OMG What ?!

As a student, I almost always felt estranged from my teachers. They were old. They were usually women. And they were dorks. My teenage years were ripe with desperate attempts to create and convey my burgeoning character as loudly as I could, and it was my teachers’ job, it seemed, to stifle these squawks of self-identification. When I myself first began tutoring at the age of 22, I realized that my ability to connect to my students as people would be of great use. I wanted them to recognize as clearly and completely as possible that I was on their team. I was of their world. My role was that of a listener just as much as it was that of an instructor, and we were speaking the same language.

And then, around 2010, about five years into my tutoring career, a funny thing happened. That language began to shift. Pre-2010, when I asked a student, “Do you think you can find the area of the circle?” and their reply was, “Sure,” I knew that this meant that we were in the same boat, parsing our way through the murky waters of geometric jargon, headed towards an oasis of numerical knowledge, together. But in 2010, when a student replied by saying, “Sure,” the tone was immediately different. I could feel it. Suddenly, “Sure,” was a non-elaborative form of discourse that actually meant: “Maybe I understand, and maybe I don’t, but I don’t really care either way, and hopefully now you’ll just be quiet and leave me alone and also I kind of hate you.” How confusing! What was going on with this semantic shift? What was this new attitude that so many of my students suddenly and simultaneously acquired, as if they were a pod of humpback whales collectively learning the new song of the season?

Millennials. They had arrived. It was a youthful generation scantily separate from mine, one that had its own concerns, interests, demeanor and, yes, language. I suddenly found myself on the periphery looking in, like a voyeur starving for a peek; I was desperate to gain a glimpse of insight into how these exotic creatures lived their lives. I was fascinated. And a bit furious. I was now officially an old person, at age 27, because I had to figure out what these kids born after 1982 meant by the word “Sure”. This was just the beginning.

As the years carried forward and the common characteristics of this generation became increasingly uniform amongst my students, I began to realize what was in fact occurring. Generations are generally unique. Members of each up-and-coming group have their own set of ideals and modes of activity, and these ways of being are often conveyed through particular applications of language. I began to see that the way Millennials used “Sure” was indicative of features of their generation, and if I wasn’t paying close attention, I was bound to lose my ability to relate to my students due to the subtle differences in their manners of speech. I aimed to acknowledge these distinctions, understand their implications, become aware of how these linguistic subtleties might potentially hurt my students’ abilities to learn from me, and figure out ways to bridge these communicative gaps as a tutor by increasing metacognition amongst my students and my employees.

Really, I should have seen it coming. My sister was born in 1986, and as much of a nonconformist as she is, Millennial tropes did not elude her. I first noticed that my sister utilized language a bit differently than anyone else I knew by way of the sacred medium known as texting. A highly educated young woman, she displayed a blatant disrespect for the rules of punctuation when engaging in text-message-based discourse. And yet, her grammatical insubordination was amazingly consistent. She used question marks to imply uncertainty, even when posing such a doubtful utterance as a statement. For instance, instead of writing, “I found the best café,” she would type, “I found the best café ?” And, yes, she would put a space before the question mark. Every time.

However, when she was actually composing a question, she very rarely utilized a question mark. And yet, she was incredibly generous with exclamation points, a property of punctuation that my contemporaries and I were collectively hesitant to employ at all. To us, an exclamation point almost always conveyed a sense of insincere enthusiasm, or at the very least an inappropriate level of excitement, most likely unfitting for a written statement, particularly via text. However, my sister was suddenly using three, four or five exclamation points, buttressing mundane statements such as “I am in a cab !!!!” with these absurd vertical venerations of vociferousness. And, yes, again, a space before the exclamation points was a constant.

“My sister is a lunatic,” was my obvious conclusion. But then, I started to notice other people her age were doing the same thing. Employees of mine, younger friends, people on Twitter, and even some of my high-school-aged students would text or write in this exact same manner. I assumed that a generation described by Wikipedia as being“generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies” would have an advanced sense of pragmatics and discourse. And yet, I could not deny how consistently bizarre young people’s texting, emailing and writing proved itself to be.

To many Millennials, a question mark simply implied uncertainty; an actual question could end with a period. Similarly, an insipid statement would often come with multiple exclamation points. And there was almost always a space before the final mark of punctuation. Millennials were creating a textual dialect, and I struggled to decipher whether I was witnessing the destruction of Standard American English, or the construction of a clever application of nuanced expressiveness. According to the BBC, “Dialect can declare one’s local credentials and put other locals at ease, or can confuse a non-local, or intentionally exclude an outsider. Differences in speech are often maintained in order to promote inclusion or exclusion. Not all slangs are short-lived, but might pass on across generations as marks of group identity, just as regional speech does.” (BBC)

I decided to investigate, and what I discovered was that many of the qualities that stereotypical Millennials were alleged to embody were represented by these, and other, linguistic quirks. One feature that is true of nearly all youthful members of modern generations is that they are utterly revolted by those that precede them, and they will do anything in their power to distinguish themselves from their parents and the yucky ways their elderly predecessors conduct their ridiculously antiquated existences.

I imagined Millennials thinking, “Oh, so Generation Y refused to use exclamation marks because they thought it wasn’t ‘cool’ to care about stuff? OK, then we will fully welcome them into our world, and will become a generation of (falsely) enthusiastic expressionists. Take that. Oh, baby boomers use scholastic writing mechanics when composing texts, even to the point where they hilariously sign their names at the end of a message? Alright, then we Millennials will intentionally abandon the rules of writing in casual mediums, despite our collectively record-breaking college attendance statistics. (PEW)

Question marks for a question? No, that implies that you’re “thirsty”, which is Millennial speak for “you care about something,” which is a big no-no. This is the purpose of the space before the final punctuation – it implies that even though the writer is willing to conform to the rules of written language and include punctuation, the rules don’t matter that much, because look at this silly space the writer put there on purpose. She knows how to write, but she doesn’t really care, but maybe she actually does, so whatever we think about her is both right and wrong and she wins but also it doesn’t matter to her but maybe it does but really it doesn’t but it does.

Emotional detachment seemed to be a priority for this new generation of learners. Raised in a post-cool society, one in which their dorky parents used ‘cutting edge slang terms’ like ‘lol’ comfortably, my students set off on a journey to establish themselves as being generally ‘over it’. Without realizing what they were doing, Millennials began to employ irony and snark as their unique means of linguistic defense. It was not only a declaration of distinction, but it was apparently a universal attempt at achieving a collective sense of safety. Through applications of language, this generation often made jokes with no intention of anyone getting them, and used such tools of self-indulgence as a means of identity-construction, empowerment and self-aggrandizement.

The world in which nerds were beaten up by jocks and everyone wanted to be a cool dude is obsolete. This paradigm has been replaced by an atmosphere in which the richest person in America is a tech geek, the most popular athlete is a shrimpy basketball player named Steph, and a desire to be cool is automatically not cool. Texting your friend, “How was your vacation?” is a bit too much of an emotional commitment because of that question mark. “How was your vacation” is much safer, and this is no small deal. Without such a carefully constructed bit of linguistic safety, kids are aware that they have a visible opportunity to be let down. They might not receive a swift response to the text. Their Facebook post might not get any Likes. Their follower count on Twitter might not reflect their preferred social standing. It’s a generation of plan-cancelling, Tinder-swiping, immediate-satisfaction-craving, dopamine-hit-addicted, false-sense-of-satisfaction-having sadness, and it all comes out in the word “Sure.” They’re too scared to care as much as their parents do, but they can’t let the world know that they’re putting on airs, so their contrived sense of apathy has to be subtle - as subtle as a conspicuously missing question mark, or perhaps a superfluous space before a period or exclamation point.

The 1990s saw great upswings in upsetting trends such as teen suicide, mental illness and school shootings. This decade was swiftly followed up by 9/11, and the feelings of fear and dread that swept the nation after 2001 seemed to be reacted to by young Millennials’ insistence on doing whatever they could to feel safe. Similarly, according to Wikipedia, “The Great Recession has had a major impact on this generation because it has caused historically high levels of unemployment among young people, and has led to speculation about possible long-term economic and social damage to this generation.”

The best way to not be worried about suicide? Normalize it. Depression? Learning disabilities? Terrorism? Unemployment? All of these genuine monsters that dwelled quietly beneath the bed of baby boomers could be quelled by a young person shining a light under the bed and exposing the monster through an over-abundance of verbal recognition. Millennials began to cater to their fears by overcompensating, and relying on extreme forms of language as a way to feel safe.

The real fears of a society usually reside in the subtleties of our communal ways of being. What many Millennials started to do was find ways to linguistically sidestep these subtleties, and one of these ways was through verbal hyperbole. Millennials don’t just like something; they are ‘obsessed’ with it. Doing something bad isn’t bad, it’s ‘an epic fail’. If something is curious or abnormal, it is referred to as being ‘not a thing’. If something is pleasant or enjoyable, it can be described as being ‘everything’. If something is funny, a Millennial isn’t laughing at it, they are ‘literally dying’ of laughter. In 2013 it got to the point that dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and Cambridge added a new official definition to the word ‘literally’ to accommodate Millennials’ ironic application of the term: “Used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible.” (CNN) The word ‘literally’ literally has no meaning.

By removing nuance, a sense of safety could be established, and this desperate attempt at simplifying language was an extension of Millennials’ attempt to protect themselves from the fast-changing and frightening world around them. If a person of my generation felt an extreme emotional reaction towards something they might say, “I can’t believe it!” or “I can’t deal with this!” Millennials prefer to respond to such an occurrence by simplifying their syntax, and stating, “I can’t.” Is it positive? Is it negative? Who knows. Sorry, I mean, who knows? The ambiguity once again acts as a linguistic forcefield, protecting the Millennial speaker from exposing a firm opinion.

Using emotional indifference as a shield is not an original tool for attempting to achieve safety, but Millennials have taken it to a new level. When I was a kid, if I expressed a sense of sadness, depression or isolation I was sure to end up in front of a therapist, perhaps on the way to being diagnosed with an emotional or anxiety disorder. Millennials seem to prefer to skip those steps and declare themselves to be as miserable as possible, because if they decide to self-diagnose, then they once again have gained control, which is just another attempt at achieving a sense of safety. And yet, these declarations of massive displeasure contradict data. “Some 41% of Millennials say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, compared with just 26% of those ages 30 and older. Whatever toll a recession, a housing crisis, a financial meltdown and a pair of wars may have taken on the national psyche in the past few years, it appears to have hit the old harder than the young.” (PEW2)

Hyperbolic emotional despair takes shape in my tutoring sessions when my Millennial students declare, “I’m so confused.” It’s a chorus of their generation, one that I once again needed some time to wrap my head around. Confessions of confusion, particularly that of students, is obviously not a novel notion. However, I found my students conveying this concept nearly ritualistically as I got older, and I began to realize that being “so confused” simply meant that total comprehension was not being achieved immediately. Children raised on wireless, high-speed Internet, members of the Millennial generation were not accustomed to self-imposed patience. If an image on their computer took longer than a moment to load, well then the computer must be broken. If their cell phone signal was weak while trying to send a text from underground on the subway, it was “annoying af”. No WiFi on the airplane?! Intolerable. So these kids, when presented with a moment of mental mystification, declared that they were officially “So confused.” No middle ground. No subtlety. No nuance.

This was all a bit perplexing for me to discover as a person straddling these two generations, X and Millennial, and yet as an educator I realized it was vital to do whatever I could to bridge this gap. I saw the walls that my students were putting up, and recognized that many of them were unaware how they were using language to distance themselves from adults, and simultaneously seclude themselves from vulnerability and uncertainty. Adults were authority figures, authority figures were often the ones who determined whether or not young Millennials were successful, and failing to achieve success was terrifying. Language was a way to assuage these fears, yet it also stifled many of my students’ interest in trying. And trying is the oxygen of learning.

A trend that I noticed amongst these learners was that many of them would rather forego an attempt at understanding something new in lieu of being bad at it. This, of course, was a dangerous precedent for them to set, and one that was potentially even more perilous for educators to either be unaware of or ignore. Millennials’ verbal coding put a chasm between themselves and their ability to grow, as well as between themselves and the adults who might be attempting to guide them towards such growth. “A child’s dialect may interfere with the acquisition of information and with various educational skills such as reading. If an educator underestimates a student’s ability because of dialect differences, the student will do less well in school, perhaps as a direct result of the negative expectations. In some cases, students are tracked with lower achievers or even placed in special education classes because of their vernacular speech patterns.” (VD)

A similar trend emerged on social media when selfies became the visual representation of choice for Millennial identity sharing. Members of this generation obviously did not invent the idea of turning the camera around and making oneself both the capturer and captured of a photograph, however they did add a new twist to self-portraits. Millennials, aware of the narcissism involved in taking and posting a selfie, once again undermined their own feelings of enthusiasm and attempted to minimize the amount of importance reflected in such an act by intentionally making an “ugly” face in photos. Taking and posting a good-looking selfie might be viewed as “caring”, but if Millennials scrunched up their faces or stuck out their tongues then all of a sudden it was all just a joke. This minimized the possibility of Millennials being viewed as caring what a viewer thinks of the picture, which of course Millennials do care about, for if they didn’t, why go through all the effort to appear like they don’t care in the first place? Minimizing one’s enthusiasm is viewed as a method for maximizing one’s aloofness, a quality highly coveted by Millennials. This notion translates to academia in many forms.

As children who were raised during the Age of Information, Millennials seem to view the statement “I don’t know” as more threatening than those who came before them. Pre-Millennials would often engage in conversations, disagreements or discussions without achieving a definitive conclusion, and that was acceptable. I wonder how much money James Earl Jones is worth? What do people in Russia call tacos? When was clapping invented? People of my generation could discuss these topics all we wanted, but the answers were likely to never be revealed, only pontificated. Millennials do not share this comfort of conjecture, this magic of mystery or the gratification of guesswork. They had the ability to “know” nearly everything, making the phrase “I don’t know” far more sinister. So, “I don’t know” evolved into “Sure”. Which, of course, is the exact opposite of what it implies. Complicated.

One of the most important questions a teacher can ask a student is, “What do you mean by that?” This question not only allows the educator to further understand a comment made by a student, but also forces the student to further elaborate on their initial comment for their own edification. Students react emotionally in academic settings more often than they realize, and these emotions are frequently conveyed through subtle verbal implications. When a student is asked, “Do you feel comfortable with the vocabulary from the passage you read?” and the response is the subtly sarcastic, “Sure,” the fact that there is a somewhat secretive sense of, “No, I am not comfortable with the vocabulary, and I am too embarrassed to admit it and furthermore I don’t even want you to try to explain it to me,” is often something the student is not aware of. This is why “What do you mean by that?” can be helpful. Students should be able to ascertain an understanding of their emotion in the moment, and teachers ought to do everything in their power to accentuate the benefits of being comfortable with not knowing. Until both sides of this conversation are speaking the same language, academic growth will be stifled and the durability of a lesson will be decimated.

Similarly, the question of “Why do you think you feel that way?” can be employed in academic settings as well. If a student can’t recognize that their own fears are getting in the way of their ability to (try to) learn, then the battle of overcoming those invisible fears is that much more arduous. If a student can confess, “Lol, I’m over-exaggerating my momentary feelings of dread because it makes them seem less frightening” then a level of honesty will be achieved between the student and teacher that can be built upon for further academic growth. If a false confession of hyperbolic sadness is conveyed, it masks the true nuanced feeling of fear that commonly dwells within young learners. That true fear needs to be recognized, articulated and shared in order for it to be quelled. Once the fear is exposed, then the learning can actually begin. A fake “Sure,” is clearly more detrimental to the learning process than a true “No, I don’t understand.” Honest emotional reactions need to be advocated in academic settings, and this is often counterintuitive to both Millennials and their less youthful teachers alike.

Even as a student myself, I always viewed communication as the centerpiece of education. I recognized early in my tutoring career that the exchange of ideas that were key to my practice relied on my ability to successfully relay the ideas I had in my head into the mind of the student seated beside me. What good were the strategies and concepts I knew would be useful to my students if I were incapable of effectively conveying them? However, the onus wasn’t only on me to explain clearly, I also had to listen carefully, for the secrets of how my students learned could often be found in how they spoke.