To the Editor:
As I’m passing congratulatory lawn signage; reading news articles and social media posts highlighting the achievements of recent high school grads; and am congratulating my own friends, family, and colleagues as they celebrate this special time in their lives, I’m thinking back to my own experience during that time and what advice I might have offered myself.

Access to information in the digital world for the Z Generation, along with the suite of formative societal experiences that designed this next generation of adults has created an incredibly open, diverse, and collaboratively minded group. Compared to the formative experiences of members of the Millennial Generation, myself included in that group, who grew to be examining, leery, and to prioritize self-growth, albeit “flexible” (according to Johns Hopkins University analysis, The Changing Generational Values), I’m part of the last generation to know life before instantaneous access to information, entertainment, and social media.

Generation Z, named “the first global generation,” has, and always had, access to every type of content on every topic, in every form — without censorship.

In the next decade, we are looking forward to seeing this next generation of professionals build a huge percentage of our working-age society. And these eager young adults are in an overwhelming pursuit of truth, justice, and depth.

I’m realizing and understanding what generational rift means in a society. Looking out at Gen Z and back at the Millennial generation, I hope I won’t become a crotchety, old folk stuck in “my day” — and that I might learn something from a generation that has had access to learn anything and everything.

This group is asking for what we all need: honest and open communication and collaboration, compassion, understanding, fair pay, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace.

I look forward to welcoming this new perspective, new philosophy surrounding productivity, and the new type of leadership these young people will have to offer us. Let’s consider them, and all they have to offer, when we are building the cultures in the workplaces they are soon to enter — or we can expect that they will build their own.

Cheers to the class of 2023. Go forward fearlessly in the pursuit of your truth. Let us hear what you have to say, let us share our experiences with open minds, let us understand that your experiences have been different — but no less valuable than ours.

Skylin Baestlein

New Scotland