this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting... Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn't grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don't seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.
I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.
One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know. Saying I don't know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with "but I will find out" or "can you help/explain it". Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.
This is just the majority of people, not specific to any generation. Our minds are predisposed to use inductive reasoning to explain the world around us. We see something new and our brain immediately begins to make inferences based on prior information we believe we know (I say it this way cause our memories are incredibly faulty) that we think is relevant or comparable.
It's essentially the Dunning Kruger effect: we think we know more than we do and, because of this, believe we can simply assume correctly about other things we know nothing about.
It's an incredibly bad habit that is supposed to be trained out of us through our education systems but we all know how incredibly faulty those systems are.
The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn't know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.
Hadn’t realized what a gem “I don’t know” is until waaaaay too late. Saying “I don’t know” still often feels like a personal, albeit public, moral failure. Which is so dumb. But feels like it makes so much sense.
I think about the Lucky 10,000 XKCD comic all the time.
As a Louisiana resident. I feel ya neighbor.
I'm a displaced Texan (living in Holland) and boy-howdy, what I would do for a #1 Whataburger meal right now...
I work in a completely different field, but you last paragraph mostly sounds to me like a typical young person entering the job market. There is this false sense og confidence, pride and know it all when graduating. I've just seen it a few too many times and I remember how confident and skilled I thought I was when I got out. At the same time, there's some anxiety and fear of doing a bad job and admitting fault may make you seem weak or unskilled and you want to impress the mentors and blah blah blah.
It is a bit funny to remember how I thought I was going to be helpful to colleagues who were way more experienced than me and then years later I'm being talked at by soon to be graduates who are trying to be helpful by sharing tips with me that I already do on the daily or don't do because I learned years ago they don't work. And when I try to give them advice or instructions it's like they just space out and hear what they think I mean and then do something completely different from what I ask of them, haha. I can't be mad at it, because it's just a part of learning and growing into your career. I think it would be a mistake to think that a newly graduated person in any field will be able to hit the ground running without any hiccups.
Maybe I'm just a bit of a softie when it comes to young people, but I just remember how eager I was when I was in their shoes and how incorrect my assumptions were when it came to what my elders expected of me. It all came gradually as I learned how to be a professional and how to solve tasks and find my rhythm. I imagine new generations on the market can't be much different from myself in that regard. 😊