I've seen many versions of memes of Gen Z just giving no fucks. Young people are shown basically refusing to be exploited, and often the meme creator can't quite seem to decide whether to feel scorn or awe.
Well, they have a lot of reason to be pissed and rejecting bullshit.
Antonio had a meeting with an advisor at Berklee College of Music the summer after he was accepted, before he enrolled. He asked whether it's possible to graduate in two years as a transfer student. He was told it is. He learned in the middle of his first year that he was more or less lied to. They accept only 24 units of transfer credit, about a semester and a half, and NO other school's music classes. You can test out of some of the core music curriculum, but that's it. So he's going to need a full third year to graduate. At nearly $50K a year, even after his scholarships, that is fairly painful.
After applying to and being accepted at a bunch of STEM universities, Maggie decided that she did not want to study STEM. So she enrolled at community college to study theater, intending to transfer to a four year university. Unfortunately, her community college THEATER PROGRAM advisor waited until after Maggie's first year to tell her that NONE of her theater classes are transferable, so she would need to start as a freshman elsewhere, and maybe she's better off just taking business administration and marketing classes.
I do wonder what fantastically "useful" degree is required to end up as an incompetent community college advisor.
Young people have been infantilized under continual supervision, then demeaned for being immature. They went through a global pandemic that cancelled a significant portion of their lives, leaving them trapped for a year with Google Classroom, while they were shamed for spending all day looking at their screens. They're told that they need to go to college to get a good job, while reading about Millennials drowning in student debt they will never be able to pay off. They were told that STEM jobs are the only hope for a stable career, but now we're told that AI is going to make all human intellectual activities like engineering and art obsolete, so the only things we need people to do are menial jobs and gig "side hustles." Or be one of the lucky few at the top with business degrees to whom all the profit is funneling—but let's not mention that you needed to start out with a shit-ton of money to begin with to be one of the oligarchs exploiting everyone else.
(Gen X went through most of this too, though the AIDS epidemic never paralyzed the entire country, before we revolutionized the world with the internet, but nobody ever remembers us, so whatever, never mind.)
So as usual, in summary, #MedicareForAll and #UBI. Because fuck capitalism. And guidance counselors.
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