A Millennial’s Take on Millennials
Millennials, you either love us or you hate us. From everything I read and see online it seems to be the latter. As a millennial it’s hard to sit back and watch the constant shade thrown at my generation because I wonder, are we misunderstood or do we really suck as much as everyone says?
To answer that question I think we should answer a more important question first. “Who are millennials?”
I’m not an expert on millennials and I didn’t study psychology yet I’m a millennial. So, that makes me semi-qualified to start a series on all things millennial on Medium, right? I can’t be the voice for my whole generation but perhaps some insight from one Millennial can change the opinions of a few who highly dislike us.
The Confusion and the Age Gap
Growing up I was told I was in Generation Y, someone born in the 80’s-90’s ,to baby boomer parents/gen x-ers, who understood the technology shift. Fast forward to sometime near the end of my college days and the term “Millennial Generation” is floating around in the hallways. Professors would whisper this phrase like it was some damn disease that was going to infect the whole campus.
I never associated myself as a Millennial, I thought I was Generation Y because I grew up in the 90’s playing Gameboy and watching TRL, but then I learned Generation Y wasn’t “real” and that it was now grouped under the term Millennials. To me, it was just another bumper sticker that society was sticking on my forehead.
One day my journalism professor posed this question in class, “How many of you want to write for a newspaper or magazine when you graduate?”
As you would imagine, in a lecture hall with 300 students, arms and hands shot straight up with grinning smiles.
“Well, maybe 2 of you will actually become journalists and maybe a handful of you will actually write for a living. You know why? Because your generation, the Millennial Generation, is killing print. There won’t be any jobs for you, you’re all about the internet and cell phones and everything techie. You’re killing our economy and in turn you won’t make it very far. Most of you will fail and crawl back to your parents who will just continue to spoil you.”
The room sat in silence, hands went down, and I swallowed down my dream of publishing my work and working as a journalist. I wanted to cry and walked back to my dorm realizing that my Millennial bumper sticker was actually a tattoo, and it wasn’t a cool one.
Maybe that was the millennial in me being too emotional, as some would say, but this certainty that my generation sucked also sparked something in me to prove everyone wrong.
I looked up this “Millennial Generation” term, back in 2008, and saw that Millennials spanned in age with birthdates in the 80’s to early 2000’s. I was being grouped with people who were 10 years older than me and my then 8 year old sister. No one, I thought, would ever take this seriously. You couldn’t group 8 year old kids with people who were at max 30 and say they were all in the SAME age group. Thirty year olds at that point where dealing with the crashing economy and bank corruption, 20 year olds were still transitioning from MySpace to Facebook, while 8 year olds were figuring out how to use iPods. Our interests and mindsets were not aligned as a generation.
What the Millennial?
So you may be thinking “Who cares?” or “Here’s another millennial complaining about something!”
I’d like to look it as explaining why it matters, why these stereotypes may have hindered people within this generation.
The workforce was the first place I truly experienced the distaste for my generation, which makes sense. High school and college I was surrounded by my peers 99% of the time.
I’ll get into my workplace experiences in another post but to sum it up, for most millennials entering the workplace kind of sucks. It doesn’t suck because of our title or the amount of money we are making, nor because of the tasks put on our desk. It sucks because of the stigmas surrounding us and those who believe it without doubt.
I was deemed:
- lazy
- broke
- entitled
- ignorant
- narcissistic
- irresponsible
- easily offended/over emotional
- the end of the world as we know it
I was fighting against stigmas that only existed because people who were 5–10 years older than me, but still deemed “Millennials”, had created these stigmas with their actions. I wasn’t offended but I was annoyed and it was frustrating to be told how you were without being given the fair chance to show how you really were. Yet, I did have a few bosses and team leads who were different, they were open to learning about me personally before putting me into a box.
For a long time I really didn’t like older Millennials, I blamed them for all the stigmas. Then during the election this year, when millennials started to complain about the election results (I understood why but IMO the action was so exaggerated), I started to hate younger millennials for feeding into so many stereotypes. Yet, as a 20-something year old I DID have some of those qualities and honestly, all humans have possessed at least ONE of those qualities at some point in their lives.
However, maybe it’s not other millennials faults. Maybe we are like this because somewhere along the planning of America, consumerism and it’s ideas screwed us.
Baby Boomers and the “American Dream”
Most adults in my life are baby boomers, adults who grew up in a world where there was war, poverty, and consumer marketing. Baby Boomers were sold this idea, this dream, that in America if you worked hard and followed the plan you would be successful.
What was the plan? Go to school, get a well-paying job, get married, buy a house, buy a car, have a child, retire happily. No questions asked, this was a happy life.
Generation X, their children, where taught this plan by their parents and most followed suit. However, they also where like the ugly-step kid in America and where kind of neglected. They had issues with the economy, foreign policies, etc; but they still tried to follow the path to happiness.
You know what everyone kind of figured out along the way? The plan and all the stuff in it really didn’t make anyone happy long term. People aren’t cookie cutter and the plan isn’t for everyone. So, they told their children. Millennials.
Yes, most of us were told we could excel at anything and everything. Some of us, not all of us (I never got one), were given participation trophies. However, we were also told to pick a career that made us happy. We were told to not put our jobs first. We were told to live a life that made us happy.
Finding Happiness
So maybe, just maybe, the biggest problems is that my generation may be the first generation to say no.
We are saying no to the path of happiness that has been laid out by society and we are doing things our own way and that may be hard for older generations to understand.
Some of us are skipping college to start our own companies, some are graduating and traveling the world for a year before getting a job, and some are making a living from playing video games in their basements. And, it’s okay. Straying from the path shouldn’t necessarily make us lazy, or narcissistic, entitled, or any other stereotypes.
So, if you want to get to know one millennial follow me and read my posts. I’ll be doing my best to explain my own millennial life choices, how I found happiness, and combating and trying to understand myself the buzz and curiosity surrounding millennials.
