Generation Me Article

Nick Boehme
Honors Am. Lit.
Generation Me Article
2/15/12
Who’s to Blame?
By Nickolas Andrew Boehme

West Liberty, IA ---- “He fumbled the ball; everyone knows who really won that game. The West Branch refs took away a win from us,” said Tanner Nolan, a West Liberty student and football player. People born in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s are in the category “Generation Me, or GenME,”.   Throughout the West Liberty School High School many students and teachers fall into this category. A common theme found in the Generation Me group is blaming. When asked the question , “Who is to blame when you fail at something?”, many   members of the GenMe responded the same way, it wasn’t their fault. They also gave excuses and blamed their failures on factors they couldn’t control. Most of the responses recorded had to do with grades or athletics.
With grades, the most frequently used response was to blame the teachers. “I blame getting a bad grade on [teacher name] for not giving us enough time.” and “They didn’t even teach us anything I didn’t even know what to do.” said by two AP students. All the responders that involved grades always had a way to tie it back to the teacher. Members of the GenMe find it easy to blame the people that fail them. Even when interviewing a teacher, they believed that students would be more than likely to blame the teachers over any other factor.
Tanner Nolan’s quote earlier is a perfect example of blaming the person that fails you in sports. A West Liberty volleyball player said, “ If you play away for a game the line judges will never go in your favor.” Just as teachers; the ones who have to make judgment on your performance always get the blame in this Generation Me Group.
The blame in this category goes to every factor but themselves. They look mainly to the people who fails them to blame. So next time things do go the way you hoped, sit there and think “Who really is to blame?”