papa o and the Z generation

ive never felt older than today. i swear.

so there's this new set of youth service corpers that have been sent to my office for their one-year national assignment.  i remember having a conversation with the human resources people sometime ago and them telling me that they only take top notch, super achieving graduates to complete their service year with the company. well, i'm guessing that the word 'top notch' has a new meaning in the modern advanced dictionary because frankly, i disagree.

firstly, i am struck by how young these kids are. they all claim to be about 20 to 23 but frankly i can almost swear they are younger (or maybe i am older) but you know, no problems there. i used to feel like a super chap when i graduated from law school at 23 so hey... naturally, i strike up conversation with them just to test the depth of the water and thats where it hits me. the times have really changed.

to start with, everyone is an enterpreneur. when i was in school, i could count the number of kids in my class who were into business, and frankly it was often clothes-selling and one new ponzi scheme or the other. when i was in university i would totally have fainted if anyone had asked me to sit in a class and sign attendance on their behalf when they were absent...yes i was the prude, i know. but now every university kid i know is a 'model' on the side, yeah even the one with the jay-z lips and gap teeth (shoot me now) leaving school and traveling across state lines to attend auditions and fashion shows with no parental approval like naomi campell on steroids... i even hear that many of these kids now write exams and projects for the intellectually challenged seniors in their universities for money. infact, as a full blown business, some of them acquire relevant computer software and laptops to write final projects in such significant quantity that they can survive without pocket money from home. my question is, where do all those 'i'm too dumb to write my own dissertation' kids go? do they end up as your bosses at work? the type of boss that leaves you wondering how he even got the job in the first place and how life can be unfair? i'm guessing.

but then the bigger question is, is it just me or is there a moral issue with "helping" people to cheat a system. i mean, the entire educational system is set up to separate the wheat from the chaff. to mould the potential brains into useful labour and ensure that those not fit to add economic value to society find something less intellectually demanding (no offence) and still play their part. this trend of 'helping' has ensured that everyone passes every exam and comes out with unmerited results only to end up depriving a qualified person out there from a perfect job. but again, i seem to be on an island on this issue.

and then to worsen things, all words appear to have lost meaning. there was once a time when the words "love", "dear", "darling", "inconvenience" meant something. a time when you couldn't tell a girl you loved her if you really didn't and used darling only when...er, actually never. i cringe at the word 'darling' till now (my poor future wife). nowadays, with these kids, everyone is "my love" and "my dear" and my darling" used in chatlines between opposite genders (as against between women where 'darling' clearly has a different meaning). when i sought to understand what they were feeling towards the girl when using those words, i was made to understand that it "doesn't mean anything". really?! i swear i AM old. yesterday i was chatting with a youngster who said to me "a friend is coming to stay over at my house because she's got something to do early tomorrow. she's not just coming to be an inconvenience to me and my parents". firstly, there seems to be something gramatically wrong with that sentence and don't get me started on how grammar died in 1979; but secondly i had to ask if it means that people who come to sleep over at your invitation without anything to do the next day were an inconvenience...to which the answer was yes. naturally the next question was: "what does inconvenience mean in this context?". [silence]. i have a feeling she was trying to look up the meaning of 'context' on google search. the conversation died a natural death at this point.

to put the final nail in the coffin, spelling and grammar. if my ghanian teachers could see the future they would have saved me a lot of stress with the stupid spelling and essay classes in nursery and primary school. i mean really. so some youngster puts up the following Blackberry (BB, to all you fellow oldies) status on sunday evening: "some few hours more to continue the hussle" (i swear i copied that literally). i almost burst a vein. i spent ten minutes saying to myself, dude ignore, dude ignore, dude ignore but my ghanian-taught past wouldn't allow me and i had to ping the person and say "hi, theres no such thing as 'some few hours' and the correct spelling is 'hustle'". i mean, i'm all for slangs but do let it add up at the very least. damnit! and so he pings back and says 'thanks boss' and then proceeds to change his BB status. it now read: "some few hour to continue the hustle". [10-second blank stare] ...and i bet that someone reading this still doesn't understand whats wrong with that last quote. o well. i. give. up. on generation Z.

so for the records and to avoid being confused with this 'top notch' generation, i wish to be known and referred to as "Papa O" going forward and will not post any comments that do not refer to me as such. :) its a good thing to admit when time has indeed passed you by. yeah, that applies to you too, botox and all. see y'all around peeps (and thats the last remnant of young blood speaking).

P.S: thanks to Ginger and everyone who's reminded me why i can't be anything but a blogger.