Talkin' 'bout my generation...

The instant gratification generation. That's what I've been lumped into.

Supposedly, the recently employed members of the workforce expect for all the benefits of a career to be handed to them within the first year of employment. Forget hard work - we want to leave early, receive the same amount of vacation time as our elders and, worst of all, we want to be handed the big jobs as soon as we step foot into the office.

Shame on us. Where would we ever been given this idea?

The truth of the matter is that we are merely adjusting to an ever-changing workforce. We're required to have years of experience before we even take on an entry-level job. To gain this experience, many of us accept unpaid internships in expensive cities, futher adding to the massive debt we're incurring from rising college tuition. Adding to our misery, starting salaries are barely enough to pay our rent, let alone pay off our college debt. How can we be happy about our jobs, many of which could be completed by those with only high school diplomas, when the outlook for our future looks so bleak?

The state of employment in the United States is disheartening. When I look at my closest friends from school, none of them, including myself, were able to gain jobs in their home cities or states. Some might call it ambition, but I believe it has a lot more to do with where jobs are available. There are certain sacrifices people in my generation have had to make that might not have been there in the past.

Also, with the addition of hi-tech electronic equipment, such as BlackBerries, many in the instant gratification generation are making themselves available in ways that Baby Boomers never were in their day and age. Sure, they might have worked longer hours, but, in all reality, is it really a vacation if you're still checking your BlackBerry every five minutes?

Overall, our generation probably does expect more because the generations before us have provided us with so much. But, at the same time, we've made certain sacrifices and have prepared ourselves for a few years of hardship right out of college. Is it so wrong for us to want a better position with a little better pay simply to guarantee that we can provide a future for our own families? I think not.

Let's Get Serious...

So, with work I've been learning a great deal about something called serious gaming. I've had to learn an extensive amount about it because I'm tryingto convince reporters to write about it. Maybe I'm naive and just don't know a lot about it, but my reporter's instinct says that this is a genuinely good story idea. Seriously. And I'm not just saying that because I'm billing time to this company.

A lot of this technology is coming from a section of the United Kingdom known as the British Midlands. This area, north of London, has a wealth of people more than capable of producing and creating these seriously technical programs meant to train not only the military, but regular corporate blokes as well.

Yeah, this technology has been around for a while, but people and companies you never thought would take advantage of it are. Cold Stone Creamery had one of these gaming/virtual reality companies create a program for them that helped their employees to learn about portion control and proper customer service. When I started my first retail job, employee training consisted of being totally unprepared in front of a cash register while real-life customers were angry because of my inefficiencies. This type of technology is amazing.

On a higher level, Fakespace Systems, a U.S. company with a branch in the Midlands, uses virtual reality and serious games to help military medics train for service during combat. This is actually kind of awesome if you ask me.

The problem is that reporters can become jerks. I understand that they receive dozens and dozens of pitches a week... and that they think they know all there is to know about their beat (I've been there, the latter part). But, honestly... if the New York Times and the Washington Post (not to mention the BBC) are writing about it, why aren't you doing something? Within a two week span, two articles were written about serious gaming, with a tremendously long drought before them.

This type of technology is becoming accesible to people virtual reality companies never thought possible. We can experience this type of virtual education on rides in amusement parks (Let's think about Disney Land... right?), but now we have the potential to experience it in our living rooms.

As a member of the newspaper audience, it frustrates me to know that perfectly good story ideas are being ignored. Again, I understand the overabundance of crap information that reporters receive and how annoying it is... but, just listen to me for TWO SECONDS.

And... that was today's frustration.

Seriously. Check out serious gaming - you'll have to do the research yourself because you probably won't find it in the newspaper.