As law professor, most of my students are Millennials. What does that mean?  Well, Neil Howe and William Strauss, in their book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, published in 1991, defined Millennials as those born between 1982 and 2004. I'll go with that.  As one who is firmly part of Generation X (the age group and not the band, though that would be cool), I'm curious. It seems that some people think so.  I don't think Gen Xers think of themselves as such very often. 

What made me think of this?  A political ad from NextGen Climate, funded by hedge fund billionaire/environmental activist Tom Steyer, apparently seeks to generate more support for Hillary Clinton by targeting Gary Johnson. The ad is below.  The ad begins: "Thinking about voting for Gary Johnson? In case you missed it, climate change will cost millennials over $8 billion if no one does anything about it."

 That's just weird to me.  I know it's trying to motivate that age group of voters, but I am not sure many Millennials would think of themselves as such.  That is — does it resonate at all to have this ad targeted at them in that way? 

I guess age-group labels like this are thrown around a lot, and I just forgot.  The ABA has a mentoring article from 2004 called Generation X and The Millennials: What You Need to Know About Mentoring the New Generations.  It's for "Boomers" who have to deal with us Gen Xers and Millennials. The piece makes some pretty bold assertions (some of which certainly aren't true twelve years later). For example:

All Millennials have one thing in common: They are new to the professional workplace. Therefore, they are definitely in need of mentoring, no matter how smart and confident they are. And they'll respond well to the personal attention. Because they appreciate structure and stability, mentoring Millennials should be more formal, with set meetings and a more authoritative attitude on the mentor's part.  

Perhaps most of that is right.  There is some value here, even though my experience is that formal mentoring is not always well received. Then again, maybe that's my bias. After all, "members of Generation X dislike authority and rigid work requirements. An effective mentoring relationship with them must be as hands-off as possible. . . .Gen Xers work best when they're given the desired outcome and then turned loose to figure out how to achieve it." I don't know about the first part, but last two sentences are definitely me.  

So, while I find the description of Millennials a little overbearing, as I think about it, it explains a lot. I think a lot of us from the Gen X world can't understand why we can't tell students what we want and have them come back with a solution.  That's what WE do, not necessarily what they do (unless we make it clear that's what we want).  

I don't like broad generalizations of groups, but I have to admit that the 2004 article's suggestions for working with Millennials is actually consistent with a lot of what I have been doing (and working toward). I just never thought of it as trying to reach Millennials.  I thought of it as trying to reach students.  Turns out, in most cases, that's the same thing.  

I remain skeptical of the likely efficacy of the ad, but maybe there's more here than I originally thought.  Still, I'm not sure an anti-Gary Johnson ad gets anyone very far right about now.