Envision this: you’re sitting at Starbucks (whichever of the 80 of them in San Benito) on a crisp, fresh summer morning in the middle of June, reading your choice novel, savoring your last summer before the woes of adulthood must be faced. Songs of birds and smells of coffee beans occupy your senses as you read – complete serenity. You can hear two ladies chat over their lattes 10 or so feet away, but they don’t catch your attention until they begin talking about the youth population of SBC. Now it’s getting juicy, so you tune in (call me nosy, but you know you would too if it was relevant to you). The lady on the left leans closer to her friend and quietly says,
“You know, this generation of kids is the worst we’ve ever seen. All they do is sit on their [buttocks] and stare at their iPhones. I sure as [heck] hope I’m gone by the time they’re in control.”
Suddenly their air-freshener scented perfume overrides the smells of the morning and the sounds are washed away by their voices. And suddenly you have something to prove.
Let me tell you, readers; these two lovely ladies are not alone in their belief. One poll suggests 7% of people believe the youth generation is “headed in the right path”, while a whopping 84% of people think we’re headed for failure. And tell me you have never heard one of your elders rant about how the young generation has no respect and is undisciplined and whatnot.
Now I’m not here to whine about the respect and discipline issue – I think we can all make concessions on the fact that we are not the first generation to receive those remarks, whether they’re valid or not. But as a member of this generation myself, I can assure all of those skeptical about the merit of our generation that we will not disappoint. Just hear me out.
If you haven’t stepped out of your house or opened a newspaper since 2006, times have been pretty tough around here. Everywhere. Local businesses have been closing without replacement, jobs have been lost without being found, families have slipped into poverty, homes have been foreclosed upon, and the list goes on, however depressing. And our impressionable eyes have witnessed it, we’ve grown up in it. Despite it all, though, San Benito’s parents have raised one hell of a determined youth.
What reveals our determination the most, I think, lies in the ever-growing motivation and perseverance of the kids at San Benito High School. The whole thing can be thought of as an inverse-proportion (let’s all hope my pre-calculus teacher reads this and enjoys my use of a math term): as the economy worsens, our drive to obtain success soars. I have some handy numbers to prove this: We watched college become more and more of just a dream with a public-college tuition increase of 56% from 2001 to 2011. But I can assure you, readers, that us kids are not for a moment losing sight of that revered acceptance letter. We watched our parents lose their hard-earned careers but we did not give up on our education – San Benito’s drop-out rates have plummeted from 10.1% in 2005 to 5.6% in 2011. We watched our favorite stores close and the “This building is not empty, it’s full of potential” signs go up, but we were not deterred by these hard times, we just worked even harder to make San Benito proud – we raised our CAHSEE (High-school exit exam) passing rates from 77% in 2006 to 86% in 2011. We watched as our high school struggled with the tough times, as the phrase “budget cuts” became part of our everyday vocabulary to give reason to it all. But we turned these struggles into successes – we raised our graduation rate from 78% in 2005 to a proud-parent-making 93% in 2011.
Case in point: Parents, citizens of San Benito County – don’t fret about us. You’ve done an exceptional job raising a youth that knows first-hand what it means to overcome struggles and never give up, never give in. It may be debatable whether we overuse our iPhones at times, but that’s for another article. What is not debatable is the fact that San Benito’s youth is going to do great things for our county, and I’m proud as ever to be part of it.
Nicole Huxtable is a 16-year-old resident of San Benito County.
