People my age are often referred to as millennials. Millennials are as those who were born in 1982 and roughly the twenty years that followed. People in these years, including myself, have been dubbed lazy, demanding, impatient and entitled, among other things.
We are privileged to live in a generation that has lived with and without higher technology. We remember what it's like to be using dial up to talk to your best friend online when all of a sudden there's no connection because Mom is on the phone with Grandma. We were fortunate enough to learn how to research using technology first before libraries while still being exposed to classes that educated us about how to effectively use a library.
It's understandable that many people have taken advantage of luxuries that have melted into our everyday life, but should all of those in the generation be slandered on their behalf?
Millennials are lazy.
But are we? Just because there is more time to play at the end of a day doesn't mean we didn't do the same amount of work. People my age are taught to be problem solvers, not bystanders. We are constantly questioning what we are told to do to figure out any other ways to get a task done. If there is a way for us to get the same outcome from our work, we will stray from how it has always been done.
Millennials are impatient and demanding.
Many of us have spent sixteen years educating ourselves. We were told to go to college, so we did. We were told to be punctual, structured, organized and well educated, so we listened and followed through. We've spent so much time trying to better ourselves and focus on our education, but are still questioned to why we are not working harder.
After spending more time and more money on our education than the majority of people we end up working with, we expect more compensation for our level of experience. We can have twice the education of our coworkers and still make less for a starting rate. It is so incredibly frustrating to be called lazy, yet when we look for more work and more obligations, we are labeled demanding.
After all the time spent bettering ourselves, we want the freedom from student loans and chance to move up in our careers, especially seeing as parents and relatives were married with children in their early twenties when we are barely starting our careers.
It's absolutely true that some people in our generation expect that they deserve free college or handouts, however, most of us understand the importance of working for what you want in life. Just because a part of our generation sparks controversy doesn't mean that all millennials should be seen in the same light.
For those of us who understand the importance of hard effort in everything we do, laziness is not a thing we associate with. We are constantly thinking of new ways to improve systems and ideas. Millennials have an advantage. We speak freely, we live fully, and we expect more from the world than what we have.
