The most influential thing I remember growing up as a teenaged "X" was when I was fourteen my father who had worked his entire life, to provide for his family and had finally positioned himself to purchase his own business fell over dead instantly from heart disease. The second most influential things which hit me was during my senior year of high school, I learned while doing research for a history class that some of the things which I had always accepted as 'fact' when explored more in-depth, were false...or at least 'spins'.

I approached college very cynical, unfortunately did not have any clue how to seperate myself from the sense that one took care of their own problems and had no concept of reaching out for 'help', so ended up in a downward spiral of alcoholism and drug abuse...then again, holding on to the 'lessons' learned or just stubborness, stayed in a bad marriage a decade too long.

The emotive response of anger, individuality, and not trusting what I was told...mated with the dichotomy of also wanting to provide for my family to the level of personal sacrifice led to a very jaded, underemployed, sarcastic individual still wondering where my 'place' is.

On the other hand, I also have learned to ask for help from others, have begrudgingly learned how to either trust or at least approach trust. I have had to learn communication, openness, honesty with those that I have close relationships with, few as they are...and I still make fun of society, culture, politics, religion and the illusions I feel are fed us from previous paradigms which hold little 'truth' anymore, if they ever did intially.

At this point, I would rather die living sincerely, with integrity, honestly to myself thqan to conform to any ideals others might hold for me...I have almost come full circle to the individual I had been twenty years ago yet with a more developed sense of responsibility. Unfortunately, that sense of responsibility has been more critical in causing problems for myself than not.

Ahhh...but the question was in regards to how have the international events, not the personal events shaped my life and perspectives...they have been met with the rebeliousness, distrust and sense that those in 'power' are more concerned with maintaining the status quo than the betterment of the people surrounding them. Living in a country with inadequate healthcare, education, centralized industries running agriculture, placing the importance of consumption over citizenry...the tearing away at the local and regional in favor of 'bigger, better'...the list goes on and it not only appears bleak but feels rather cold.

"And, finally, there was the Monica Lewinsky scandal, culminating in President Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998."

Hmpf.

9/11 had a tremendous impact on me and I was born in 1974. Even at my age it affected my outlook and purpose.

Other events:

1. The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

2. The Boomer emergence as the country's political leadership (Clinton and Bush being prime examples)

3. The Boomer use of 'cool' and 'rebellion' as marketing tools to sell consumer goods to GenX and younger.

4. AOL/Compuserve and yes - the Internet. GenX is the Internet generation. It's we who are the heads of Google and Yahoo!

5. The rapidly expanding nichified media marketplace.

6. A PC or Mac in every home.

Your attribution of some of these things to GenY shows a form of popular bias.

-Without a doubt the birth of MTV. Can't all Xers in the US remember exactly what they were doing when "Video Killed the Radio Star" came on for the first time? (I would also imagine non-US Xers can remember when MTV came to their countries too.)

-While technology was in its infancy stage, I bet most Xers can also remember exactly when they got their first Sony Walkman. (I even remember trading mine for a Soviet soldier's uniform while on a school trip to USSR.) (Would anyone have ever thought that those spongy-orange headphones would be the start of music on the go or as my Gen Y son calls it "on demand"?!)

-You have definitely hit on something about Xers with the divorce rate, women going to work, latch-key kids, etc. All Xers definitely saw divorce and unemployment all around us. With other global epidemics like AIDS becoming so prevalent and in the media all the time (which was new- CNN certainly wasn't around for our parents), I completely agree that these were major contributions to our character.

-While the Boomers protested publicly about Vietnam and talked about their distrust of the government with their families, we poor Xers just sat there alone watching MTV and with our Walkmans worrying about things with no family dinner table to discuss events or parents around to help calm our fears.

-Because of the lack of parental involvement, this made us Xers 1.) Learn how to do things independently & know that the only way anything will get done is if we do them ourselves 2.) Lean on friends more than family (hence the beginning or the tribal tendency), 3.) Depend heavily on media for our information and 4.) Has made us the "helicopter parents" that are shaping the next generation!

-One thing we did have that generations before us didn't were malls. Malls gave us a place to hang-out (with our friends of course, not family), become major consumers since our social activities were directly associated with retail and put a much greater emphasis on our appearance. (I'd love to tie-in big hair and shoulder pads somewhere because they were pretty unusual traits of our generation, so I guess they could fit in here.)

-Not to keep bringing-up music related parts of our formidable years, but we too had our "causes" that brought light to world issues- like Band Aid, Live Aid, Farm Aid, Hands Across America, etc. These gave birth to new Goodwill Ambassadors like Bono, Madonna and Sting (oddly enough all part of the MTV “founding fathers”). I could be wrong, but what changed with the Xers is that we were now looking at world issues in a much different light. I don't know that other generations ever cared about what went on with famine in Africa, Apartheid or how people actually lived in communist countries. Our parents (and especially our grand parents) were so US-centric that the notion of global meant nothing to them.

Thank you for another thought-provoking piece.

My adolescent years were spent not only watching my parent's marriage dissolve but my mother's transformation from housewife (she completed one year of college before getting married and stopped working after starting a family) to working professional. It was an emotional roller coaster at the time, but in retrospect, the best thing that could have happened for both her and her children. My mother is "younger in spirit" now than she ever was when I was a child.

What shaped my development most was the cultural atmosphere of the mid-80s to early 90s (the "pre-dawn" to the internet years as I like to call it...). This was an amazing time to be young and involved in arts and culture - We had the social-values wars of NEA funding "What is ART? What ART is considered appropriate in the eyes of the government and society?" The emergence of a strong DIY culture as seen by independent record labels, fanzines, artist collaboratives, college radio... And let's not forget the huge shift that was taking place within the urban community as rap music and issues of opportunity and access were being presented and debated in a new, and, as some perceived, controversial way.

These explorations of attitudes and beliefs weren't always covered in the mainstream press (unless you were Mapplethorpe or the PMRC - in which case, what the cultural community was doing was portrayed as "bad," "perverted," or "frightening") but when you look at the collective body of work done by folks like Spike Lee with "Do the Right Thing," social activists-rap artists like Public Enemy and NWA, the thousands of folks around the country who self-published newspapers, magazines, and fanzines through an independent network (all without email or websites - and I am proud to have been one of them), and those who supported such efforts through their purchases, donations, and volunteerism - it is truly amazing what we accomplished.

Some creatives launched very successful careers from these roots, but for many, the phrase, "I'm the best thing that never happened." would be most appropriate. However, I don't think anyone who was involved in the arts community at that time would wish their experience to be anything else. We had an opportunity to shape and savor the final days of an era which will never return.

Laura Zurowski

Wow, the potential application of this research within the Talent Acquisition and Recruiting space is beyond profound.

Unfortunately, we have little to no voices in our space paying attention to psychology and pyschographics; rather, the focus is overwhelmingly on Source-of-Hire (i.e. the "Where").

The ultimate panacea for any great marketer or salesperson is the "Why", not purely the "Where" . . . but this premise is not sticking in the Talent Acquisition world.

If anyone would like to discuss, and/or collaborate on any research regarding the Why in Talent Acquisition (i.e. moving outside of solely Source-of-hire), please contact me.

Joshua Letourneau
Mg Director, Strategic Talent Sourcing Framework
LG & Assoc Search / Talent Strategy
BLOG: www.lgexec.typepad.com

I am a "haven't figured out what I am" (1964). The Challenger disaster probably had the largest single-event impact on my core beliefs. It was the first major US screwup (of which I was aware) and it decimated my confidence in my country. Prior to then, I believed that the US would not allow harm to come to its own people, the US did top quality work, scientists were seeking the truth, and the list goes on. At some point that disillusionment spread to corporate America. Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed. Yet I still believe that I may give nothing less than my best to my employer and country. The change then, was that I learned to expect nothing in return.

As to the good things that happened during the 80s, I also remember the Berlin Wall coming down and rejoicing that the chances of global war were greatly diminished... huh.

In spite of that really depressing account, I am happy, as are many of my peers who find their identity not in what they do but in who they are.

“Who Am I?”
If I was to pick one defining moment it was when I was inducted as a young teen into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Before mainstream computers, before mobiles before the Internet … we came together face to face around a table, with our feast of candy, chippies and coke. As the Dungeon Master spoke reality was suspended, we became spellbound, living vicariously through our characters (Fighter, Mage, Thief, Dwarf, Human, Elf).

The creativity and innovation generated at one session could very possibly, in my humble opinion, power a corporate board with Big Think Strategies for a year!

I feel blessed that I had that opportunity to incubate in such a safe and supportive environment (Ok so I died occasionally fighting an orc or a goblin). It was the combination of friendship, social/physical/mental presence, a unified goal, team work, storytelling, fun …. And maybe the sugar rush that makes it a defining moment and what in my mind separates me from the Boomers and Gen Y.

One you don't have on your list that was important to me, as a young *American* woman, was the Clarence Thomas confirmation. A woman privately wrote the confirmation committee that the judge they were evaluating had sexually harassed her. This man had been the head of the EEOC and should have been beyond reproach on this issue.

They--all men--ignored the content of her letter until it was leaked to the press. After being forced to address the letter publicly, they turned around and dismissed her anyway and confirmed Thomas. This was big news in the day. Remember "They just don't get it"?

I have no idea what GenX men learned from this, but I learned that authority figures are profoundly hypocritical, blithely give lip service to quell complaints, but will ultimately always back a man above a woman. I take a small pleasure that those same (many Democratic) men are now railing against the conservative slant of the Supreme Court.

Shortly after that was the William Kennedy Smith Jr rape trial, right? Then Nicole Brown's murder a few years later? Yeah, the early 90's were not a good time for women. Best to keep your head down, work hard, not make waves related to gender issues.

I'm not sure this has changed, but the feelings about it has. Because older women do not talk openly about these issues, young women can enter the workforce unaware of their surroundings. Hopefully, they don't have to discover them the way others of us have. Good for them, I say.

I was born in 1969, for those of us too lazy to do the math, that puts me in high school from 83-87, and 39 today. Looking back, what I remember the most from that time is the threat of the Cold War and the exploding AIDS epedemic.

I was convinced that nuclear holocaust could happen, and did not believe our leaders could protect us. The Iron Curtain came down and it turned out that Russia wasn't that big a threat after all, sounds a little like "weapons of mass destruction" to me. There's a constant internal tension for me that it could all go at any moment, that fully exists in my psyche today. I'm fascinated by post-apocolyptic novels.

First coined the gay plague or the gay cancer, I could never get on board with the initial message that AIDS was a punishment for lifestyle choice. I remember reading And The Band Played On and crying. My initial career goal (when I went back to college in the early 90s) was to become a hospice psychologist working with AIDS patients. Back then, gay was just coming out of the closet. AIDS put the issue front and center in the 80s. My parents instilled a couple of mixed messages for me: "boys only want one thing", coupled with "sex is healthy and fun for consenting adults". Once we all began to understand that AIDS happened to everyone, it was too late. Many who had thought their heterosexuality protected them from risk were proven wrong. Our intolerance of homosexuals cost too many lives. The move from a gay plague to AIDS to HIV took the decade and entirely too long. It instilled tolerance in my generation and the slight resentment that sex would never be healthy and fun between consenting adults without a condom. We girls still had to be the ones to protect ourselves from sex.

Of course, then came the Internet, and those of us who recognized the wave for what it was jumped on. Y2K was the new apocolypse. This Gen X-er got married, moved into IT because that's where the money was, had kids, survived the dot.com bust by going to work for a major corporation six months before it happened, bought a farm, and currently dream of going off the grid. I never thought I'd make more than $100K a year. I never thought past 2000 and my 31st birthday. I have more than I ever dreamed and still I am haunted by that vulnerability: it could go at any moment.