I was born in 1997 on the tail end of the 90s and straight into the digital era. I was put through private school and had at least two extracurricular activities going for me since I was six years old. I “rebelled” by getting into a selective performing arts high school, placing in the upper half of my class where the average GPA was a 4.0. I made sure to take at least two honors classes in addition to the rest of my 8 to 5 schedule, and when comparing myself to my peers, I was still not achieving enough.

I ended up being in one of four available spots in a program for the major of my choice, however, since I was majoring in theatre, my peers thought of it as “lesser than” despite the fact that my percentage rates of getting in were less likely than their acceptance rates. I have been through SAT prep, AP testing, and honors classes all while still holding my role as the community outreach coordinator of my senior class as well as participating in three other clubs and maintaining a 4.2 GPA my senior year.

And even when I look back now, nearing the end of my college freshman year, compared to my peers, I was still not achieving enough.

I am being honest in the fact that I truly believe that I was not achieving enough in high school. This could be attributed to a multitude of things; the culture of American higher education, the pressure to not only be a good student, but to be more than just a good student, or the fact that I was required to take chemistry at all because for some reason that was supposed to help me later in life. (It has yet to do so.)

I am a part of the largest generation in history; I am a millennial. Time Magazine calls us the “Me Me Me Generation,” our parents call us the whining generation and our grandparents call us the lazy generation after that. There are three things that define my generation: laziness, entitlement, and selfishness. Combine those together and you get an unhealthy and impossible form of competition.

More and more people today are going to college than they did in the past, and not even a bachelor’s degree is enough to secure a job after graduation. The generations before mine have created a monster in the form of American education and it is eating Millennials alive. According to USA Today, “Millennials are the most educated generation in human history, yet they have the highest share of people who are unemployed in the last 40 years.” The United States is in trillions of dollars of debt and one of the main causes are student loans.

While the economic downside can be an argument of its own, I want to recognize the mental and emotional impact this is having on my generation. Words like “tenacity” or “ambition” have been spoon fed to millennials since grade school; according to CEB, a consulting firm, who polled 9,000 people and found that, “[M]illennials among them are in fact the most competitive: 59 percent of them, in the latest poll, said competition is 'what gets them up in the morning.'” Throughout my education, I not only trained but expected to go farther than above and beyond if I ever wanted to survive, let alone achieve my goals.

Higher education is no longer about learning; it’s a checkmark on a to-do list to secure a job. Our parents wanted to give us the security they didn’t have, and so universities reflected their thoughts and shifted their education practices to better suit students for careers. We have been branded the “Generation Katniss,” named after the successful novel gone Hollywood movie trilogy heroine from "The Hunger Games." Vox magazine says, “It’s an apt metaphor for the millennial struggle to shrug off the darkness and baggage of the world that’s been left to them, and remake it into something less poisoned by the past — or at least something their own… 'The Hunger Games' caught on because of all the ways it captures the bleakness of the current era. It will stay with us because it offers hope that those who make it through that bleakness can escape, and make something better out of whatever comes next.”

Not only have I seen this phenomenon, I’ve lived it. American culture is mapped out in competition after competition in endless pursuit of survival and basic living necessities. I look at my peers and see them slaving away in internships and classes they hate for the sake of securing their future. There are people I know that can’t help but make everything a competition, even outside of school. For example, they’ll ask how you’re doing only to respond with something to one up your answer. This type of behavior is not entirely their fault, the media and culture we live in enforce this in every opportunity given. Perhaps the majority of my generation is lazy, entitled, and selfish -- but look at who raised us this way. Every generation thinks the latter is the worst, despite the fact that we grew up in the circumstances they created.

Maybe millennials are lazy because we are tired of competing for every possible job in order to survive.

Maybe millennials feel entitled because we are forced to deal with the problems of another generation; not only taking care of ourselves but the previous generation as well.

Maybe millennials are selfish in the sense that we are self-aware -- maybe millennials can empathize with others and recognize where to draw a line for personal growth.

I was born in 1997 on the tail end of the 90s and straight into the digital era. I am a millennial, and I am competing to help pick up the pieces of last generations’ problems, and I am still not achieving enough.