Discussion: Letter from a Millennial: Quit Telling Us We’re Not Special

orange

Quote:

Dear Baby Boomers and Generation X,
Quit telling us we’re not special.
Believe us, we bloody well know.

Earlier this month, Wellesley high school teacher David McCullough, Jr., delivered what was perhaps the world’s first commencement dirge to a crowd of teenagers on the first day of distinction many of them have ever experienced. Graduation from high school, he informed them, is a shiny induction to the hordes of mediocrity. McCullough even took it upon himself to remind the youth of their eventual funerals. (You know it’s a problematic speech when Rush Limbaugh loves it.) What parting words did the teacher have for those who survived his twelve-minute lesson on nihilism? The paradoxical exhortation to go forth and live extraordinary lives! Because, apparently, we can?

Here’s the rub: this speech is misplaced. It doesn’t belong in an address to the generation graduating into an economy that wipes its rear end with their high school diplomas. It doesn’t belong in an address to the generation who began running the rat race at age 4. It doesn’t apply to the generation that knows hard work guarantees nothing, that can’t hope to own a home before we have our own children, that pours coffee for other people’s parents for free in the name of gaining “work experience” through “internship.” David McCullough ought to have given that speech not to the graduates, but to their parents. We have not yet begun to shape the world: we are living in the one you created. And it’s killing us.

We stopped believing in our own specialness about the same time that we figured out who was the real Tooth Fairy. We grew up accruing praise, but not self-esteem. We learned that praise was a parenting strategy, not a sincere reward for merit. We stopped listening when you told us we were smart, brave, beautiful and unique. “You have to say that because you’re our parents,” we told you. You agreed.

So we looked to our teachers to learn where we stood. They couldn’t tell us the truth, either. “Did I get an A because I really wrote an exceptional essay, or because my teacher was afraid to deal with my parents?” We learned to suspect the latter.

When our teachers couldn’t tell us, we looked to our bosses. They despised us: the pampered, electronic generation who doesn’t know the meaning of hard work. When we worked hard, they were surprised. But they cynically assumed we were only working hard to build our resumes. That 16-year-old who went on a humanitarian relief trip to Haiti? Just another yuppie trying to pad her Harvard application. What would it take to convince you that we really care? Even the things we do for fun – playing sports, joining a band, riding a horse, writing a story – you have made into a competition. You’ve taken our creativity and told us that it matters not because it fulfills us, but because we can sell it to a college and reap the returns on our “investment” decades from now. Every little thing we do must be harnessed for profit. And you wonder why we seem to have no spontaneity left.

You have done our work for us, then called us lazy.
You have threatened our teachers, then told us “just an A” isn’t good enough.
You have gotten our jobs for us, and called us underachievers.
You have recorded everything we do, like researchers breeding a better mouse.
You have made us trophy-seekers, then mocked us for our walls of worthless awards.
You have pitted us against each other in a fight for success, which has become survival.
You have given us a world in which even our college degrees are meaningless because there are just too many of us.
You have made us depend on you. When we followed your instructions – went to the best schools, got the best grades, took the most internships and did the most independent study projects, met the right people and got into the right grad schools and chosen the right majors – we’ve ended up stuck in your basement because nobody in your generation is willing to pay us a living wage.
Then you called us the “boomerang” generation that refuses to grow up. When did we have the chance?

Somebody handed me this thing, but I don’t know what for.

We don’t think we’re special. We know that being “special” and a dollar won’t even buy us a cup of coffee anymore.

We learned something else along the way to becoming “special.” We learned that you depended on us. For validation. For certainty that you did everything right. If we did not succeed, it reflected badly on you. When you told us that you loved us and that we were smart, beautiful, creative, independent, and destined for greatness, what you implied was that we must be all of those things or that you would cease to love us. That our lives would cease to be worth anything. That we might as well die if we’re not the best.

We are drowsy with medications that we take to calm the fear that if we are anything less than the best, we will fall through the cracks. We spend our days fighting each other, always fearing our invisible duplicate who has everything we have on her resume, plus one. We don’t even know what’s down there in the zone of failure – we just know that our failure scares you so much, we’d better never dare to fall. So we work twice as many hours as you did for half the pay and come home to your taunts about how we’re twenty-six and still can’t afford an apartment.

And you know what else? We’re not all even this lucky.

A great many of us have no family home to return to. A great many of us are told not only that we’re lazy because we send text messages, but also that we’re lazy because of our race or class. We’re told that if we’ve ever been on welfare we come from inferior stock: lazy parents who breed entitled children. We try to go to school and pull ourselves up, somewhere nearer to equal footing with the children of the elite, and find that we’re up against insurmountable odds. We do our own homework, and we find ourselves at the bottom of the pile because other people’s parents have already helped them blow away the playing field. We struggle to earn our own money so we won’t be accused of expecting handouts, then watch our grades drop. If we pull our grades back up, we find that we’re up against the spotless records of other kids who were racking up sports trophies while we packed grocery bags and mowed lawns. Do we think we’re special just because we might get into college? A place where we’ll spend four years racking up debt in numbers that we’ve never seen? A place where we’ll sit through another commencement, look out over the sea of hats and realize how small we are yet again?

The truth is, we never thought we were special. You did.
You thought we were special because we were extensions of you.
You trained us to be the children you could brag about. Then, all of a sudden, everybody had one and we were no longer good enough, like outdated toys.
We were supposed to fulfill all your unrealized potential.
We were supposed to live your dreams.
We were supposed to have what you never had, do what you never did and be who you never were.
We can’t.
We know the congratulations are hollow, the awards meaningless, the degrees redundant, the ceremonies overwrought. We aren’t surprised; you are.
If there is anything that defines our generation, it’s knowing exactly how miserably our lives have failed to satisfy you.
We grew up imagining that we could be like you, but we’re not. You have prevented us from being like you.

There is a generation in America that believes in its own specialness. I will agree with that. But you’ve got its identity wrong.
It’s not us, it’s you.

You believe that you got where you are through hard work and self-reliance, not seeing that your parents created a postwar world where you could be free. Your parents suffered, and they showered their pent-up dreams on you: you grew up in love and luxury (well, some of you did). You were promised that you would live through the rainbow after the storm that was the World War. And you did – many of you lived great lives. But you got used to it.

When will you realize that your advice doesn’t work? Even McCullough, in the midst of stabbing our supposedly inflated egos, urged us not to do anything that we didn’t love or feel passionate about. You know what? We don’t have that luxury. That idea is a relic of days gone by. We are not the generation that finds itself in creative abandon. We are not the generation that goes off in search of personal fulfillment and the satisfaction of a job well done, only to come back millionaires. We are the generation that takes whatever work we can get, that knows no matter how hard we try we might not succeed. We know our lot, and it’s not nearly as bright as yours. Woodstock? Ha. Like any of us could afford to take time off to lie around smoking and writing songs. Don’t accuse us of your ennui: we’re too busy trying to find a job.

Now, we have not only to worry about how to find our way through the dried-up maze without vacant jobs or relief from our debts of education. We have our ticket for the train to success, but it’s run off the rails. And we have to start worrying about you.

How are we going to support you?
Social Security won’t prop you up anymore. Your own retirement savings? As reliable as our degrees, which is not at all. Do we have houses to mortgage? Investments to collect on? Assets to sell? For most of us, the answer is a belly laugh and a no.

So quit telling us we’re not special.
We know that. We’ve always known that. You’re the ones who can’t accept the disappointment.

Source: http://phoenixandolivebranch.wordpre...e-not-special/

I may not agree with everything here but it does a decent job of attacking the negatives thrown at those born between 1980s and 2000s, or rather Generation Y. This would probably include most of the posters on this forum. Food for thought.

Sunderland 4ever

Kudos to this article. Never stop posting Ke.

Quote:

So we looked to our teachers to learn where we stood. They couldn’t tell us the truth, either. “Did I get an A because I really wrote an exceptional essay, or because my teacher was afraid to deal with my parents?” We learned to suspect the latter.

When our teachers couldn’t tell us, we looked to our bosses. They despised us: the pampered, electronic generation who doesn’t know the meaning of hard work. When we worked hard, they were surprised. But they cynically assumed we were only working hard to build our resumes. That 16-year-old who went on a humanitarian relief trip to Haiti? Just another yuppie trying to pad her Harvard application. What would it take to convince you that we really care? Even the things we do for fun – playing sports, joining a band, riding a horse, writing a story – you have made into a competition. You’ve taken our creativity and told us that it matters not because it fulfills us, but because we can sell it to a college and reap the returns on our “investment” decades from now. Every little thing we do must be harnessed for profit. And you wonder why we seem to have no spontaneity left.

I particularly felt identified on that part.

orange

Seriously, there are so many studies that show that when you hinder creativity as a child, it's really hard to break out of the cycle. There are too many people getting into college, if not younger, thinking they deserve everything and are different, just because they've always been supported by their family and friends as such. It's not just their fault, though. There have been parents who actually continue to give that validation, when the child never truly learns to solve problems on their own, and then at some random point, they're expected to "grow up." Then again, it ends up back on society as thinking that because they are only in high school, or only in college, or only their child, they need that special attention still. It's an endless cycle.

It's why I value programs where people are encouraged to be independent and different, just because it's so hard to get that nowadays where it actually matters.

Sunderland 4ever

This is just a post to explain why I felt identified with the part I quoted.

When I was on the last year of high school, all of my classmates were preparing for the university studying on academies. Now, before continuing, It is worth mentioning that the most competitive universities here are public, making it even harder to enter, and in order to enter students must take a 120-question entrance exam in 3 hours. Back to the topic, the truth is, regular education my country offers is so mediocre to competitive university standards that studying on an academy would pretty much increase your possibilities of entering to the university up to a... 98 percent? If you have a lot of money, chances are higher you can study abroad, but in my classmates' context, no one has that lot of money.

As my classmates were studying to prepare for the entrance exam, even on recesses, I couldn't avoid asking myself about my future, which I never ever planned, even though I remember talking about it several times, I never ever really have planned it. Not even now.

High school finished and all of my friends got crazy to take the entrance exam; some others still prepared for it on academies. Me? Ha, I was just studying English because I liked it, but as I mentioned, I never ever planned what I would do with that on the future.

Years passed - three years actually - and I became a teacher. Most of my friends are now halfway done with the university; none of them showing signs of enjoying it. I don't blame them, it must be stressful as hell, especially knowing that their parents expect something from them because of their parents investment on their son/daughter education.

After thinking about that I've realized that if I don't study something else, I might get stuck in one place as now certain jobs only accept people no older than 25. Will they be successful after so many years of studying? Will I be stuck and I won't be able to find better job opportunities? Well, so far I have those questions in my mind. But somehow I've managed to be what I am, which wasn't easy. I don't know how but I have done it. Will the future be the same? Who knows. At least I thank my parents for being flexible and liberal about my taking of decisions and thank myself for not exceeding such degree of confidence.

orange

It's pretty much the same deal with american public high schools versus private schools.

I'm glad your parents were able to get you to pursue what you liked, but raise you well enough to be able to realize what you would need to do to keep up with the world. I find that a healthy balance. You either forget about your responsibilities and pretend that it's okay you're studying something without thinking of the consequences or you end up thinking only the consequences should drive your decision. Your parents left all of that to yourself, which is admirable.

Not everyone has that kind of opportunity though and that's why I love this entry.

Fireman25

I agree with everything he said. For those people who are angry at him for what he said, they are taking it the wrong way. You have people out here who think everything should be handed to them just because they come from a wealthy family or they graduated from a top University and they think they deserve special treatment. Perfect example, I read an article about this woman, who graduated from Harvard, and now she is planning to sue Harvard just because she can't find a job. The world is not easy. You have to start from the bottom and work your way up, some people think they should get a free pass.

Parents, who upset by this, need a reality check . It's fine to motivate your kid to do well in life, but at the at same time, don't act like the world is only here for your child.

evfanjake

oh my god, I was reading this and I found myself identifying with so much of this.

especially this:

Quote:

We spend our days fighting each other, always fearing our invisible duplicate who has everything we have on her resume, plus one.

Like this describes my my entire last year.

WIG-SNATCHER

Why did this make me cry

This hit so close to home with me.

family.guy123

that was depressing

eli's_rhythm

I can't decide if I love it or not. It's pretty melodramatic and one-sided.

JungleDisturbia

This was like one of the most depressing things I've ever read.

But it was still a good read.

HandsOn

You always post the best articles, orange.

orange

Quote:

Originally posted by Fireman25

I agree with everything he said. For those people who are angry at him for what he said, they are taking it the wrong way. You have people out here who think everything should be handed to them just because they come from a wealthy family or they graduated from a top University and they think they deserve special treatment. Perfect example, I read an article about this woman, who graduated from Harvard, and now she is planning to sue Harvard just because she can't find a job. The world is not easy. You have to start from the bottom and work your way up, some people think they should get a free pass.

Parents, who upset by this, need a reality check . It's fine to motivate your kid to do well in life, but at the at same time, don't act like the world is only here for your child.

The author would be be arguing that she is suing Harvard because she was encouraged to spend money for the well-known universities, trying to get into that universities, trying to stand out enough to get people to remember her during grade school, and well just feel like she's succeeding as the daughter. It's extremely aggravating and a constant reminder that there is just too much expected of this generation. Still, the fact that she thinks she can sue a school for not giving her a job is what McCullough was mentioning originally and I think it's good to consider both sides. She may be silly for thinking she can sue a university but she grew up thinking such things would happen. It's a two-way street that people fail to recognize.

Quote:

Originally posted by eli's_rhythm

I can't decide if I love it or not. It's pretty melodramatic and one-sided.

I can see that but I like it a lot because it opens so much room for discussion. I know for me, it helped me realize my view in a broad perspective.

BettyWhite

I started reading this but couldn't bring myself to finish it. Rolling my eyes to the heavens tbqh. Just more typical teenage prattle bitching about the older generations bitching about the younger generation. Yaaaaaawn.

shenzi

The whole thing is pretty whiny. And the fact that he keeps saying "we" bothers me because I don't identify with any of this.

orange

Quote:

Originally posted by BettyWhite

I started reading this but couldn't bring myself to finish it. Rolling my eyes to the heavens tbqh. Just more typical teenage prattle bitching about the older generations bitching about the younger generation. Yaaaaaawn.

I see you would rather have older generations just bitch about younger generations

Well, you kids who just recently joined ATRL think you're alllll that

Quote:

Originally posted by shenzi

The whole thing is pretty whiny. And the fact that he keeps saying "we" bothers me because I don't identify with any of this.

Did you hear what McCullough actually was saying? If you try to defend or disagree, of course it would be whiny. McCullough is pretty much putting down how Generation Y thinks about being special/deserving of everything and the argument from this article is trying to explain why it may be coming off that way.

arkl

I don't know how I would react to this but this is a spot on attack at the oxymoronic behaviour of adults building us up to be great only to reduce us with their mocking of how "we'll never amount to anything."

jinzo

Article's pretty much the truth. We're only growing up in a world that others have created for us.

We can only try our best, but the existing structures hold us back. Hits home especially as I'm sending out CVs to vacancies I know will have had hundreds, thousands of other applications just like my own.

Eric.

For some reason, this reminds me of last week at Financial Math class, when our teacher told us something very interesting: "You have to understand how the process of your machine works so you can find the mistakes, fix them and it will make more profit for you in every cycle." It's a concept applied to the subject she teaches, but also to life. We become employees of what has been handed to us and think everything we'll come easy after we finish college. Not at all. Since most of the people on that class are Enterprise Administration students, she encouraged us to find out what are our priorities (on which activities are we spending our time and money the most?) and check if they are helping us get to that ultimate goal we want by helping us close those cycles proper and successfully.

Something very compelling the article tells us is that the world that's been constructed for us is no longer a wold where you can live off of your passion, unless you're really good and ****ing go for it, of course, but passion can only do so much and no matter how much you believe in your idea we're still worried. That something that's telling us we're wasting our time and we should really go after something that can provide us some linear stability.

When we're children we have a section of our brains that analyzes our actions/words before we do/say them that is mostly undeveloped. As we grow up, that section develops and we're molded to our parents' and society's example of correct behavior and therefore hindering our way of thinking in such way we can't think out of the box very much. We cling ourselves to a routine and rarely see anything different from what we see everyday, our social conduct tends to go with introversion (but many get past that) and we basically become the pawns of somebody else's machine. All of this in our heads and we might not even notice it.

I could prove that myself the other day when I was a that very same teacher's office and her daughter told me that she imagined the office spinning around and going into a different dimension. It might be a small thing, but the way she said it felt like it could've happened at any moment after she said it. As we grow up we lose that kind of drive to believe we can make things possible by simply conforming with what we're given, instead of exploring, experimenting and keeping an open mind to everything, even to things we might think we dislike. Just because we want to make our parents happy. It feels like they say to you "I fought my way through, sacrificed a lot for you and now you have to be a blueprint of what I want you to be (or, in worst cases, what I wanted to be)." Sure you want good grades and prosperity, but are you really learning, are you really satisfied with the results beyond the numbers themselves?

Jameson Teqkilla

I identify with some of this, but not a lot of it. I struggle a lot with the whole concept of living in a society with all these arbitrary rules we didn't have any art in making. And we as a generation have seen a lot more of a negative view of "The American Dream" than any before us. Because media is so self-guided now, it's much easier to be cynical and distrustful of government or the future.