Harvard Business Publishing

Does anyone remember the Hippies? Possibly more socially / politically focused, but on the same kind of journey: away from what they believed to be 'conformity', but ultimately to an alternate conformity. Army surplus jacket with painted on psychedelic badging. Right On!

Allan, great observation. It is ironic that many of these Gen Y'ers and Millenials are the children of the Hippie generation. Life Father/Like Son, Like Mother/Like Daughter.

The biggest contrast to today's Gen Y is that many of them are either still living at home, have returned home or are still being financially nurtured by their parents. The Hippies were more apt to live without rather than suck money from their parents. I find today's Gen Y'rs to be more lazy and lack motivation. Between my husband and I, we have 4 of them!

I guess I group in to the Gen Y catagory, and yes some of us are already reading HBR.

I definitely see some common threads that I can relate to. I have often showed up in places in healthcare that I probably shouldn't have been, but don't worry nothing dangerous to patients. I have set meetings with VP's, directors, I even send a proposal to the President of my school last month about him being my mentor and have a meeting with him in a couple weeks.

It is very true Gen Y's are not sure what they want for the most part. There is a general feeling of wanting to do something, I think that this should be taken advantage of, for some slight compensation or opporunity for them you can have something you have not had time to work on completed. In exchange for things that aren't taught in school, learned online, or found any other way than participating executives, directors, and managers have a lot to offer. Forget thinking about a budget, may even agreeing to write 5 reference letter for scholarships. There are many different ways without coming up with a new budget that Gen Y's can move forward with their 'odeyssey', while helping with the mission statement too.

How can we celebrate a generation that seems to have permanent attention deficit disorder at the expense of their parents? At some point these parents need to cut the purse strings and get these kids to fend for themselves. There isn't going to be enough Zoloft or Prozac available when all the kids crash into reality at some point in their thirties.

Every generation, left to itself, has gone through some variant of this. Most generations, of course, do not get left to themselves -- most, throughout history, end up fighting wars or something -- and even those find a way to do the odyssey after the war is over. See the Lost Generation of the 1920s; the post-WWII generation, especially in Europe; the 1960s-1970s generation in the US (including not only the hippies but also the war vets).

If we go back further into history, we find so-called primitive societies which sent their young people on walkabouts (or vision quests or whatever). The purpose was to deliberately kick the young person out of the clan or tribe, have them see the world, then come back. With luck, they would bring back with them something new or of interest from the outside world, which would benefit the tribe as a whole.

In the US, the closest we get to that is military service or college. It would be interesting to create a "walkabout" experience in modern US culture.

I think Scott said it perfectly, I would add that working hard in school and getting a real job is also experience that can be an adventure. Maybe we need mandatory military service in the US after all.