The Millennials are Here?

I am supposedly a member of the Millennial generation. However I am confused by this to a certain degree. I believe myself to be more of a "border-line" millennial. Why would I believe this? The foremost reason is that I am helping to train "true" millennial as part of my job. Recently I have been given the opportunity to start doing more Library Instruction as part of my job. This has provided many new challenges. One of these challenges is how to give a presentation that challenges and yet meets the students needs. At times this is a paradox. These students have all the gadgets, and automatically seem to "get" technology. However they also don't seem to have the ability to problem solve or to take disappointment well.

This provides many opportunities for new technologies, however it also means that most library OPAC's annoy the heck out of them. Within the realm of the Internet they can always find an answer, it may not be verifiable, but it answers their question. Most library OPAC's don't answer these questions. There isn't that wonderful basic search that covers everything. It isn't Googlized. This is a problem for this new narcissistic generation. Everything is about them, and when they don't succeed as well as they feel they should, it isn't their problem. Their parents haven't allowed them to feel the effects of falling on their butts. Instead they/we have butted in and given explanations to teachers and other adults with the understanding that we can't harm the Millennial's psyche.

This change in perspective has changed how education, and other jobs are preformed. We cannot confront, we must coax. We have to be as the CBS article puts it "a manager must be half shrink and half diplomat". This poses a problem even within Library instruction. You have to cleverly work with your audience to shut down their automatic defenses when someone implies that they may not know everything. This is a necessity. Most of my students cannot use basic searches within the library databases or catalog. While these students have grown up being connected to each other over the Internet, they have no idea how to actually search for valuable materials within it.

There are some student obviously who can find their materials, but it is one of those things that needs to be taught and learned. But Millennials don't necessarily take well to being told that they don't know everything or have to work to have the best results. This is one of the reasons why Google has taken so well. Working hard to have to earn a grade is not really one of the things we have taught our children. We give them awards for everything, we don't allow winners or losers, we are all praised just for participating. This is frankly a load of B.S. But it is what we are encouraging. So when conducting L.I. sessions, we have to be remarkable, we have to prove that we can find something that they wouldn't have been able to find. We have to overwhelm them, while having to back off from all the information we could give them.

Let the conundrum continue.

(P.S. the reason I believe that I am on the edge is that I am only 1-3 years within the Millennial age group, but also it was that I have not grown up with this extra parental involvement, my Mom raised me like she was raised. I was allowed to fall on my butt, and learn from the experience. However I also grew up with a computer, and remember teaching my 3rd grade teacher how to use basic application on it before allowing my fellow students to work on it."