HAPPY FATHER’S DAY! – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

White House: Fatherhood Barbeque

 

The Semantics of YoPIs and Yuppies By Filip Simunovic and S.Z

Thank you Filip and SZ  :)  for this superbe article!

 

Both words are spelled similarly. Obviously, the pronunciation is even more similar. And they are both odd abbreviations beginning with a ‘Y’.

But how do they relate beyond that?

The first one stands, clear enough, for a fledgling blog, on the pages of which you are reading this text. If it is to develop beyond that and become a club, a movement or a subculture of its own remains to be seen – its future is largely in our hands.

Behind the second abbreviation lays a comparatively gigantic phenomenon, a phenomenon so old that it had already long passed its prime and is probably extinct.

Here, we will discuss the demised giant.

Yuppie stands for Young Urban Professional or Young Upwardly Moving Professional. It usually refers to an eighties subculture of young people who were pursuing well-paid professional careers, and who were distinguishing themselves by disregarding the stability of family life and taking pleasure in advancing their career and spending money on themselves. An archetypical Yuppie is a late-twenties/early-thirties lawyer or stockbroker, drives a BMW convertible, is elaborately groomed, clad in designer clothes and armed with a selection of the newest gadgets and accessories. He or she is focused on working hard with the goal of achieving professional heights and financial opulence.

Only several years after initial introduction of the term in the early eighties it received negative connotations. It began to imply loss of traditional values, greed, self-absorption, superficiality and ostentatious display of wealth.

From a present time distance, we can wonder if a typical yuppie ever existed in its full-fledged form. It might have merely been a marketing term describing the consumerism-driven mindset of the time, and the subgroup of people who had the means and idle time to intensively participate in it.

However, the impact of the yuppies undeniably resonates in the popular culture. A generation of writers like Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt was inspired, or had inspired, the Yuppi phenomenon. Wall Street, a 1987 Oliver Stone film is soaked in the greedy, money-grabbing, unscrupulous atmosphere. More recently, soulless careerism of the successful young people has been violently portrayed in films like American Psycho and Fight Club. A brilliant eighties comedy series Only Fools and Horses revolves around second-grade London swindlers Derek and Rodney who are motivated, albeit unsuccessfully, to rise from a South London suburb and become, in Dereck’s own words, Yuppies.    

Let us end in hope.

Let us hope that YoPI evolves and becomes a trend with an impact on our culture. Let us hope that its impact is a longer lasting, more stable one, one that inspires intellectual achievement, personal relationships, cultural exchange, perpetuated learning and education, and one which does not, of course, in any way hinder a (financially) successful pursuit of a career. All of the above are key prerequisites for cultural tolerance, which in today’s world is much more then an exotic property of well-traveled affluent intellectuals – it has become an everyday necessity.  

To put it in the words of S.Z, a prominent collaborator of this blog (and a prominent individual in many other ways): It is not what we become that is important. Who we become is what matters.

 

Challenge: Finding One’s Path By Amina Shabani

Thank you Amina for this very inspiring article. Yopi

How do you tell your parents that the dream they envision for you, a successful businesswoman negotiating merger deals in a room full of executives, is not for you?

Send an email? Or call to say that you have good news and bad news? Tell a sibling to relay the memo?

When that question haunted me a year after graduating from college, I was too scared and said nothing. I was unhappy in a Master’s program, having studied Economics with many doubts as to why I was doing it in the first place. Secretly I had realized that I was sacrificing my own happiness to please my parents and have their approval.

 

Since I could remember, I always had a passion for books and literature. As a teenager, I was known for being a daydreamer and was often reminded that I needed to wake up! In addition, having a twin brother always brings up unnecessary comparisons as parents tend to forget that they are dealing with two individuals. He excels in Sciences and Mathematics, I have to study for hours to secure a B. Furthermore, in my parents’ generation, Sciences and Economics were privileged subjects that guaranteed a job. After all, my father studied in the ex-Soviet Union in the 1970s and had to learn Russian before completing his studies in Mathematics and Physics. Clearly, as they only wanted the best for me, I was told that with languages and literatures, I was setting myself up for failure.

 

During my college years, although I enjoyed my Economics classes, I was clueless about what I wanted to do after graduation. When I decided to minor in Spanish in my junior year, my parents thought I was crazy. Wasn’t Business an appropriate option to complement my major? During my senior year, when I was contemplating whether or not I should add Spanish as a second major and finish the B.A program in 5 years instead of 4, I knew I was asking for trouble and just decided to graduate.

 

A semester into the master’s program, I had to take my future into my own hands when my father called to ask for my resume so that I could apply for a position in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia as an analyst. In less than a week, I had emptied my savings account and started applying for graduate programs in Spanish or Comparative Literature.

 Looking back, I wished I took the time to read the requirements of each program and know what I was getting myself into. But at that time, all I wanted was to get accepted regardless of whether the program required Master’s exams or a thesis for graduation or just to finish the coursework. Out of the 13 universities I applied to, I was accepted to Boston University, Mc-Gill University, University of Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University and the last two offered full financial aid.

Breaking the news wasn’t easy at all. I called and left them with no choice. In the months to come, I had to act confident, stand up for myself and hush my fears especially when I arrived at the Indianapolis International Airport and got my first taste of the Midwest: green pastures, field corns and tractors.

Why Indiana? Because everything was taking me out of my comfort zone

 As graduate students, we also have to teach three courses per year and I had never taught Spanish in my life. The program is very rigorous and I knew it was the best fit for me since I love challenges. But most importantly, I chose Indiana because I knew I was going to grow as an individual.

 

Following my passion is never easy. After all, when I failed the first part of my Master’s Exams, I was devastated. I still don’t do master theory as well as I should, I still have to work on my academic writing, I have my own insecurities as a nonnative speaker, as an instructor, I am still struggling to find a balance between teaching and taking my own classes….. but at least I know I am in the right place.

“Ad Usum Tironum: On YOPI, created for the use of all the apprentices that we are.”

Thanks Sandra for this amazing article!! YoPI.

The first version of this piece was very utopian. It had proverbs and old axioms on how everyone should follow his/her heart. The main point of the article has not changed. It is the format in which it was written that was altered. All the rambling that I did in the first version has one and only one aim: to salute and give ovation to the creation of blogs such a YOPI, that gather information and help people like me (people with inexperience on where to look for information, people who get overwhelmed and at times lost in the jungle of the professional world, at highly critical times of their lives.)

The element missing from the first version (an old fashioned, solely theoretical piece, bordering the unattainable and rendering it quite useless in our modern world) was practicality.  The use of the word ‘useless’ here is not an attempt to entirely dismiss those old fashioned articles or books, full of wisdom, and written with style and intelligence. ‘Useless’ here is synonymous to impractical, impractical to what our world has become: an environment where, in terms of our careers, the more important and useful aspects revolve around the tools that are made accessible to us for the purposes of reaching our goals and ultimately starting our dream careers. Today, a twenty-five year old young woman/man wants to know where she/he can go to find resources that will help her/him land her/his dream job. This blog puts together essential information, and takes the aforementioned points to another level by giving us the opportunity to hear from people who are ‘movers and shakers’ and learn from them. It really is a tool for the use of us all, apprentices in the professional world, and life in general.

The only relic I kept from my first attempt to convey the idea that we are all capable of having a dream career if we have the right tools, is this sentence from the conclusion: ‘however, despite all the vicissitudes of our lives, our fears and doubts, there is always a way to make one’s dreams come true. And as Coelho tells us in the Alchemist, “it’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”’ I will write again soon. Until then, ‘Good Day, and Good Luck.’ (SAZ)