Like many of you reading this, I watched the first presidential debate last Friday. I might have been hoodwinked or perhaps I'm just in a state of suspended disbelief, but I think I'm pretty sure: our economy is screwed.
A month into senior year -- making an OCR push and pretending to have some insight into the workings of the world - it dawns on me that our generation is really pretty clueless about the immensity of the tasks before us. Now, this doesn't mean that we should believe all the hype that the ensuing downturn parallels the Great Depression.
For the upper middle class of America, the current recession may not really hit that close to home. Sure, jobs may be harder to secure, but your parents' house probably isn't facing foreclosure. (On that note, sincerest apologies to those that had their offers from Lehman rescinded. By the way, thanks for flooding consulting.) GRE or LSAT? It could be worse, right? In comparison, at least we're not suffering in Myanmar unable to get loans to rebuild rice paddies wiped out in cyclones or smoking Salvia after working a double shift at Wal-Mart.
And for those of us at Penn who fall within that bracket, the truth is we really need not worry too much if we don't get that OCR job. We're still our parents' favorite children, and we're sitting on their equity and credit, untouchable at 30,000 feet. But even if we aren't the ones facing the day-to-day hardships, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't empathize with those who are.
It's here in this brief limbo between keg stands and tying double Windsor knots that we have the time to think about the future and realize that we do have the power to choose a trajectory different from those that preceded us. This is the hard part: as Ivy Leaguers, we must have played our cards right, and our natural inclination after college is to seek our place in a respected profession. I'm all for that, but not without the understanding that this is our moment to define ourselves from generations past. This may sound idealistic, but at least we still have time to believe in something. Keep in mind that it was the baby boomers, our parents included, who have supplied us with these problems. So let's get back at them and pass up that traditional route to "success."
For all the faults of the present, this can be our time to rally our generation, come of age and take pride that we will be the ones to restore the economy, maybe fix social security, mitigate poverty in America and slow global warming. Let's pull our heads out of the sand, pry them away from case study books and try to be a little less like our predecessors. If not, allow me to recommend cryogenic sleep.
