Generation Y: Everybody Wins or Everybody Loses?

How often have those of us who are now in our 20s and 30s heard that the plight of our generation is that it is full of spoiled, delusional, entitled people that can’t accept reality because we were all given trophies as children? Well, if you haven’t heard it, you’re truly amongst the privileged minority. You can check out the latest Huffington Post article circling the Internet here, but fair warning, it will likely get you a bit fired up.

When Adam Weinstein crafted his poignant response to the above post, I couldn’t wait to share his thoughts and vent my own annoyance. I was born in ’83, and though I rarely witnessed these “everyone wins” events, I have been hearing this excuse since I was in elementary school. Twenty years later, the excuse is old and pathetic, and just as invalid now as it was then. Here’s the reality. 

Everyone Gets a Trophy

Sure, this happened from time to time. But it didn’t dominate our childhood experience and it didn’t instill in us the deluded warm-fuzzies that the older generation would like to think it did. In my experience, it had the opposite effect.

I can remember one occasion in my youth in which I ran a race and was given a participation ribbon at the end. I was confused at first, and once I figured out what it was, I didn’t want to take it. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I hadn’t won, and on top of it, these people felt so sorry for me that they were giving me a piece of cloth that meant nothing. The ribbon was a piece of garbage and I knew it as well as they did. Was I supposed to proudly hang this ribbon on my wall? Show it to my friends? “Hey, I participated in something one time!” The experience certainly didn’t make me feel special or entitled. I felt like even more of a loser.

Did everyone who participated in these types of events feel that way? Well, I can’t speak for the rest of my generation, but I’m hard-pressed to believe that most children that I grew up with appreciated these “special” award ceremonies. We were competitive. We were driven. We wanted to win, and we wanted to be recognized when we did. And, despite the older generations' best attempts to the contrary, we understood when we didn’t. We were kids, but we weren’t stupid, and we aren’t anymore ignorant now, either.

I ask of you, who are the deluded ones in this scenario: the kids participating in the events, or the adults hosting them who apparently think that giving the whole group a prize makes the individual feel special and entitled?

Ok, maybe Lucy's a little deluded, but that doesn't mean the whole group is, just like giving us all ribbons doesn't make us all winners.

Everyone Goes to College
Yes, most of the people I grew up with went to college. But why is that? Well, because we studied,  worked hard, and were told by parents, educators, and economists alike that we had to go to college if we ever hoped to make enough money to make a decent living. A high school diploma was going to get us nowhere. In fact, a bachelor’s degree probably wasn’t going to be enough either. The job market was tough and competitive, and many jobs required graduate education.

We were told that student loan debt was “good debt,” and that it would take no time to pay off those loans once we got the high-paying jobs that a college degree was supposed to grant us. But for many of us, that’s just not what happened. The economy went south while many of us were pursuing those degrees, and we left college with fancy diplomas and a whole lot of student loans with ridiculously high fixed interest rates that make paying them down nearly impossible.

But the critics would like to make us feel stupid for thinking our hard earned degrees would actually amount to something. Shame on us for listening to the silly adults who were handing us trophies for just being there. 

Everyone Waits to Get Married, Buy a House & Start a Family
What the majority seems to gloss over is the fact that we are dealing with reality.  Day in and day out, we go to our jobs (generally in a field that doesn’t correlate with our expensive degrees), we work overtime, get second and third jobs, and hope that we make enough money to cover the bills.

We sacrifice. We choose to wait to get married, buy a house (despite ridiculously low interest rates), and start a family because we recognize that we just can’t afford it right now. We worry about the fact that we won’t be able to give our children (if we can ever afford to have any) the care they need because we will still be making these student loan payments years from now. Retirement planning can't even factor into the equation. We’ve put our lives on hold to try to make ends meet, to try to do the responsible thing. We’ve left home behind, taken jobs in other states, other countries, to try to get ahead, and often it’s still not enough.

The reality of our situation is depressing, and yes, sometimes the weight of all of this makes us unhappy. We recognize that there are individuals out there in worse situations, and that people before us have struggled to be successful, and people after us will as well. We are not misled trophy children expecting rewards just for showing up, thinking that "magically" someone will just decide we're special and hand us some money and recognition just for being us. We are hardworking individuals that were just handed circumstances and an economy in which it’s difficult to prosper. And most of us are dealing with it in a very logical, realistic way. (Maybe that fancy education was good for something). Sure, there are people that feel entitled in our generation, just as there are in any, but it's a shame to think that this is how people choose to define all of us.

So if degrading Generation Y, calling us yuppies, GYPSYs and trophy kids makes you feel better and (somehow) less responsible for the difficult times that we’re dealing with today, go for it. But I hope you recognize that you are just deluding yourselves. This is just another one of your sad little award ceremonies where everyone who was lucky enough to be born in an older generation apparently is "special" and gets a prize for not being born in the ‘80s or ‘90s. Congrats!

A *special* note to those of you out there who understand these difficult times, have commiserated with us Millennials, given us valuable advice, and supported us throughout the years (whether emotionally, financially, or both), we are truly grateful and extend a heartfelt thank you.