and she can manipulate them with grand expertise. That being said, although she has osmotically grabbed some of my tech knowledge over the years, there are times that it still frustrates her to no end. Heck, it frustrates me sometimes too.
So, although it was supposed to be a surprise, the job of procuring tickets got handed off to me. Which honestly, is a good thing. I'm more of a planner than a spontaneous sort, so not getting home and finding out I had to drive an hour and a half one way to a basketball game that didn't start until 7 PM on a school night was probably a good thing.
It turns out, it wasn't just her that was having trouble getting the tickets. I tried the website for four hours yesterday morning trying to score our seats. I used a different browser, I placed myself in Chicago via a VPN to try and order them, I even tried a different card just in case. No luck.
It wasn't until the ticket office opened at 10 AM and I called in (much to my annoyance) that I finally got to talk to someone and get the tickets ordered. It was a smooth process and the guy was very gracious. He even gave me the "Cyber Monday" ticket price even though it was now Tuesday.
However, through the process I couldn't help but think of the future generation, and how it seems to be so difficult for them to "pivot" and figure things out. You would think with all the video games they play they would have better problem solving skills, but I guess when the answer to every puzzle is available on a website or via a YouTube streamer, you don't really need the skill.
I was having a conversation with @mrsbozz the other day and she agreed that kids simply don't have problem solving skills these days. When they are faced with adversity, they simply shut down or worse. Now, before you assume we are just a couple of old people ranting about "kids these days", you should know that my wife is a licensed school social worker. She has made a career of identifying, teaching, and helping young kid navigate through social emotional issues. She has some real "street cred" as far as her opinions in this subject are concerned.
I even see it with some of the young adults who are entering the workforce, so if that gives you any indication, things are likely only going to get worse. I wrote a post a while ago about how most of the stuff I learned in the pursuit of my university degree had little to no influence on the job I ended up doing. It's not that I picked a job outside my field of study,
but 90% of the stuff I learned to do my job, I learned by doing my job.
While I might be generalizing a bit, I don't feel that is the case anymore. I've seen and heard countless examples of new workers being at a complete standstill unless you basically spoon feed them what they need to do. It's not even enough to give them a general goal and encourage them to figure it out.
Perhaps we have just become so used to simple answers being at our fingertips. I think part of it too has to do with the first answer not always being the right one. In the past you may have had to try a dozen different scenarios until you found the one that works. These days, it feels like people try the first one and if it doesn't work, they deem the task impossible, and move on.
I wonder what would happen if after a single failure we considered them a lost cause and cut them loose. I have a feeling they wouldn't think that is quite so fair or reasonable...
Have you noticed this trend fellow members of HIVE? Any thoughts on this @tarazkp? I bet you have some pretty deep knowledge and opinions you could drop on this one! I'd love to hear them!
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You kinda make solid point about the decline in problem-solving skills. It’s almost like convenience has replaced curiosity. When answers are instantly available, people forget how to dig or experiment.
Your wife also being a school social worker adds weight to that perspectiv, cos she sees firsthand what’s happening with kids cognitively. And of course the larger concern is when this same pattern shows up in young adults entering the workforce. Real problem!
Yeah, it is kind of scary to think where we are heading. Hopefully there is a fringe few that can turn the tide. It doesn't seem to be a priority for parents though.
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A Bachelor's degree is only a paper that you should have the qualities to perform a certain job or position. It doesn't say anything how good you will be, even not if you did graduate "cum lauda".
I fully agree on that and probably 50% or even more is by making mistakes. That is the fastest track in general to become good in your job.
Yeah, it's funny how that works isn't it!?
I really don't want to get into a rant about today's youth and how they need things sppon fed to them. LOL .
Aggree though, I have a 30 and a 20 year old. The difference between the two is night and day. The 20 years old gives up way too quickly if things aren't "Internet easy". Rolling up ones sleeves, researching, turning some screws, reading, throwing some elbows? Nope, not part of the equation.
Yeah, it's pretty sad. I remember once someone said the US was number 1 in the world at innovation. I don't think that is the case anymore.
you got kids??
coulda sworn you didn't. or maybe that was the case, and time's flying fast + I missed an important update...
Yes and no. No kids for us, but my wife and I both work in public education, so she has over 100 kids on her caseload and I have about 1100 students I am responsible for as end users of the technology.
"Kids these days" might be some kind of comparison among generations but I sometimes agree on this line, with the limitation of not being insensitive. I agree on the part kids are not developing their problem-solving skills nowadays, getting frustrated easily to little inconvenience, and then shut down for they know nothing as to how to figure it out. I have a niece of 3 and she would do a lot of cries when the kids show she watches get lag, and then get frustrated, not telling us the problem, shutting her mind and mouth. I guess phones really does this, aside from parenting, it decreases attention while it makes their work easier but doesn't teach them logic. If the kid is within five years, it could be their parent's fault or the gadget, but if they reach more than that age, it could be still their parents, the upbringing they had, or their social environment. Better have healthy parenting before it is too late to help a child navigate the real world without knowledge.
It's definitely the parents because I know some kids who handle problems quite well. The issue is it seems to be a sort of trickle down effect so it will likely just compound as generations pass.
Yeah I have a lot of "kids these days" moments as well but this time I think that an over-reliance on technology to solve anything for you has permeated not just the young, but everyone. I was listening to a podcast the other day about how chaotic life would be for most people if we were to wake up one day and GPS just didn't work. Most people these days have no idea how to get from one place to the other and would probably just "shut down" as you say, if all of a sudden they needed to use a paper map and remember turns. I am sure you are old enough to remember those frustrating days, but you got it done in the end.
These days I get into an Uber type taxi and even though I presume the person does this for a living and I am going somewhere very common like a huge shopping mall, they turn EXACTLY where the GPS tells them to turn even if it is clearly not the best way of getting there. People have just become automatons because of tech. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Already almost everyone I know immediately goes to AI assistant anytime a question arises and I have to stop them and say something like "let's just talk about it for a bit first" to stop them from preventing anyone from actually thinking for a minute.
Back in my day (lol) we would get told some absolute nonsense by an aunt or uncle and we would spend the next several years just presuming it was true. My story about such a thing is when I was a child my Mom would play guitar and one of her songs was "Yellow Submarine." I lived the next, at least, 10 years of my life thinking that my Mom wrote that song because she told 4-year old me that she did because it probably would have invited a string of question from me if she had told me the truth. I wasn't a Beatles fan so it wasn't until I was in high school that I heard it on a friend's CD player and my mind was just blown.
Haha , wow that is funny about Yellow Submarine. I do know that the Beatle who wrote it was trying to make it sort of a kids song so he kept the lyrics simple and easy to remember. I used to do cable modem installs across several cities back during the flip phone days. I had a map that had one city on one side and the other city on the back. I wore out several of those. When I was a kid we used to get trip tiks from AAA before we headed out on long trips. I use GPS today, but I still usually look at a map ahead of time so I have a general idea of where I am going.
The younger generations have never had it this hard ... ever! That is what I heard the other day, I nearly fell off my fluffing chair!
That is your basketball team then, I see you sporting their merch
Oh yes, those are my guys. I hope they do well this year. It's interesting how so much of the stuff people consider hard these days is usually self imposed.