The difference between our collective generation and your generation (differentiating the reporters from the students) is that we poured our souls out on paper that got easily yellowed and lost. The danger is that many of your friends (nodding at the students) are putting intimate ideas in cyberspace journals. So when today's 15-year-old is 40, some friend is going to drag out all of that idiotic stuff at their class reunion.
My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.
As each generation comes up that doesn't have the habits for paper it's just easier and cheaper to get your stuff online. You know, people go to what they're used to. Certainly our generation, you know, we'll always want to have a magazine in our hands. We like that, but millennials didn't see the value in that necessarily.
Increasing postsecondary enrollment and success, particularly among first-generation, low-income, and minority students, is good for students and our state's economy.
If you look at the first generation of wireless, it really lasted about 15 years before we went to the second generation. When we implemented the fourth generation, which allowed us to do all the smartphones and the videos, the time between that and going to the fifth generation is going to be four years.
Even in challenging economic times, making sure that study abroad is part of our college students' education is a vital investment. If we want a new generation of leaders and innovators who can be effective in an ever more globalized world, sending our students overseas is not a luxury. It's a necessity.
Arriving to class late is disruptive of the learning process. I think that it is disrespectful to both the instructor and the students. I generally find a problem with students being tardy to my 9:10 a.m. class, in which students would come in thirty minutes late to this fifty minute class. I started locking my door at 9:15 second semester.
I don't know why there's not more activism today. I do think that your generation is twenty times smarter than our generation ever was, but the problem with being smart like you guys is that it can lead you really easily to being cynical, and cynicism is actually a pacifying attitude.
I remember as a ranger the first time I stood alone on Inspiration Point over at Canyon Station looking out over this beautiful land. I thought to myself how lucky I was that my parents' and grandparents' generation had the vision and the determination to save it for us. Now it is our turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15 years, 40 years, 100 years from now. I want to be as faithful to my grandchildren's generation as Old Faithful has been to ours. What better way can we add a new dimension to our third century of freedom?
I got engaged, married, and divorced in 15 months in Hollywood, so, you know what I'm saying? We're out here putting rings on it! That's what our generation does, we put a ring on it, you know what I'm saying?
I have find that today's students are often more tolerant of human variance than students in earlier generations might have been. On the other hand, some of our students need much more interaction with a wide variety of peers so they level of understanding deepens and so they are prepared to live in a world that is only going to get smaller.
We do our universities a disservice when we brand them as a lost cause. There are some frightfully honest students out there, and when their questions are respectfully dealt with, many admit their vulnerability.
The experience I had all those 40 years of working on Broadway and working on television, I bring it to students and I let them kind of drain me dry but they all feel at the end of the class that they are getting so much out of it. The students grow in my classroom because they feel safe. They don't feel like they're going to be yelled at.
But here's what I would tell people of my generation. I turn 40 this year. There isn't going to be a Social Security. There isn't going to be a Medicare when you retire. Forget about what your benefit is going to look like. There isn't going to be one if we don't make some reforms to save that program now.
When you're first-generation money, you want to say, "I got a Mercedes and a Rolls and a Lamborghini. Take a look." When you're second-generation money, you're very quiet behind your country club doors. I think that's why people are much more aware. It's the first-generation wives that have the huge rings and the second-generation says, "Everyone be quiet as we get on our yacht or our private plane."
Most of my friends between 21 and 31 are at different stages of figuring out what the hell they are going to do with their lives. It's a big part of our generation. What is the next step?
My freshman year at Harrison High School, I saw a journalism class where students were putting out a weekly newspaper. It touched a responsive chord in me.