When you talk to adults who have jobs, families, and mortgages about college: do you ever feel like they’re just trying to terrify the shit out of you? When you say, “I’m an art major” and they say, “Oh, have fun being a starving artist, ha! No money in it, but if you love what you do, who cares about money?” Or when you tell them that you’re majoring in a career that’s less than dreamy, such as accounting or law or medical billing and they say: “That’s stable.” That’s stable? That’s it? John, in the HR department at AT&T is probably stable, but I doubt that those birth control glasses and ties that cover his crotch can make me blush. They make it sound like we’re either dreaming too big or we’re settling.

Either way, it’s terrifying to talk to adults about our futures. First of all, the one thing that is sure about the future is that it is so abysmally unsure. It’s terrifying that we don’t know if our careers will succeed, if we’ll even get a job out of college, or if we’ll even finish college (finals are hard). Although we spend hours studying, drinks gallons of caffeine, and take more anti-anxiety pills that Joan Rivers throughout her early comedy days; the one thing that is universally true is, no matter what we say about why we do it (whether we love the field we pursue to work in or are only going to college to please our parents), the fear of failure can cripple young adults.

This generation is different. Whether we really are ‘whiny, entitled shits’ like so many forty-something-year-olds have barked at me or we’re genuinely smarter than ‘they’ want us to be, the fact is that we’re changing the way life is lived. That terrifies people who did things the old fashioned way. So maybe that’s why they make our future plans feel inferior: they’re scared that we will take over the world.

And damn it, we sure as shit can.

We have our hands on amazing technology; we can learn the name, birth date, and spouse of any American President in a matter of seconds. For the most part, that technology is used for good reasons. We’re learning new, faster methods to do everyday things. We are the generation that, in 30 years, will be holding places in the HOR, Senate, Presidency, and that scares these stuck-in-their-ways modern day adults.

Why? Well, due to this fancy pansy technology, we’re finding new ways to make money. We aren’t cramming our lives into the usual nine-to-five misery. It’s absolutely mind boggling to my grandfather that parents can make money from home, and not through farming. Bloggers, YouTubers, crafters, anyone who basically has any talent doing anything – they can make money from it. So suck it, baby boomers.

So the next time you’re at your grandmother’s Christmas party and your cousin’s husband’s older brother asks you want you want to do, tell them. Let them know without fear and with passion about the career and life that you dream to take by the hands one day. And if you see them almost roll their eyes then catch themselves, puff out your chest and wear their disapproval with pride. Your dreams are worth the work.