Developing Child In The 21st Century

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How to Cope with Being Unextraordinary
When given this assignment, we were told to pick something we are an expert on or can do better than anyone else...and I began thinking of ideas. I sing in choir, I like to organize, and I make pretty good brownies, but after a while of rattling off ideas, I came to a realization: I 'm not extraordinary. There isn 't anything I do better than other people or something I write about without feeling like a fraud. This is how I decided to write about how to cope with being unextraordinary.
As a college student, I am stuck in between two generations with different views on being special. Generation X was told that they were run of the mill and that it was hard work that separated them from the pack. There were no participation trophies just winners and losers. With generation Z, every child is a special little snowflake that needs to be handled carefully or they 'll melt. Current College students get an odd mix of both treatments which I like to summarize as you 're special but you 're not special. There are two main …show more content…

According to Sandra Smidt, author of Developing Child in the 21st Century, the first reason is that parents of college students told their child they could do anything they set their mind to and this type of parenting has its pros and cons. It builds confidence when the child is younger, but when they get older, they feel like they aren 't living up to their potential and this can cause existential crises about whether what their doing with their life has any meaning. While the midlife crisis has been around for decades, there is a phenomenon increasing with Generation Y called the quarter life crisis. The author of The Quarter Life Crisis Break Through, Adam Smiley Powolsky, says that it is a combination of the stresses of college, both academically and financially, the competitiveness of the job market, and a constant fear that we aren 't doing something meaningful with our lives that makes up a quarter life

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