She Says Rizz. I Say What?
Gentelligence in action: This editor's note by Donna Boen '83 MTSC '96 about working with her Gen Z designer recently won a 2024 CASE Circle of Excellence Bronze Award
She Says Rizz. I Say What?
This editor's note by Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96, editor of the Miamian alumni magazine, ran in the fall/winter 2023 Miamian. This week it won a national 2024 CASE Circle of Excellence Award Bronze Award for Writing - Column or Opinion Piece.
I sit roughly 5 feet away from a 23-year-old crackerjack designer, a whiz-kid who dyes her hair purple. Eggplant purple. (My hair is strawberry blonde. Mostly.)
If we rolled back from our desks at the same time, we’d bang into each other. Fortunately, we get along great, despite our difference in ages. Yeah, no. I’m not telling you my age, but here’s a clue. Cassidy graduated from Miami in 2022. I’m Class of 1983.
She’s smart and funny and creative, good at her job and lightning fast. And me? I like people who are smart and funny and creative, good at their jobs, and lightning fast.
With me being a Baby Boomer and her a Gen Z, we don’t always understand each other. Sometimes she gives me a blank stare, and other times I reciprocate.
When I said, “This project is like making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” she didn’t respond. “You don’t know what that means, do you?” I said and explained.
Vice versa, when I told her I didn’t know the first speaker for this year’s Lecture Series and that he was the co-creator of some show called Phineas and Ferb, she proceeded to perform the theme song, by memory, to the animated TV series of her youth (her younger youth).
“There’s a hundred and four days of summer vacation
Then school comes along just to end it.”
By the way, the lecture in Hall Auditorium was standing-room-only.
I’ve not sung any theme songs to Cassidy, for which she’s grateful, but I have taught her that apostrophes never, ever change direction, whether they’re part of a contraction or filling in for a missing number, and the word “unique” never takes an adjective. Nope. You’re either unique or you’re not.
She also knows more Miami history now than all of her college friends — combined.
Just this morning, I regaled her with stories about single-sex dorms, visitation hours (“No way!”), and getting a “vis vie” from the person sitting bell desk if they caught you. (“Bell what?”) Cassidy, in turn, tries to keep me current with news about the Bengals and Taylor Swift.
We both read the daily New York Times summary now so we know what the other person is referencing. For instance, the Times explained that Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year (that’s Oxford as in the dictionary, not the Ohio city) is “rizz,” a “colloquial word, defined as style or charm. Believed to have been taken from the middle of ‘charisma.’ ”
Her response? “No cap.”
My response? “Huh?”