BY GLENN MCDONALD
ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES MEHSLING, U. OF NEBRASKA
Double Take
X Square
Ah, the privileged of youth.
In his new book, Managing Generation X: How To Bring Out The Best In Young Talent, Bruce Tulgan provides "useful suggestions to managers to make the most of this energetic new breed of worker."
U. Magazine: How do you envision Generation X?
Bruce Tulgan: The slacker myth is just that. It's an insult. It positions us as dropouts. But there's a new myth — the loner entrepreneur. It's absolutely true that this generation is more fiercely entrepreneurial than any in history.
U. : What do Xers want in a job?
B. T.: No one is offering us job security, so we can't believe it when managers demand we pay our dues. We're not going to do the grunt work without some kind of return.
U. : Any advice for graduating college Xers?
B. T.: Interview your interviewer. Go in with the understanding that you have as much to offer as they have.
All good advice — assuming you have plenty of money. What about the debt-ridden English grad? We'll never know. Some of the Xers Tulgan interviews in this book: a public-interest lawyer, a vice president of a major investment bank and a physician in residency.
Imploding Drastic Inevitables
WE THINK OF EVERYTHING. Not content with simply chronicling collegiate history and documenting the current campus scene, we here at U.
Magazine have now figured out a way to accurately predict the future.
You can thank us later. (And you will — we've foreseen it.)
See, last week our intern Kasey (hereafter referred to as Brilliant Young Protégé) formulated an awesomely complex planar triangulation program and fed it into our supercomputer HAL. By tracing the trajectory of cultural trends of the 1970s through the present and projecting them forward 20 years, we've been able to ascertain what life will be like in the year 2015. In our neverending quest to better the lives of you, our loyal readers, we've provided our findings below.
Projecting the path of 1970s disco through 1990s rave culture reveals that in the year 2015 dance music is really, really fast (up to 1200 bpm), while bell bottoms are still in fashion. As is John Travolta. The trend toward synthetic drugs (cocaine to speed to ecstasy) tops out with the popular designer drug $ \mathrm{H}_{2} \mathrm{O}. $ "Hydrotripping" becomes the new rage as kids from Manchester to Manhattan drink dozens of gallons of water in a night. Post-modern urinal art dominates the design scene.
In the late '70s, tabloid TV was experimenting with prototypes like Real People and That's Incredible. 1995 sees the genre in full bloom as dumb people everywhere sacrifice all dignity for the chance to Be On TV. In 2015, the networks have arranged for everyone to be televised all the time. Remote hook-ups in your home record your every move and bounce it off a satellite directly back to your own monitor. In other television news, the sitcom has been reduced to one static shot of Sinbad mugging at the camera and a continuous laugh track. Also, final statements are being prepared in the O.J. trial.
In '70s rock, men were men and women were women — Motorhead and Black Sabbath were the mean and snarly; Carole King and Linda Ronstadt were sensitive and poppy. In 1995, Eddie Vedder coos softly about hearts and thoughts fading, and it's no secret Liz Phair could kick Bono's ass. This trend continues. In 2015, women own rock and roll. Frances Bean Cobain fronts the world's biggest band, and no label has signed a male artist in four years. Rock and roll is the better for it.
Projecting current political trends: The 70s saw the tail end of meaningful student activism Presently, the central issue galvanizing students nationwide appears to be, um, campus parking. In the year 2015, students are entirely passive note-taking automatons. One lone holdout at Berkeley attempts to protest the
administration's 3,000 percent tuition hike but is shot and killed for smoking a cigarette behind the Union.
some random tidbits: The proliferation of caffeine drinks continues in 2015, coffee has been added as a fifth food group, and 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by Starbucks cafes. America's degenerate conviction that fat is evil and youth equals beauty (Farrah Fawcett to Christie Brink-
ley to Kate Moss) produces supermodel Susie "Pumpkin" Jones, a ravishing 4-year-old blonde weighing in at 12 pounds. In sports, the NBA is recruiting directly from junior high, baseball exists only in computer simulations and hockey players fight with knives.
So there it is, America — The Future! Exciting, isn't it? Emigrate now. Our Brilliant Young Protégé is currently working on projections for the year 2165, and although we haven't gleaned much, HAL has spit out two words:
Emperor Travolta.
Feel of Clay C.S. Harding, U. of Arizona
38 U. Magazine - October 1995