So says Jenny Ballentine at a town hall meeting last week with John Edwards.
Ballentine complained that she was "busting her ass" to go to school, working, and having student loans.
The person who received a standing ovation during John Edwards' Monday night visit to the University of New Hampshire wasn't the presidential candidate or his wife, Elizabeth. It was Jenny Ballantine, who said she was looking for someone to believe in.
The 22-year-old described earning $8,000 in the past year while she worked on her political science degree. She said she was scared to take on loans for graduate school.
"I need help," she told the Democrat, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina who sought the office in 2004.
Ballantine appeared to be the type of voter John Edwards was reaching out to as he addressed a crowd of around 750 on the second floor of the Memorial Union Building.
I heard about Ballentine on Rush Limbaugh's show and tried to blog about it but couldn't find the original story then. I was appalled at Ballentine's narcissistic, self-centered view of what the presidency is for.
When I went to college, I lived at home with my parents, which was their contribution to my education. I worked 35 hours per week at the local newspaper and took a full load of classes. I made an informed decision not to move out of my parents house until I was finished with college because I knew the expenses involved were enormous.
This isn't to say Ballentine had the exact same choices. But she did know when she embarked upon a college education that if she took out student loans she'd be expected to pay them back. I still have $70,000 in loans from law school that I have to pay back, but I don't whine about it. It was a choice I made, after all.
The self-centeredness of her comment is just the latest evidence that our self-esteem driven education system is producing a crop of soft, whiny adults who are still expecting someone else to take care of them. Is it any wonder we hear about the quarter life crisis nonsense?
James Taranto at OpinionJournal publishes this e-mail about Ballentine:
Miss Ballantine's inquiry and the ridiculous response from the Edwardses underscores the "me first" mentality that has been force-fed into my generation. We grew up hearing from boomers in authority positions that we could do anything we wanted, and that if it felt good, we should surely do it. From K-12, we were given the proverbial gold star not because we did something correctly, but because we were "special people." Those who went above and beyond were on the same level of those who did the bare minimum and achieved less. Furthermore, those who whined the loudest often received the biggest stars because the authority figures wouldn't dare destroy their self-esteem.
Flash forward to Miss Ballantine's brush with the Edwardses. She notes that she has to work, go to school, and--gasp!--struggle a bit to eventually taste success. Their response is the biggest gold star of all: a standing ovation that proves she alone is "special," even though millions of Americans are in her very position.
Such behavior by the Edwardses only enables a generation desirous of constant praise and gold stars. A true leader would explain that life's greatest accomplishments are sweetest after its most trying struggles. But once again, the liberal mindset teaches that just experiencing life deserves a standing ovation. I'm concerned for my generation when something really tough happens in our lifetime.
And, indeed, Taranto points out that the social science backs up this assertion.
With a recent study showing that today's college students are the most narcissistic and self-centered in decades, a small chorus of professionals is offering a bold response: We have no one to blame but ourselves.
"Things went too far," says psychologist Jean Twenge, lead author of the study and a professor at San Diego State University.
What she means is that parents overcorrected for the harshness of a previous generation that preferred children to be "seen and not heard." She points to the soccer trophies that coaches hand out to all team members just for showing up rather than to a few for outstanding athleticism, and to a song taught in a colleague's daughter's preschool to the tune of "Frère Jacques": "I am special/I am special/Look at me."
"If you're that child, it's not surprising that pretty soon you start to believe it," says Twenge, whose new book, "Generation Me," examines feelings of entitlement among young Americans...
Called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the study does not directly link children's increased entitlement to parenting style, but the connection is inescapable, says social psychologist and researcher Robert Horton of Wabash College in Indiana. Parent educators have long identified four styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and passive. The styles are based on a combination of how loving and restrictive parents are.
In the authoritarian style, parents are not very affectionate but very controlling, says Horton. Permissive parents tend to lavish love but are barely able to impose limits or consequences, and passive parents tend to be literally unavailable as well as unreliable and unpredictable.
"The ideal is to express affection and set limits in a way that respects a child's feelings," says parent educator Nancy Samalin, director of the Parent Guidance Workshops in New York City. She's describing the authoritative style, probably the most labor intensive. It demands a careful balance between loving and restricting a child, between being involved but not suffocating. "It's a parent who sees the need for limits and is willing to be unpopular," says Samalin, author of the best-seller "Loving Without Spoiling."
Increasingly, being unpopular makes parents uncomfortable, says psychologist David Walsh of Minneapolis.
"Humans are born hard-wired with certain drives," he says — for instance, to fight or flee, to seek pleasure rather than pain, and to seek connection. "Think of the drives as a team of horses. If you learn how to hold the reins and manage the horses, they take you to wonderful places. If the horses get out of control — if one drive dominates — you end up in a ditch."
When I went through a devastating custody suit about 3 years ago, the case worker told me I was "authoritative" and that my ex was "more permissive." When 12-year-olds are given a choice between a parent that makes them do chores, help out, do homework, and obey rules while the other one sets no rules, guess which parent the child wants to live with? But that's a harangue for another day.
The point is that I knew I wouldn't always be popular because I try to make my kids do things the right way. But I also knew that the only way for them to become competent adults was to demand that they behave certain ways in childhood.
The oldest--the one living mainly at her father's--still carries that training with her. She's a very accomplished 15-year-old who takes honors classes, plays in the marching band, and plays soccer. And she's more disciplined than her siblings because my husband is more permissive. Battling your parenting styles can be exhausting, but I would rather work with my children so they don't become the next Jenny Ballentines rather than allow them to whine that it's all about them.
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