On my commute to class the other morning, I broke my practice of listening to music on my Spotify playlist and instead listened to the radio. At 8:30 a.m. I caught the morning radio show hosts rather than music, and that particular morning the unsavory comments made by OSU coach Mike Gundy regarding the younger generation were being discussed. He listed off perceived grievances and examples of my generations' flaws that I've heard from older people before, and it still managed to prick the same chord of annoyance within me that it always does. After listening to the rest of his comments and the opinion of the morning caller who had decided voice her support of Gundy's sentiments, I found myself reflecting on the differences across generations and asking why there seemed to be so much animosity between members of different ages.

While I'm well aware of the impact that defining characteristics of different decades have on the perspectives of various age groups, I can't wrap my mind around what warrants such aggressive divisiveness among the population. As a member of Gen Z, and having seen the resurgence of many social issues that have prevalent long before my time, based on the responses to those issues that I've seen from my age group and what I've learned from history, I would say that the Millennial and Z generations are characterized by tolerance and progressive thought that has not been seen before. However, my viewpoint is very dissimilar to Mr. Gundy's as he stated:

I think we live in a world where people are non-committal. We allow liberalism to say, "Hey, I can really just do what I want and I don't have to be really tough and fight through it." You see that with young people because it's an option they're given. We weren't given that option when we were growing up. In the world today, there's a lot of entitlement.

I'm a firm believer in the snowflake. I think it's setting there... I'm talking about every millennial young person. Generation Z, I think is what they call 'em. It's the world we live in because if they say, "Well, it's a little bit hard," we say, "Okay, well, let's go try something else." vs. "Hey, let's bear down and let's fight through this."

Although my initial response to hearing such an opinion is to immediately shut down and begin firing off the shortcomings of the generations prior to my own, as I was stuck in the car with my own thoughts and Mike's, I had time to truly process the implications of his statement.

All in all, I don't feel like every one of his claims is irrefutably true, but I do recognize the validity of some of his points. I do think that Gen Z's and Millennials generally have a greater range of options at our disposal and that there is a sense of entitlement present. Granted, I think that entitlement can be found in any generation and those older adults often misinterpret the pursuit of advantages necessary to be successful in life as feeling owed those advantages in order to attain goals. More so, I understand where his irritation with lack of commitment stems from, but again, the greater range of options is embedded in contemporary practices, and so it follows that people would explore the choices which are afforded to them—the same way he explores options in his career as a coach but I digress. The differences of circumstances that the world has offered throughout the decades have produced contrasting views as to how things should be and are done between generations, but the main causality I see that breeds contention is the practice of generalization.

The harm caused by making statements about generational groups as a whole—especially name calling derived in irritation and anger—destroys the line of communication necessary overcome differences of opinion and alienates members of society from one another. I would implore every member of society to exercise empathy and try to understand a perspective outside of their own before becoming offended and isolating themselves from a group that is difficult to identify with. Name-calling and assigning blame for the state of the economy and political climate does nothing but contribute to the increasing divide in our country at the moment, and we are not in a place in our history where we can afford not to be united.