<p>[The</a> Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It? - Politics - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/print/2013/08/the-outsiders-how-can-millennials-change-washington-if-they-hate-it/278920/]The”>The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It? - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>It’s worth reading the entire article. I think it hits two things home:
- Volunteering, whether we like it or not, is ingrained into our generation’s soul. Whether folks did it because their parents thought it was a good thing to expose their kids to other people, other causes, and learning to give back to a community (like mine) or because they thought it would look good on a college app (okay, part of mine was for this reason too), volunteering is everywhere.
Folks sometimes ask me how I volunteer during/after college, and it’s easy: I find things that I’m passionate about and/or believe in and lend a hand. In college it was e-school tours, tutoring elementary students, and helping out in random volunteer events. Now, it’s walking 40mi for breast cancer, lending a hand in beer/wine fests, and supporting my hometown’s art non-profit. Obviously my settings changed dramatically, in addition to what was important for my time, but that service carried on.<br>
Someone, somewhere, could benefit from an extra pair of hands and a brain. Go find a passion and you’ll find that need :)</p>
<p>2) Our generation needs to change the workplace and the government. We’ve already begun, by introducing fresh minds into the workplace, grounding bosses a bit, and bringing about change in hot political issues. But it needs to go further. Many of our parents were available for us as kids, many had stay-at-home moms who could provide love and nurture. But now, we have woman (like myself) who want a career and it’s suddenly transformed everyone into working robots with 45-55+ hour weeks. What happened to the life/work balance? Why can’t we have careers and have a family without killing ourselves?<br>
As for the government, the baby boomer generation found pride in working for the government. Now, it’s seen as a job with median pay, okay benefits, median perks, and not much loyalty beyond job security. And, it seems like I now see daily social media posts about “The President needs to go!” or “Why doesn’t Congress get their pay cut?”. As someone in the private-gov’t sector, change can happen, but it needs to start with the younger folks. We need our faith restored in the gov’t to enter the gov’t sector, yet that restored faith won’t come without change from our presence. I think UVa’s community does an excellent job of teaching us to bring change to things that serve the people if they don’t serve us well anymore, so maybe some young, bright minds will enter in the gov’t sector with change on their minds…</p>