Gen-Y Mindset: What a 'Waste'

Teaching the Gen-Y allows me to observe their behavior and understand how they think. I personally find that it is important to study their attitude towards assignments or work. This could explain why many companies have been questioning about the quality of work from Gen-Y.

I gave an assignment to my students this semester where they have to form a group of 5 and identify a company of their choice for examining the marketing strategies. After a week, they came back to me with a company they have chosen.

Everything looks fine but not until I asked them how many companies they have selected as alternatives before they make their decision to choose one of it. The answer given by almost all the groups.... one. Basically, they don't have any alternatives but decided on a company that they know and thought it is the only company that is the best for the assignment.

So, what is the reason and why don't they look for more alternatives before making a choice? I want to know why. The answer I got from them are:

"We thought this company we "know" is the best.
No time.
We want to focus on one company"

From their feedback, I learned that they do not like choices when it comes to a task or assignments. They find that it is a waste of their time and effort if the companies that they investigated were not chosen. Meaning to say that if given a choice, the students do not see it as an advantage but more work is needed to identify the alternatives. They are lack inquiry skills and do not see the benefits of the exploratory approach in the learning process.

In life, we need to make a lot of decisions to solve our everyday problems; and we always have many choices/alternatives to solve a problem. While we explore alternatives, we learn and improve our skills in making a decision. Nothing is a waste if we keep exploring the alternatives/choices; even if it is not the best choice for solving the current problem it can be used for the future.

Learning is a process. If one only focuses on the goals and ignores the process of achieving the goals, then it is really "WASTED"!