Millennials, as many have defined, are those who were born in the years 1981-1986. By this definition, all of my beloved children and their significant others are Millennials! This term with this meaning didn't exist back in the days of my college years during the late seventies and early eighties, but it has made a huge difference in the way that we reach out to current and prospective students at the community college. During the years that the Millennial generation was preparing to apply to and attend college, email, and then cell phones were becoming more prevalent as the means of official communication to students. When I began working at the community college back in 2000, many people still didn't use email or cell phones, and texting was quite costly, so our communications with prospective students were either in person, via landline p phone calls, or paper and US postal Service.
Today it is very unusual for someone planning to attend college to not have a smart phone and multiple email addresses. Most young people don't both much with email any longer, and rely on texting as their preferred method of receiving information. Hence, the move for colleges and universities to move to emails, and now to text messaging for much of our communications to students. And now the incoming students belong mostly to Generation X! That being said, the target audience for the community college includes people of any generation -- baby boomers on up, so we need to be flexible and use a variety of communications.
Our student body today is also much more multicultural than it was back in the seventies and eighties. The University that I attended was a church school, and attracted quite a few students from outside the United States, so I was exposed a bit more to people from different cultures than I had been in my small hometown and high school. In fact, if I remember correctly, my very first date in college was with a gentleman from the country of Peru. When I met this student at one of the orientation dances, I was excited to talk to him since my older brother was at that time serving as a missionary for our church in the country of Peru. We went to a movie together, but I declined any other dates since I was still a 17 year old freshman, and really wasn't interested in getting very involved with someone who was quite a bit older than me during my first semester/year of college. That being said, the campus was still very predominantly white and Christian. The community college where I currently work has the most diverse student population of any institution of higher learning in our state as far as race and ethnicity is concerned, and is also very diverse in regards to religion and sexual orientation, and our aim to to make sure that people from all different backgrounds feel welcomed, respected, and included at the school. This is definitely a challenge. Even though I see and work with students from many diverse backgrounds every single day, the majority of faculty and staff members are white, and faculty, staff, and students are still sometimes the recipients of prejudiced words and actions, sometimes intentional and sometimes not. This is an ongoing challenge, not only at our college, but in our country and throughout the world.
Millennial has another meaning for many of us . . . the time period of preparing for the Millennial reign on this earth of the Lord Jesus Christ. President Russell M. Nelson, prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints says it this way: "A true millennial is a man or woman whom God trusted enough to send to earth during the most compelling dispensation in the history of this world. You were taught in the spirit world to prepare you for anything and everything you would encounter during this latter part of these latter days."
Does this intrigue you like it does me? You can watch his full remarks to our wonderful millennial generation here:
I love and admire the Millennial Generation and hope we can all work together to prepare for the glorious time with our Savior Jesus Christ will return again to reign here in this currently troubled world.
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