English 102 Assignment: Reflective Essay on Generational Challenges

This reflective essay, written for English 102, examines the problems young people face today in comparison to older generations. The student reflects on their research process, highlighting the evolution of their understanding of the topic and the challenges encountered. The essay discusses the impact of technology, economic factors, and social changes on the youth, drawing on personal experiences and insights from various sources, including articles and interviews with elders. The student analyzes the strategies employed, such as source selection and the use of an annotated bibliography, to effectively structure the essay and present a balanced perspective. The essay concludes with a positive assessment of the learning experience and acquired skills, expressing satisfaction with the final outcome and the format of the research project.

Tong Wu
Molly E Ubbesen
English 102-205
July 27, 2018
Assignment 16: Reflective Outline
Paper Topic: The problems young people today face compared to older generations.
Introduction
From my research, I have found out that the young people of the current generation face
numerous problems compared to the older generation young people. These problems are
attributed to both economic, social, political and mostly technological factors. Modern
technologies have made information access and communication easier for the youth today. With
these new technologies, the lifestyles of the young people today have greatly been changed in
terms of dressing styles, socializing as well as eating habits. These modern technologies are
misconceived to have simplified life for the youth today. However, this is not the case, as
highlighted in the research article that I just completed.
Evolution of the Project
As a student, it was quite easy for me to recognize and identify the specific problems faced by
today’s youth since I fall within the age bracket of the youth today, that is to say,I am in the
current young generation. However, the main challenge was to compare them with those of the

older generations. My intention of doing the project was to recollect the experiences that I have
gathered as a teenager, and put them to use, and in deed they helped me a great deal to identify
the problems of the youth today. Besides my personal teen experiences, I got immense help from
elders both within as well as outside my family, all of whom acknowledged the differences and
helped me to form a critical judgment of both. The assistance I got from the elders and my
family members enabled me make strong comparison between the challenges faced by the young
people today and those of the older generation. After forming the critical judgement, I was able
to develop the strategic structure that I would follow in carrying out the research and finally
writing down the report. I wrote my first draft from which I realized that my opinion was being
largely shaped by secondary sources, instead of concentrationg on my own personal opinions. I
approached some elderly people and inquired from them about the major problems that they
faced during their teenage years or as youths. They were so cooperative and from them I got
some points which I compared with my own personal experiences of problems as a teenager
today. After this, I revised the draft using more analysis from my personal life experiences, the
information I got from the elders I interviewed and the information form the secondary sources.
My revised draft seemed to adequately capture the project purpose, incapacitating both the
challenges of the current young generation and the older young generation as well as comparizon
of these challenges.
Analysis and Evaluation of Strategies
I had full faith in my overall strategy that it would work out perfectly well and help me meet the
objectives of the project, although I had to make some changes later on. I went through some
quality articles that I perceived to contain the relevant information on the research topic. This
helped me understand these problems beyond my personal experience, rather than just having a

generalized idea of the complexities faced by the people of the two generations. Prior to this, I
had to do a background check on the authenticity of the articles so as not to be misguided into
forming false opinions using irrelevant sources. From my analysis of the article sources, I
narrowed down to six particular articles which I thought would be helpful in the formation and
presentation of the problems pertaining to generational gaps, technology and other problems
related to the young people today in comparison with the young people in the older generation.
I then carefully studied these articles having in mind the main topic of the project. The vast
repository of knowledge which I gathered through this extensive study brought upon me a little
challenge, in the initial phases, of how to form the outline of the article. By perrusing through
different research papers online, and going through my lecture notes, I managed to get an idea of
how to form the outline of my article. I wrote down the article structure. Through this structure I
was able to get an idea of the requirements of the article based on the different parts of the article
as outlined.
Another challenge arose when doing analysis of the different articles containing related
information on the study topic, to select the best articles to use. But the structure of ‘Annotated
Bibliography’ came to my rescue. It helped me to focus on the major points within each article,
and address them from a critical perspective, while at the same time, linking them with my own
opinions about the study topic, ‘The problems faced by young people today compared to the
young people in the older generation’. However, I was still deviating from the main topic, when
doing the analysis of the sources to use, by sometimes putting more of my own opinions than
could be included in context of the article under examination. It was with much effort that I
achieved a perfect balance of both, my opinions and the contents of the article under
examination. Once I got over this problem, the movement through the paper became easier. By

the end, I was able to achieve a balanced and rational structure of the article as well as the
content, that is, without basing so much concentration on my personal opinions at the expense of
the article sources or favoring much of the article sources and ignoring my own personal
opinions. I actually managed to reason out in the context of what many other writers had layed
out adding to my opinions as well.
Review of Source Selection
I got my initial ideas by generally surfing through the internet. But the open internet did not give
me the detailed information I needed, since I realized that I needed to form more critical ideas
about the topic. I opted not to wholly rely on the open internet. Certain articles from the Google
Scholar were so helpful that I had to closely examine their contents. I had a variety of articles to
use, but through thorough analysis of their contents in relation to the study topic, I had to narrow
down to six artices I considered helpful towards addressing the topic. While narrowing down on
six particular articles, I had to reluctantly omit a few. This is because, although they were
valuable in shaping my opinions, the ideas they predominantly presented were similar.
Giving an example of two sources I used. First, the point raised by Sharlene Gale and Graeme
Codington in the article “Facing the Youth in the 21st Century” about the causal relationship of
obesity with the mental and physical health of today’s youth, offered a fresh perspective to me,
which I had never thought about before. To quote my own writing, “obesity disrupts the mental
equilibrium of the young generation that the people of the previous generation did not have to
face” best describes my learning of this new perspective.
Secondly,the authors Richard, Fry, Ruth Igielnik and Eileen Patten in the article “How
Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago” dwell on the problem of

unemployment which is being faced by the present generation people. The article brings out the
fact that millennial men prove to be better in terms of education than that of the earlier
generation of the young men. This article has helped in providing the statistics pertaining to
millennial and the silent generation that has helped in revealing important aspects related to the
changes that have taken place in the society. All these sources were really helpful as they
provided a perfect mixture of history, the current state of affairs and the possible future
challenges, all pertaining to the research topic.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I am pretty much pleased how the research paper has taken shape. It was a very
endearing learning experience for me, from where I got to know a lot more about issues
pertaining to my own life, that I had never known before, and also solutions to some of the
problems I face as a young person today. I have also acquired certain skills by the execution of
various processes during the research progress. As mentioned earlier, I really liked the format of
annotated bibliography, and would like to do more future projects on a similar format. I would
have liked to add more additional sources. Nevertheless, I am quite happy about how the project
has turned out to be.

Work Cited
Sharlene Gale S. and Graeme Codington, “Facing the Youth in the 21st Century”. May
1999.pp.1- 133. www.researchgate.net/publication/301647194
Pewresearch.org. "How Millennials Today Compare With Their Grandparents 50 Years Ago."
Pew Research Center. N.p., 2018. Web. 17 July 2018.
Wu T. “The problems young people today face compared to older generations”. 23 July 2018.