Criticize the Mistake, Not the Person
The author, Danielle Abril gave a video about talking to Gen Z when we need them to improve on work. She pointed out Gen Z is willing to learn from mistakes and get better, but they want to directly know what and how the managers want them to improve instead of humiliating them to suck their incompetence.
While reading an article about Gen Z, I always feel like all my failures in the past, such as being laid off, arguing with the managers, and being isolated by my family and classmates due to my bizarre thoughts, have ironically proved to be a correct social standard.
Society Changes Because of Gen Z Powered by AI
After I graduated from university in 2013, I always expected to work hard and learn hard in society, regardless of the payments. My way of living didn’t need much. (Then I read about it’s minimalism.)
When a supervisor points out that they are not satisfied with my work, they at least should let me know that ‘they have taken time to read my work but hope me to make adjustments on this or that part.’
Berating whether I learned anything from a business degree cannot extend the deadline of a company’s balance sheet, but generalizing which section I messed up can submit it on time.
Working in an accounting firm in 2015, I always complained about similar things after going home at midnight. “It’s unnecessary to work this late. I’m resilient to improve my work, not to tolerate the manager’s ignorance.” My father, who was a senior executive in a company, always said, “Suck it up. That’s what a rookie needs to face. Those senior managers are entitled to decide how things should be done.”
All I wanted was to have a mutual conversation to know how I could do better at work instead of being treated like a student, while the teacher evaluated my study in grades, the manager summarized my work with a patronizing grunt.
Gen Z at School
When I was working in a private boarding school, the tuition was five times higher than other public schools but it promised every student would be admitted to the top 3 dream schools. In these kinds of schools, the pressure on the teachers was indescribably higher than the students.
Often in the teacher’s office, a student lowered their heads, standing while the teacher scolded, “Why not study harder? You are a student. Don’t you want to study in XXX school? Do you want to disappoint your parents’ hard work?” The ending was never changed. “Study harder and get a better grade next time, okay?” “Yes.” The student answered and left the office.
I changed my way, being fed up with impractical raving. After grading the paper, instead of immediately ordering the worst one to the office. I examined every paper again. I told the worst one, “This paper is to test the understanding of using the past tense, and I look over your mistakes. I suppose that you haven’t memorized the past tense, right?” After their answer, I told them how to remember different past tenses, asked what parts baffle them, and discussed their learning styles.
I was isolated in the office. Other teachers rolled their eyes while I was talking with a student. Without furiously yelling and berating, they thought it was time-wasting to make a student study, and the school couldn’t make the parents sacrifice more than half of their salaries to send their kids to study here.
A mutual conversation was taboo at school since teachers should let students know the ultimate authority, and the only time they were allowed to talk was when the teacher asked a question in class.
In 2022, this school closed due to lack of enrollment. Before that, a previous colleague complained to me about how disrespectful the students had become, how complicated questions the students had asked in class intentionally to have a chance to tease the teacher’s professionalism, and how anxious she became because she could never read and absorb that much academic knowledge like AI.
Gen Z Still Needs to Learn from Humans
Because of the advanced technology, Gen Z can obtain nearly all sorts of answers to complicated questions at their fingertips, but listening to Rap God every day cannot make us rap like a Rap God; reading Stephen King’s books cannot make us think of another legendary Shining; and watching Hell’s Kitchen cannot make us cook like Gordan Ramsey.
We are exposed to a massive amount of inspiration, artwork, and knowledge, while a wedding cannot promise a stable relationship in a marriage, GPT cannot make you educational and thoughtful as a person.
We will find out that in the end, what we realize will be beyond GPT’s current information and we can only learn from the experts, historians, and scholars to untie the knot.
Humans are Unpredictable
We can quickly grab the ‘logic’ in the answers generated by AI, but no one is a mind-reader to know a person’s thinking. In different countries, with different families, and different life experiences…, people don’t answer a common question based on a massive information process but on how they feel right now, how they feel about the first impression of the asker, how they feel about their sound or tone, or they find that the question is already an answer to itself.
