I couldn’t even imagine

                                                                              

hiring 99 out of 100! 

As you may know, I taught college (business, psychology, career development, creative writing) for many years, full time at Ocean County Coillege, parttime at Pace University and Georgian Court College and with the US Army Columbia College Extension Program.  At present, I’m loosely attached to the corporate training program of a small community college. 

     So, let’s say I have some sense of what college life is all about. 

     Or did!  Today that little piece of enlightened experience was smashed to smithereens.  Well, okay, it was severely dented; I’ve just been waiting a while to find someplace where I could sneek in that smithereens expression; it’s such a cool phrase. 

     Anyway, today I had occasion to be (what I felt like was) the oldest living human being in the middle of one of America’s largest and most populated university campuses. 

     My educated, experienced, objective observations?  99 out of 100 college students are just big high school students, and that’s a gracious understatement. 

     Walking through noontime clouds of cigarette and marijuana smoke, I thought I was thrown back into a time tunnel visiting San Francisco academic institutions in the early 70’s.  Aw, c’mon, Hal, there’s no more drugs and smoking on America’s campuses.  Right.   

     Overhearing how wonderful Obama’s decision was to consider adopting a puppy (nothing about the rest of his press conference, or unanswered questions about taxes, forthcoming Cabinet composition, exchanges with President Bush and all the former living Presidents, a peculiar side comment about Nancy Reagan, etc.), I was reminded of the lectures I used to give on selective perception, or, essentially, hearing only what one wants to hear. 

     At least a dozen students slept soundly (or were perhaps unconscious?) on benches and couches as thousands rushed past them to packed café tables brimming with pizza and beer pitcher lunches (Aw, c’mon, Hal, there’s no more drinking on America’s campuses.  Right.) . . . and more smoke. 

     Oh, and I was very nearly blinded by glittery body jewelry (counting, of course, only what was above, between, or creeping out of clothing, or those marvelous little glistening moments of illumination bursting forth from various tongues whenever the sun hit conversing, gasping, laughing, or drooling mouths at the right angle) . . . enough gold, silver, platinum, brass, bronze, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, to fill a flaming footlocker. 

     Now, I don’t much care how weird a lot of people choose to look; I’ve been there myself; but the pervasiveness of immature attitudes and behaviors that seem to be driven by unorthodox clothes (or lack of), makeup, jewelry, hairstyles and colors left me wondering about the challenge of corporate recruitment efforts, and the slim pickin’s American management has today in the business world. 

     I acknowledge this may not be the case when it comes to filling those beyond-IT-related positions, where wild and wooly and bizarre personalities seem to thrive. 

     So the new corporate America management teams need first and foremost to be surrogate parents, yes?  Go ahead, tell me what you think.  Tell me I’m wrong.  I hope I am.  I couldn’t even imagine hiring 99 out of 100 of the thousands I passed today. 

     That’s a sad commentary on parenting, on educational discipline, and on the take-everything-for-granted lifestyles that permeate today’s young people, descendents of the yuppies!  The times they are a changin’, sang Bob Dylan . . .  Halalpiar         

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