Each generation experienced some kind of dark spots through their life that had a huge influence on them in the future. Let just take an example with World War II. or even with the financial crises. The life of Generation Z already has been influenced by multiple factors, a tragedy such as The World Trade Center attacks, the huge modernisation of technology or the boom of the Internet. If I think about the power of social media that affects our everyday life, I can say that we and our habits already differ in many things from previous generations.
However, we can not deny that the main factor that has a huge impact on everybody’s’ life is the situation created by the coronavirus. It is something that our generation never experienced and the big freedom, that we were born in, disappeared immediately.
Of course, the whole world is affected by the pandemic, but why I think that Gen Z faced with the biggest change? To start with, we are the first generation who experienced the still developing online education. Yes, technology was in our life before, however, we never used it in that form. I think all of us can say that surfing on social media or on YouTube just for pleasure time and participating on classes on the same devices is not the most convenient tool. Even though Internet made our studies better and easier before, online education was harder than we ever thought. Gen Z is living with smart phones in their hands, but it ended up being hard to separate the two function from each other.
We arrived at that stage where we missed school and the common sentence ‘Don’t want to go’ changed to ‘I’d be happy to go to classes’.
The thing is, that generally saying, or at least me for sure, gen z is sociable, and we need that interaction with our mates during education. Also, as my terms were built on group projects, I could feel that I’m missing working together and share opinions even though it wasn’t my favourite before. It was a big lesson for us to learn that we need to appreciate things, hugs, education until we can experience it and not to take everything for granted.
How does it influence the future career of Gen Z?
Gen Z is around the age of 17-23, we are about to start our first real job which is not the easiest task currently. I can admit, that it is hard for everyone, however, without any or small experience, freshly graduated students have even less chances.
Obviously, we are trying to stay positive and adapt the new situation as fast as it possible. I feel like that no one prepared us for such crisis during our studies, however, as gen z, we are on a good track to change our plans. It is good that we have a huge advantage with technologies so launching a meeting through zoom or working from home on computers are not a challenge for us at all. True, it has a huge impact on the young adults’ career, but I think in a useful manner. Firstly, being challenged and not getting everything is sometimes good. We learn how to fight and not to give up after failures.
We experienced in the very beginning of our careers that nothing is guaranteed, and such crisis can happen anytime.
I feel like that gen z was originally an emphatic generation, however it made us think more of others. These characteristics will stay with us and future employers will appreciate it in us.
What’s next, Gen Z?
I can view the things from my respective, as a hospitality student it was even a bigger blow, because our industry collapsed first in such situation. Things that was so normal for me, like flying monthly from home to school, being able to find better and better positions in big hotel groups, basically in any countries, disappeared. It was a good lesson from life, that even though we were born in an easier and globalised world, there is always worse times as well. I feel like we can appreciate more the education, jobs, money and also families and friends. We will always remember it and it will influence our decision in the future, which will make us an even stronger generation!
One of my school college, Zinaida Voropaeva, wrote an interesting post about her experience in the university, back in 2018. If you are interested how was the education before the pandemic, because you already forgot it or you never had a chance to taste it, check it out!
Obviously, time has changed, we have to adapt the new system, however, I am pretty sure it has some good side effects as well. Just think about, how cool is not wearing proper uniform during online classes! Feel free to comment below your opinion about the best consequence of this new lifestyle and how you perceived it!
Author: Ms Kitti Fekete, Hospitality Bachelor Student at Hotel Institute Montreux (HIM), from Hungary