PREFACE

WHAT COULD T­ ODAY’S YOUTH possibly have in common with college students from the 1970s? This is the first question that we expect our readers to ask. It is, a­ fter all, one of the first questions that we asked ourselves when we discovered a trove of long-­forgotten student interviews from a half-­ century ago. College students in the 1970s were part of “Generation Jones,” a small generational window that overlaps with the tail end of the baby boomers and the early days of Generation X. From this bridge be- tween their better-­known generational neighbors, these students had a unique vantage point on a society in transition. Theyw­ ere ­children during the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President John- son’s Executive Order on Affirmative Action in 1965, policies that ­shaped the institutions in which they lived and learned. The campus protest movement of the late 1960s roiled the United States as they prepared to apply to college but was coming to an end by the time they arrived on campus. They­w ere the first Americans to vote at the age of eigh­teen, a­ fter the voting age was lowered in 1971, and they cast their first presidential ballot for e­ither Nixon or McGovern the following year. They grew up against the backdrop of the Vietnam War but saw the draft end in 1973 and never had their ser­vice determined by a tele- vised lottery. Generation Z (born 1997–2012) learned about ­these historic moments from the 1960s and 1970s from textbooks or Wikipedia. The defining events of their childhoods include the 2008 recession, the election of Barack Obama, and the Sandy Hook massacre. They have never known a world without social media, wireless internet, and hybrid cars. The Amer­i­ca they ­were raised in has never not been at war. viii Preface

Many Gen Z-­ers ­will have a grandparent from Generation Jones to help them celebrate when they gradu­ate from college as members of the Classes of 2019 to 2034. From the outside, the divide between t­hese two generations appears vast. F

• Gen Jones huddled around the tele­vi­sion to watch Neil Arm- strong take one ­giant leap for mankind and walk on the moon—­a seemingly impossible technological feat in 1969. Gen Z was born a­ fter astronauts took up permanent residence in the International Space Station and began to live among the stars. • Gen Jones listened to Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead on vinyl (before it was vintage) and lamented the fact that they ­were too young to go to Woodstock. Gen Z may have been an- noyed when Woodstock 50, the commemorative cele­bration, was canceled but could stream the entire cata­log of festival re- cordings from 1969 on demand via the internet instead. • Gen Jones read about the 1969 Stonewall riots in the news- paper, witnessing the spark that started the modern gay rights movement in the United States. Gen Z saw marriage equality become the law of the land in all fifty states, a realization of one of the goals of that decades-­long fight for LGBTQ rights. • Gen Jones watched as the World Trade Center was erected and marveled at the opening of the world’s tallest structures in 1973. Gen Z only knows ­these iconic buildings from the footage of 9 / 11, and their singular memory of the towers is watching them fall. • Gen Jones watched “The­ Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs on a tele­vi­sion with metal rabbit ears and a tuning knob, instead of a remote control. Gen Z can find a movie about this exhibition tennis match on Netflix and watch A-­list actors Emma Stone and Steve Carell re­create the story of the epic 1973 face-­off. F Preface ix

As researchers, we have long studied the experiences of con­temporary students in high school and college, focusing on the unique issues facing youth in the twenty-­first ­century. Before embarking on this proj­ect, we would have agreed with the scholarly lit­er­a­ture that claims that the cultural and economic changes of the past half-­century trans- formed the experience of young adults coming of age. We would have agreed with the common wisdom that being raised as digital natives, with the ability to stay connected 24 / 7, meant that something substan- tive was dif­fer­ent about growing up ­today. We might have believed the narrative that coming of age in the twenty-­first ­century meant that ­today’s youth are marked by exceptionalism and that an entirely new stage of ­human development needed to be defined to describe their experiences. We would have done that, if we ­hadn’t listened to the voices of the stu- dents from the past. Instead, we listened to their voices. We spent four years cata­loging and analyzing college student interviews conducted annually between 1971 and 1979. We got to know t­hese students’ hopes and dreams. We lis- tened to their strug­gles and missteps. We heard each of them evolve during their four years of college as they grappled with making ­mistakes, experiencing indecision, and figuring out what they would do ­after graduation. And, most of all, we marveled at just how similar their experiences ­were to t­hose of the students in our classrooms ­today. The stories of achievement culture, roommate strug­gles, an unpredictable job market, student loan debt, and the push-­and-­pull with parents ­were all too familiar. In the pro­cess, we discovered something universal about the ex- perience of coming of age that transcended the differences that have become central to our attitudes about “kids ­these days.” The lived experience of ­today’s youth may look dif­fer­ent from the outside, but ­there are significant similarities and impor­tant continuities across generations. In the pages ahead, students from the Class of 1975 share their sto- ries of being young adults and help us to see how the pro­cess of coming of age actually permeates generational bound­aries. From ­these students’ lives, nearly a half-­century ago, we learned an impor­tant x Preface lesson about the experience of growing up—­yesterday, ­today, and . . . ​ we suspect . . . ​­tomorrow. We heard ­these students ask for the same ­things we know that ­today’s youth need as well: guidance, support, the freedom to fail, and, above all, time to do the impor­tant work of preparing for adulthood. What could ­today’s youth possibly have in common with college stu- dents from the 1970s? As you ­will see, far more than we ever could have i­magined. THE END OF ADOLESCENCE