The Vanderbilt Breakfast Club

Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed. 

Thank you, John Hughes, for your timeless words. A legendary screenwriter, producer and director, and an icon of the 1980s, his word still ring true about the power of stereotypes, of “simplest terms” and “convenient definitions.” We may not read physical newspapers, we have laptops instead of PCs and David Bowie is the guy who judged the walk-off in Zoolander, but I know millenials can still relate. From the perspective of older generations, we are categorized, defined, classified, tagged. Dividing people into schema is something we all do for things that are unfamiliar – our brains would be on overload if we didn’t. But today, the Mr. Vernon’s of the world are fascinated with the idea of labeling the millennial generation - as much if not more than those fascinated with the teens of the 1980s, which was the first “me” generation. Today, I see journalists, pop culture analysts and marketing consultants constantly analyzing the power of the millenials.

I too wanted to analyze the power of the millenials, so I put on my John Hughes glasses and looked through (what would be now considered hipster) lenses. In his films, he allowed audiences to delight in and debunk stereotypes, which is exactly what I wanted to do in my blog called Bursting the Vandy Bubble, in which I would take a stereotype and break it down by interviewing someone I wouldn’t normally meet. In other words, I picked my own Breakfast Club. I have always loved digging deeper into someone’s life story, figuring out what they are all about, pulling a John Hughes on them, if you will. Like the categorized 80s high schoolers, I selected a few millenial stereotypes that are doled out at my own school, Vanderbilt University: the socialite, the student government representative, the athlete, the actor and the inner city girl. In interviewing my peers, by having a Breakfast Club kind of moment with them, I would discover that they were more than just the stereotype that had been prescribed to them the modern Mr. Vernon’s.

I could have described these individuals that I interviewed in the “simplest terms, the most convenient definitions”, but I knew that would just add to the insufficient body of evidence attempting to describe my generation. As a senior on the verge of entering the real world, I wanted to know more about these people who were coming of age with me. At Vanderbilt, the phrase “the Vandy bubble” describes the tendency to ignore life outside of our socially and somewhat physically restricted campus, but I think I put myself in somewhat of a personal Vandy bubble too by not stretching my social circles to those unlike me. Through my interviews with my selected modern day Breakfast Clubbers, I wanted to burst the bubble on my generation and my school – and as it turns out, myself.

#privateuniversity

But why, you ask, would a bubble need to be burst in the first place? Well, the Mr. Vernon’s today come in the form of fellow millenials, businesses and bloggers who all aim to one-size-fits-all-icize millenials. 

Unlike yours truly, some millenials embrace the stereotypes and build them up: blogs like Betches Love This and Bro Bible take the “mean girl” and the “asshole dude” characters to a ridiculous albeit comical level. They tread the fine line between the comical self-awareness of the characters they’ve embodied (the Head Betches who write about all things betchy and the bros who cover life, girls, sports and college) and perpetuating negative stereotypes.  

 

Perhaps some marketing schemers think that all millenials fall into these easy categories perpetuated by betches and bros; therefore marketing to these stereotypes must be as easy as coming up with a few choice adjectives to explain an entire generation. According to millennialmarketing.com, “To Engage Millennials, Be Meaningful, Quick, and Shiny!” Um, what?

 

 

 

 

(Thanks, Millenial Marketing. Maybe I’ll download your eBook; I hope it includes a chapter on glitter, sparkles and lamé. Lord knows that’s what the kids want these days.)

Howard Fineman isn’t much better at lending a sense of individualism to the millenial generation. In his commencement address to Colgate’s class of 2011, he didn’t highlight one particular stereotype, but indicates that the thing that separates us from other generations is paramount to anything else about us: technology.

“You have grown up in and with the digital world. When you were in grade school, the following things did not exist, or barely existed: iTunes, smartphones, iPads, Google, Wikipedia, Skype, eBay, Flickr, Craigslist, You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare -- in other words, your whole existence.”

Our “whole existence,” Mr. Fineman? Don’t get me wrong, I love technology as much as my fellow Vanderbilt Breakfast Clubbers, but through the people that I have met in my time at Vanderbilt, and in writing this blog, I know I have proved that we are so much more than Apple product addicts.

Andrew Sullivan recently did a piece that is the Internet cousin of my blog.  He actually lets millenials speak for themselves in a recent series called “Letters from Millenial Voters” in which students and young professionals write about the reasoning behind their political affiliation. Finally, a sense of why the millenials decided the last election: we are not just stereotyped betches or bros, attracted to shiny things, walking around with an iPhone glued to the palm of our hands. We are more than statistics or survey questions, more than SAT scores and more than the collective hours we spend on Facebook. (Without a doubt, a lot.)

I found that sense of more in each of the interviews that I conducted with the socialite, the student government representative, the athlete, the actor and the inner city girl. Every single one of them came to Vanderbilt with a different story.  As we talked and I reflected on our conversations, I could see the disintegration of the generational stereotypes that the Mr. Vernon’s, Betches, Bros, Millenial Marketers and Howard Finemans had assigned. Furthermore, I could see and hear the longstanding Vanderbilt reputation being chipped away.

People think that Vanderbilt is a school full of stuck up brats who take the opportunity to go to a prestigious school for granted. (There are absolutely people like that, but my issue is with the idea that the public thinks we’re all like that.) A reputation of an institution, while sometimes valid, is often no more than a stereotype applied to a lot of people – which is debatably worse than a stereotyping one person because you’re implicating an entire group. Even though each of them described the ways in which Vanderbilt does have a stereotype, the Vanderbilt Breakfast Club agreed that the university is slowly but surely distancing itself from the WASPy student body of yesteryear.

The diversity of the Vanderbilt Breakfast Club made a wonderful jumping off point for conversations, and our chats ranged from socializing to Darth Vader to community service. We were never without something to talk about because they all had such varied backgrounds. They hail from Orlando, FL, Geneva, OH, Atlanta, GA, Austin, TX and South Bronx, NY, and major in a variety of studies including Spanish, Religious Studies, Human and Organizational Development and Public Policy. All of them have different career aspirations, from social work to PR to entrepreneurship to international relations to simply “abundance” from our student government rep. Different schedules, different families, different political beliefs, different hobbies, different organizational pursuits, different socioeconomic backgrounds. This group was a cornucopia of talents and pursuits – and I have to think that if I had selected other students who don stereotypical label (the frat guy, the engineering nerd, the band geek, the hipster, the rock star, the good girl, the list goes on), I would have encountered just as diverse perspectives and experiences.

So in saying that “everyone” in the millenial generation is an iPhone-toting Facebook-robot, you would be wrong. To everyone who says that “every” Vanderbilt student is a bratty white kid with a credit card, you would be wrong. There were definitely parts about each interviewee that fit into the stereotype – which is why they had it in the first place. The athlete is an up and coming SEC football star, the socialite parties at frat houses and bars, the inner city girl comes from an urban neighborhood, the student government guy ran for student body president and the actor is progressing into improv comedy.  

Stereotypes do come from something true but they are oversimplified. They fall short in a number of ways, as evidenced by the bevy of individuals I have formed relationships with through this series of interviews.  The Vanderbilt Breakfast Clubbers are real people, not just cookie cutter characteristics. Like Andrew Sullivan, the media needs to give individuals the chance to tell their own story, because you can’t understand what someone is all about without the chance to hear it from their perspective. You have to spend a little time in Saturday detention before you can form a judgment about them.

(Don’t say no to cookies, just cookie cutters.)

Ok, so for all of the griping that I’ve done about being the next John Hughes (I wish), my own generation perpetuating our own stereotypes, other generations stereotyping us, and stupid marketing schemes, I have to say: there is something to be said about a generation having a common thread. It doesn’t necessarily have to be as simple as “we are the technology generation” although that is partly true. The Pew Research Center sums it up nicely:

We know we can never completely disentangle the multiple reasons that generations differ. At any given moment in time, age group differences can be the result of three overlapping processes: 1) Life cycle effects. Young people may be different from older people today, but they may well become more like them tomorrow, once they themselves age. 2) Period effects. Major events (wars; social movements; economic downturns; medical, scientific or technological breakthroughs) affect all age groups simultaneously, but the degree of impact may differ according to where people are located in the life cycle. 3) Cohort effects. Period events and trends often leave a particularly deep impression on young adults because they are still developing their core values; these imprints stay with them as they move through their life cycle.

So the technology boom, September 11, the war on terror, the economic downturn, President Obama’s election will all tie us together in some way, and all of my ramblings and musings and opinions may be linked in some way to those collective experiences. But again, I still don’t think that any one collective experience is the defining way to link us.

It’s more the awareness that my generation has of one another and the world. We have been called a “me” generation, like the kids growing up in the 1980s, but I would argue the opposite. Every single one of my Breakfast club –the socialite, the student government representative, the athlete, the actor and the inner city girl – all talked about a desire to help people and improve the communities and world around them. Despite the different ways they wanted to do that, despite their different views of the world, they all acknowledged a sense of humanity and their place in improving it. We’re not living in some la-la land though: the recognition of their place in improving the world indicates an awareness of its imperfection – and their own imperfection at that. They all talked about faults, doubts and expressed concern what the future might hold.  Yet in uncovering all of this, I proved that there is a heart and soul to the individuals of my generation, and of Vanderbilt, not to be defined by stereotypes.

The athlete is a tireless worker with two brothers. The socialite wants to work for a non-profit college admissions company. The inner city girl would do anything for her family. The actor spends his spring breaks doing community service in Latin America. The student government guy is president of the Asian American Students Club (he is decidedly white). All of these things I would have never known about them, I now see as part of who they are, not just who everyone thinks they are.

Furthermore, I realized that I see myself in all of these uncovered details that I discovered when talking to them. I am a hard working family girl who loves community service, and while I’m not president of the Asian American Student Club, I love learning about cultures that are not my own. Without hearing the firsthand stories of these “stereotypes,” I never would have found out who they are – nor found out a bit of where I fit in to this generation.

A confession: I am terrified to graduate from college. But after slowly piecing together my blog, I slowly pieced together my confidence. I now realize that individuals of my generation who are so different than me have the same awareness of the world around them. I am scared to leave Vanderbilt, but knowing that I have the ability to form opinions about people after I get to know them is heartening. I don’t feel that sense of foreboding separation as much as I once did, because I know that if I just sit down and ask someone about themselves, there will be more than likely something that connects us because we care about our peers, our community and our world.

Dear Mr. Vernons of 2012,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice our identities for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for stereotyping millenials and trying to write essays about who you think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a socialite,
and a student government rep,
and an athlete,
an actor,
and an inner city girl.

Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Vanderbilt Breakfast Club.