Anxious vs. Eager

I recently had someone in their early twenties correct me on my use of the word anxious, when I should have been using the word eager. I said something like “I am anxious to see your vacation pictures”, when I should have said “I am eager to see your vacation pictures”. A quick Google search told me I should use 'anxious' when I am worried or uneasy about the subject. I should use 'eager' when I have desire, or I look forward to the subject on hand. I’m not sure, but I suspect I have used 'anxious' incorrectly for most of my life.

While I was mildly embarrassed to learn of my error, I was thrilled that someone in their early twenties knew the correct grammar. It turns out they had studied journalism. This brings me to my point. Marketing Research is one of those fields where good writing skills are critical. But we find the youth coming into our industry have poor writing, grammatical and spelling skills. It’s not completely their fault. With spell check, grammar check, auto-fill, and all of the shortcut lingo used for texting, chat and email; they are naturally developing bad habits. The same thing happened to math skills many years ago, when calculators became common.

Unfortunately, my expectations for a college graduate have lowered over the years. They are not entering the workforce with the basic set of skills that employers use to take for granted. We work with our new hires to improve their writing skills. Most of the time, when an error is pointed out to them, they realize the mistake and learn from it. But more and more, they look at us in confusion. They don’t really understand the error, and they don’t understand why it is important. Maybe we will start interviewing journalism majors for new hires.