I Miss the 90s

I came of age in the nineties, and there are several things that I miss about it. I miss the fact that I could turn on the TV and watch actual sitcoms instead of a bunch of reality shows about spoiled housewives getting into catfights in fancy restaurants or people making fools of themselves for fifteen minutes of fame.

Back then, I think that the only reality shows that were really popular were the Real World and Road Rules, and that was when those shows were actually worth watching. Do you remember when the kids on the Real World were picked because they actually had jobs and had accomplished things, like the musicians, the playwright, the AIDS activist, and the comic book artists? Now the only requirement for cast members is that they look like models and make New Year's resolutions like, "This year I will stop making out with random strangers in bars" and "This year I will not get arrested for being criminally annoying" (I didn't even realize that was a crime until I read about Snooki of Jersey Shore fame), and "This year I will stop taking off my clothes in public".

I also miss the days when everyone wasn't permanently attached to their cell phones or laptops, and we actually could go through a whole day without using either. The Internet was only just beginning to be popular. I didn't actually start using e-mail until my junior or senior year of high school, and I actually thought that e-mail was just a lame fad that would go out of style fairly quickly, like clear Pepsi and Pauly Shore.

When I taught high school students, I once asked a group of them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of them said they wanted to be rich and famous. One student showed me rap lyrics that he had written and said that he wanted to be the next Jay-Z. Another student said he wanted to be like Donald Trump. Interestingly, none of them said they wanted to be teachers.

I'd grown fond of these students, partly because they didn't throw hissy fits over their grades and they didn't insist on calling me by my first name, unlike some of my college students. And I wanted their dreams to come true, even though I knew that the odds were stacked against them. They were still young enough to believe that they could have and be anything they wanted.

I think that's what I miss most about the nineties, which is when I came of age as a teenager. I don't miss high school, which I think of as four years of cliques, cruel gossip, and a sense of feeling lost. When I was in high school, I thought that once I finally escaped, I'd figure out what it was I wanted to do with my life. I thought that by the time I was thirty, I'd be an official adult and on a clear path to where it was I was supposed to be. (On the other hand, back in high school I also had crushes on Lance Bass from N'Sync and Ricky Martin, both of whom turned out to be gay, so a lot of what I thought back then turned out to be wrong.)

But then I started college. And I soon came to learn that I couldn't be anything I wanted to be. Unlike what I'd been told in high school, it wasn't enough just to get good grades and work hard. I found out that it was harder than I thought it would be to get a job as a lawyer, or an editor, or a professor. And many of my college classmates came to the same realization; at least half of the people I knew ended up changing their majors.

I pursued my dream of becoming a professor, and it came with a lot of good experiences. But it also meant giving up on a lot of things, and it also means that at age twenty-nine, I'm still in grad school, still working minimum-wage jobs, and still feeling lost. I miss that belief I had back in the nineties, when I thought anything was possible. Back then I didn't think of all the reasons why my dreams couldn't come true.

And now when I listen to my students talk about what they hope their futures will be like, part of me is tempted to let them know what it will really be like. But I don't say anything. I don't want them to lose that hope.

What about you? Is there anything you miss from the 90s? Aside from the boy bands, I mean.