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What is it with kids these days? The more exposure I get to current youth culture, the more I fear for the future of life as we

know it.

I know that’s a bit harsh, but hear me out. Recent encounters with children as young as four to young adults as old as 19 have blown my mind. A sense of entitlement seems to permeate throughout this younger generation, which is squelching their work ethic, their reliability and their senses of respect and responsibility.

Case A: My younger siblings are spoiled beyond spoiled. The two girls, ages five and six, have more toys than a toy store, more DVDs than a video store and both are never without their Nintendo DS’s. The pair expects a new toy, or a “prize” as they call it, every time my father takes them to any kind of store. Naturally, if he denies them their prizes, they throw temper tantrums in the store until they get them. The girls have my father so trained that he buys them excessive toys even when they are not present. At a recent dinner with my brother, my dad purchased more than 10 SuperBalls from a machine in the lobby, because “the girls collect them.” See also: my dad’s basement littered with moreo than 100 of these balls, which he then has to clean up.

In this instance, it is obvious that the parents are just as responsible for the children’s behavior as the kids themselves are, if not more so. The excuse my dad gives, if pressured, is that he is too tired to fight with the girls, and that it is just easier to give them what they want. Laziness on the part of my dad and my stepmom then translates to obvious laziness on the part of the children, who almost have to be bribed to clean up after themselves. How this will translate to their future work ethic, I can only cringe to think.

Case B: As most seniors know, creating a senior thesis or research project is no easy feat. But that difficulty increases tenfold when the success of your project is dependent on the responsibility and general social etiquette of others.

As a senior dance major, each of my peers and I were required to create a piece of choreography for a group of dancers. These dancers are typically underclassmen, and they have three main responsibilities: show up to rehearsal, work hard and be upfront about scheduling conflicts. For some reason that I cannot seem to grasp, my graduating class has had to deal with numerous instances of our cast members acting irresponsibly and ultimately disrespecting our authority as choreographers. One big problem is that dancers have been skipping rehearsals without notifying their choreographers in advance.

If a choreographer knows about an absence in advance, he or she can plan around it and structure rehearsal accordingly. If not, a missing person can be a major handicap to the other cast members, as well as the choreographer. It is like trying to finish a puzzle with missing pieces. Movement cues are often set between dancers, and it is difficult to negotiate interaction between bodies when someone is absent. The choreographer must also account for this absence by catching the dancer up at the next rehearsal, taking precious time away from an already limited rehearsal schedule.

I’d like to know: when did completely blowing off someone who is counting on you to show up become an acceptable thing to do? And why, when confronted about their irresponsible behaviors, do these dancers show no sign of regret or altered consciousness? Maybe I’m being judgmental, but I chalk it up to their sense of entitlement.

As younger generations enroll at the UIUC, they bring with them a set of expectations – they deserve to get A’s in class, they deserve to get scholarships and they deserve to get prime opportunities to showcase their work — just because. When I began my college career four short years ago, I took nothing for granted; I worked like crazy and I realized that as a freshman, my actions laid the groundwork for the rest of my time at the University. I was too afraid of my impending reputation to ever skip a rehearsal unannounced, and it took serious convincing to get me to skip a class.

Though I have relaxed my views about rigid class attendance over the past four years, I always hold myself accountable for my actions. More importantly, if someone expects me to be somewhere, I pay them the common decency of letting them know about my absence in advance. It only takes a second, but in the fast-paced youth culture, maybe even that is too much to ask.