Dependent Child or Independent Adult?

Regardless of whether you think the health care reform bill (link to actual bill, in case you wanted to read thousands of pages of legalese) is the right or wrong kind of change our health care system needs, there are huge changes affecting pretty much everyone’s life.

I want to focus not on the pros and cons of the bill, but on one of the least insured demographics: young people under the age of 26. This demographic is one of the least insured for a variety of reasons, including: unable to get coverage on parents’ policy, unable to get affordable coverage at new jobs, unable to get immediate coverage at new jobs (a sort of trial period to make sure you’re sticking with the company), and even young people’s sense of invincibility (I’m healthy, so why bother with insurance when I have a dozen other bills to pay?). Under the new law, persons under the age of 26 can be on their parents’ health care policy even if they are no longer attending school.

This change is huge for me because I graduated two years ago, I have not yet found full time employment with health care benefits, and my parents’ policy won’t cover adult children (is that an oxymoron?) who are no longer in school. The new bill, for me, means I can go to the doctor without paying for the whole visit out of my own pocket. But it also means that I’m still dependent on my parents.

The change to allow adult children coverage on their parents’ health insurance raises some interesting questions about when children are no longer children? When do we get to be adults?

Here are some common rights of passage into adulthood:

• The freedom of a driver’s license at 16 (in Minnesota, it’s older in some states)
• The opportunity to have a voice in government by voting at 18
• The honor and duty of serving one’s country through military service at 18
• The (sometimes foolishly) fun thrill of gambling our first dollar at 18 (in Minnesota, it’s 21 in some states)
• The satisfaction and responsibility that comes with our first legal alcoholic drink at 21

Then there are those rights of passage that come at different ages, but generally happen for the first time between the ages of 18 and 35: buying a car, owning a home, having a baby.

And what about being considered an adult in the church? Once you’ve had your confirmation or bar/bat mitzvah you have adult status in your faith – and that can be as early as 13!

Is having one’s own health care coverage a new right of passage into adulthood? Are we destined to be not quite full-fledged adults until we’re 26? Is someone who starts working full time right after high school and gets his own health insurance more of an adult than someone who goes to college or even gets his career started while remaining on his parent’s coverage?

I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly mature and independent person – someone who could take care of herself without mom and dad’s help by early adolescence. But all this talk about defining when a child becomes an adult has me wondering when I’ll ever be considered an adult in the eyes of the majority?

Obviously adulthood and becoming an adult is a process, and for some people the process is longer than others. The length of the process is affected by not only one’s personal maturity level and personal motivation (picture the 35 year old living in his parent’s basement eating Cheetos and watching Wrestlemania), but also by social norms, economic stability, and government mandate.

I’ll tackle government mandate first: by law you can and cannot do certain things until you reach a certain age (see the first rights of passage list above). Done.

Social norms and economic stability are ever-changing factors, and thus are a little harder to define and impose on a vast majority. So I’m going to make some generalizations here, but please don’t take them as the be-all-end-all definitions.

Let’s consider getting married and having kids. Back in the day it was normal for couples to get married right after high school and start having kids. Now, with opportunities like college and a more socially acceptable attitude towards birth control and cohabitation before marriage, a lot of couples don’t get married until their late 20s or 30s. As I said, this is not a be-all-end-all definition – I have several friends under the age of 25 who are married and own homes. This is where economic stability comes in. My friends who are already married (or planning to marry soon) have at least one person in the relationship with a stable income.

In discussing this topic with older friends and relatives, they said they can remember aunts and uncles or other relatives who, after getting married and in some instances after having kids, where forced to move back in with a parent because they couldn’t afford to live in their own home. Were these distant relatives any less of adults because they lived at a parent’s home? Am I any less of an adult than my married friends because in six months I’ll more than likely be back on my parents’ insurance policy?

The new law mandates that insurance companies must allow persons under the age of 26 coverage on their parents’ health insurance, but young people don’t have to accept that coverage. Some will take the coverage because economically it makes sense. What about the social acceptability of the matter? Not that 25-year-olds are going to broadcast to the world that they are insured by their parents (or maybe they will on Twitter). But it’s hard to reconcile with one’s self the complexity of being dependent children when in so many other areas of our lives we are independent adults.

A long time ago a young man may have entered adulthood at 18 by leaving the family farm, getting married, and settling into a new life of his own. Nowadays, it’s much more complicated and it seems adulthood is indefinable, at least not by making one age or life event the mile marker for everyone.  Just because you can vote or go to a bar, doesn't mean you are a fully independent or fully mature adult. Everyone reaches adulthood on their own time.

So is 26 really the age when most young people are able to reasonably afford their own health insurance? What if my career doesn’t take off (or for that matter start) until I’m 25 or 26? Will I be able to afford “adult health insurance”? Should the government or for that matter insurance agencies mandate when individuals can afford their own insurance? I guess we’ll see in the next couple of years how much this health care reform really does for allowing us kids to become economically responsible adults.

Old Fashioned Thank You Notes in a Digital Age

It is obvious that one should write a thank you note following an job interview. In the digital, fast-paced age we live in, what is not so obvious is how to deliver said thank you note.

Case and point: I went on a job interview last week and dutifully wrote and mailed thank you notes to each of my interviewers within a few hours of the interview's completion. Note that I said, "mailed," not e-mailed, but actually drove to the post office and dropped handwritten notes into the big blue mail box outside. I was confident that my interviewers would get the thank you notes before making their final decisions as they had said I would hear back about the position early next week. However, decisions were made sooner than expected and I received notification that they offered someone else the job within an hour of going to the post office.

But what about my thank you notes?!?! I realize the notes themselves probably are not the deciding factor in whether I get a job or not, but the notes were now a bit irrelevant (I mentioned in the thank you notes that I looked forward to their decision and reiterated my interest and suitability for the position). So I quickly e-mailed my interviewers to thank them, adding that I had put handwritten notes in the mail just hours before and amending my "I look forward to your decision" to "I will stay in touch and hope to be considered for future positions." Since my e-mail was sent late on Friday, I haven't heard back yet, but I hope that my "amendment" is appreciated and not viewed as an "oops."

However, I can't help but wonder, 'what if I had just e-mailed thank yous to my interviewers?' It certainly would have avoided the need to amend my handwritten statements, but e-mail seems so impersonal to me. There's something about getting a handwritten note that seems so much more real and thoughtful.

Perhaps the solution is to still write handwritten thank yous, but perhaps within an hour of the interview send a quick e-mail thank you, too. Is this overkill? No, not if you make each version of your thank you a bit unique - for example, the e-mail could be a few short lines reiterating your interest and thanking the interviewer for their time; the handwritten note can include more specific information ("I especially appreciate you taking time to explain X and share more about Z").

Maybe the future is sending e-cards to interviewers and recruiters? Given that a lot of that kind of e-mail ends up in junk boxes or marked as spam, I don't know if that will ever take off. I also have yet to come across a real classy e-card. If you have, please share.

My personal criteria for sending thank you notes is more or less this: send electronically while still in the interviewing process, but always send a final handwritten thank you once the process is over. I've sent e-mail thank you notes while I was still interviewing (i.e. I made it through a first round and was moving on to the second), and later sent handwritten notes once the process was complete and decisions were being made. I've even sent a thank you to an interviewer via LinkedIn because I didn't have his e-mail address, only the generic company address I sent my resume to. But once I had been in the office for an interview, I sent a handwritten note. Moving forward, I will definitely include a third thank you via e-mail a short time after the interview - something concise, just to show the interview I appreciated their time and to avoid having to make amendments to handwritten notes.

How do you thank your interviewers? Are e-mail thank you notes the way of the future? Do any recruiters or interviewers out there care one way or another if you get handwritten or e-mailed thank you notes? Have you ever thanked an interviewer on LinkedIn or Twitter?