I'm David. I graduated from CCAD in 2009. I illustrate things and write things, too. Here's a sample of my writing:
Millennials may be the last American generation to be taught cursive formally.
College ruled notebook.
No. 2 pencil.
Pink eraser.
Handheld sharpener.
This, we were told, would be our voice. Cursive our language.
We grew up in the 90’s as Generation X suffered through apathy and restlessness, the greatest fear of middle (white) America was that we were all fated to be indulgent and empty forever. The Columbine shooting convinced us that Doom and Marilyn Manson poisoned the youth. The computer, once a fanciful square beast that hummed and sighed and ate plastic floppy-A disks in the darkened study of your rich friend’s house, had now installed herself in the corner of every living room. She was good for writing papers. She was good for watching pipes build 3-d houses. She was not good for much else.
You could hear which generation pressed commands into her keyboard: Older users attacked with a heavy plastic ka-chunk-a! Younger typists tapped like rainfall, pitter-pat. The internet boomed and busted.
9/11 happened. And then Afghanistan. And then the Iraq war. We called french fries freedom fries. Apathy and boredom were gone, replaced with fervent hard right patriotism and increasingly outspoken liberal outcry against the war.
In 2008, the housing market collapsed and dropped us into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Jobless rates soared. Many of us graduated and moved in with our parents, putting off careers and families of our own.
Even then, most of us had personal computers. We wrote every day, pitter-pat, on our keyboards. We texted. We were called the worst generation by far.
We grew up straddling a great paradigm shift, like all generations do. We saw apathy and violence, privilege and terror. We watched the futility of war and the failure of capitalism. We grew up, and computers grew up with us. It made our lives easier, but it gave us new problems.
The older generation has not forgotten what they were like when they were young. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they do remember, and expect the young to be like them. They’ve forgotten that the younger generation adapts to the world they’re given.
Many of us millennials learned cursive on paper, and we’re going to throw it all away. Not as an affront to those who came before us. No, we’re building on the wisdom of our mothers and fathers. We need them now, just as much as they’ll need us. After all, they’re the ones who built the computers that killed cursive.
We’re the ones who made cursive a font.
Millennials may be the last American generation to be taught cursive formally.
College ruled notebook.
No. 2 pencil.
Pink eraser.
Handheld sharpener.
This, we were told, would be our voice. Cursive our language.
We grew up in the 90’s as Generation X suffered through apathy and restlessness, the greatest fear of middle (white) America was that we were all fated to be indulgent and empty forever. The Columbine shooting convinced us that Doom and Marilyn Manson poisoned the youth. The computer, once a fanciful square beast that hummed and sighed and ate plastic floppy-A disks in the darkened study of your rich friend’s house, had now installed herself in the corner of every living room. She was good for writing papers. She was good for watching pipes build 3-d houses. She was not good for much else.
You could hear which generation pressed commands into her keyboard: Older users attacked with a heavy plastic ka-chunk-a! Younger typists tapped like rainfall, pitter-pat. The internet boomed and busted.
9/11 happened. And then Afghanistan. And then the Iraq war. We called french fries freedom fries. Apathy and boredom were gone, replaced with fervent hard right patriotism and increasingly outspoken liberal outcry against the war.
In 2008, the housing market collapsed and dropped us into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Jobless rates soared. Many of us graduated and moved in with our parents, putting off careers and families of our own.
Even then, most of us had personal computers. We wrote every day, pitter-pat, on our keyboards. We texted. We were called the worst generation by far.
We grew up straddling a great paradigm shift, like all generations do. We saw apathy and violence, privilege and terror. We watched the futility of war and the failure of capitalism. We grew up, and computers grew up with us. It made our lives easier, but it gave us new problems.
The older generation has not forgotten what they were like when they were young. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they do remember, and expect the young to be like them. They’ve forgotten that the younger generation adapts to the world they’re given.
Many of us millennials learned cursive on paper, and we’re going to throw it all away. Not as an affront to those who came before us. No, we’re building on the wisdom of our mothers and fathers. We need them now, just as much as they’ll need us. After all, they’re the ones who built the computers that killed cursive.
We’re the ones who made cursive a font.
