Can't Stop This Thing We Started

[Here we go again. This is the new beginning to the "freshman" portion of the thesis, or the beginning of the momentum for the Generation X stereotype. Enjoy. Or comment if you don't. Or ... comment if you do. Thanks.]

In math equations, X is the unknown variable. We solve the value of X by determining every other number in the equation. Yet in the case of the so-called Generation X, the media rushed to judgment without filling in much of the equation.

Observers relied on stringing together pop culture phenomena -- a novel, a cult film and a musical sound -- and assigned arbitrary values around these suppositions. Pundits everywhere exclaimed that Generation X was doomed to do worse than its parents, even though there were no figures to indicate this result. In general, people tried to decide what X represented without filling in any of the other blanks, preferring to plug their own assumptions into a puzzling equation.

The question arises as how we can represent Generation X, termed by some of its detractors as looking “shocking on the outside, unknowable on the inside.” Those born between 1961 and 1981 have already suffered conglomeration into bored, huddled masses yearning for their MTV -- and have no intentions of further stereotyping a caricatured generation.

But what if we look at the four years of hype and hoopla over Generation X, from 1991 to 1995, as the same span one traditionally attends college? Into this scheme, we introduce Jenn X, a college freshman who will enter Coupland University while her generation is not yet on the radar screen. When she graduates in 1995, all things X will soon be yesterday’s news. In between, her cohort will be lauded and eschewed, applauded and booed, placed under the microscope, put through the wringer and -- above all else -- misunderstood.

Of course, what teenager doesn’t feel misunderstood? As Jenn X’s mother drops her off at college (since the odds dictate Xers do not have a nuclear family), our freshman feels like her mother does not understand her and that her father is distant. Yet away from her parental units, she will feel invisible in her new surroundings. No friends, no family, no support, Jenn X is but a blank slate.
This was the state of Generation X in fall 1991. In the eyes of the media, there was for all intents and purposes no Generation X when classes started that year. But this changed soon enough and like that freshman trying too hard to fit in, Generation X would soon receive more attention than it would ever want.