On Monday evening I got off the ice from hockey practice at the Alfond Forum and slid out of my hockey gear as if it were a one piece suit. “You have a hot date or something?” One of my teammates joked with me. “No, even better! Going to get some extra credit for one of my classes.” I quickly drove up to the Portland Campus, careful to not accrue my second speeding ticket this month. When I arrived on campus there were signs everywhere pointing towards the Center for Global Humanities. “This must be a huge event” I thought to myself. I followed a small crowd of people into the lecture hall and slid into a seat towards the back of the room. I did not know anyone else there, and I was surprised to see that a large portion of the crowd was actually made up of adults and even several elderly aged people. I guess the controversial title of the event drew out many people who were looking to either dispel Bauerlein’s notion or came out to support him. Before Bauerlein said his first I was already in disagreement with him over the fact that todays young adults and are “The Dumbest Generation”, but I tried to keep an open mind. It became very obvious within the first few moments that Bauerlein was using this event as a platform to sell his new book “The Dumbest Generation”. He stood at the front of the lecture hall waving around a copy as if attempting to hypnotize the crowd into logging onto their amazon mobile accounts before all the copies sold out. Bauerlein proceeded with his talk and it quickly became a rant. One of his biggest talking points was the relationship my generation has with technology. Although he did have a point about how technology has potentially decreased the amount of face to face interaction we have with each other… He claimed this was a result of our lack of social skills and inability to connect with others. Initially I disagreed with this because the time we spend on our phones or using technology is not a result of our lack of social skills, rather the other way around. He vehemently claimed that my generation was always up to no good while on our phones or laptops. Which is in fact, utterly false. I am able to use my phone for seemingly endless tasks, and as a busy university student, a significant amount of the  time I am on my phone I am working on something regarding my education. The technology of today’s world is nothing short of a a miracle, that being said, our relationship with technology is still a work in progress. I believe Bauerlein to be in his claim that today’s young adult lack the social skills of previous generations. We have been thrust into this era of magnificient technological growth and we are learning how to incorporate it into our day to day lives as well as maintain personal face to face social skills. This is a great challenge that I believe “The Dumbest Generation” is doing a good job of.

collreadwrit1b