"Your generation doesn't know how easy they have it."
How many times have we heard that? Not the old, "In my day we had to walk uphill both ways." No, instead of that, what we're used to hearing nowadays is instead much more detrimental to how we feel about ourselves. We are told that we are the generation that is "Given medals just for playing the game." We are made to feel privileged, entitled, and as though we have had the world handed to us on a silver platter -- but we haven't.
My college education, without scholarship, would put me over $300,000 in debt for the six years of my program. The scholarship I have is quite literally my lifeline; without it, I would not be at Seton Hall. The grades I worked for in high school, the standardized testing scores I got by spending the summer with my nose in a prep book, they are what got me my scholarship. My dedication to my program and my passion for my future profession are what push me to study so that I do well in it. Even with a generous scholarship, I am not going to college scott-free. That is okay. Being a part of this generation, hearing about the debt that students out of college are faced with, that has become a part of our understanding of what a good education costs. It has to be okay, because we have no other choice but to accept this hand we have been dealt, a hand we have been dealt and been called privileged for having.
Choose not to attend college, and you're faced with questions that pick at your intelligence, as they ask you what you are planning to do instead. My high school put all of its focus into sending us to college. High schools need to prepare students for their future, but that is the key word, their future. Although this generation is expected to go to college, it is not for everyone. Never mind that our heroes on the battlefield may never have attended a day of classes. Those who leave trade school may not have a four-year degree, but the two cannot be compared. You do not need college to succeed, but the pressure to extend our education is never-ending.
We have resources and technology available to us that our parents never had. Yet, when an adult tells me that "they didn't have Internet in their day," I silently think that they don't realize how blessed they were. I love the Internet. I think that it is an unbelievable way to gain access to knowledge we would not have gained otherwise. I wonder if anyone would believe that for my first large college essay, I found the majority of my information from the dusty textbooks in the library. We as college students are not oblivious to these old ways, they are not obsolete. We know how to use the Internet to do research, and we refuse to ignore online resources, but also do not neglect the shelves of the library we walk past. The Internet opens a world of information to us, but it is not always what is good for us.
When my parents' generation left class, that was the last interaction that they had with their professors. Now, when my phone dings at 12 a.m. and I see a grade posted, that's how my night is going to end. We're forced to make our academics rule our lives. We can never step away from our phones, for fear that we will miss an adjustment to an assignment, or wait too long to answer a pressing email. I've had to make the rule that I will respond to an email from a professor as soon as I get it. I try to drop whatever I may be doing to figure out the answer and respond. That is exhausting, but it is a result of how we have been conditioned as college students.
We are lucky. We have the world at our fingertips, and will be the next generation to run this country, this planet even. Yet, it is not all perfect for us. No generation will ever "have it easy."
There will constantly be new hardships, new obstacles to overcome. We cannot compare our experience to that of students before us. Our college experience is unique in so many ways, both positive and negative. Let's not be a generation that puts what we are doing above what others will do after us. We are so strong and so brilliant, just as every generation in college has been before us. Let's make them proud of us, using what makes us so seemingly different. This is our time to show the world what our generation can do.
