Quarter Life Crises blog post
That which doesn’t kill us
I just want to point out that before “Generation Y” is labeled as being a bunch of whiners looking for a hand out, we were raised in strange times and won’t develop the same as our parents or grandparents. How could you ever compare the three age groups and therefore devalue their experiences? My grandparents have a strength born of hardships I hope to never have to experience. My parents have an outlook on life that could have only been shaped by the times they have lived in.
While as a generation we may be fairly slow starters, what we’re learning now will make us significantly stronger. Forced to think laterally in our careers, expanding with new technologies, having to be responsible with money from a young age, and the general maturity that comes with hardships will create a group of people I’m proud to be part of!
It’s interesting that my generation seems to exclusively suffer from the quarter-life crisis. Maybe it’s a lack of identity or the ever changing world we’ve grown in. We’ve had a lot of labeling, first it was Generation Y, then it was the Tech Generation. I’ve even heard us called the Boomerang Generation (which I’ll get into further down).* We are different because of the economic, political, and geological world in which we were raised.
We were born in a time of economic growth, the dawn of computers and internet, when everything seemed to be limitless and exciting. AIDS became very real during our childhood, drugs became enemy #1, and this ushered in a time of social responsibility. Throughout high school we were told that anything was possible, only to enter the work force during a drooping economy. Some of us earned degrees that are almost worthless (aside from the horrendous debt) because of the sheer saturation of them in the work force. A bachelor’s degree doesn’t make you stand out anymore and master’s degrees are becoming the same. stifling
Frightening attacks on America, England, and around the world, subsequent war, and our own friends being sent off to fight and die were our introduction to adulthood. The world became a very scary place suddenly and to top it all off, the economy is in a bit of a state! It’s nearly impossible to buy a house or get a loan to start your own business and unemployment is edging higher and higher.
But…but!! It’s not our fault!!
*Which brings me to the ‘Boomerang Generation’ hatred. Speaking generally (because obviously the situations differ for each person), once we left home at 18 or uni at 21, we tried to make it in the outside world. Paying rent, holding down a job, being productive members of society. A huge percentage of us ended up going flat broke due to a lack of jobs and increasing debts and moved back home, hence ‘Boomerang Generation.’
If it were a few people, sure, I’d welcome the jabs and comments saying we were lazy and just mooching off our parents. But this is almost an entire generation that was forced to move back home! I have friends from all over the world, New Zealand, England, America, and vast majority had to move back home in order to stay afloat. So either this is something that’s symptomatic of the time we grew up in or the collective generation that raised us all made the same mistakes…which is more likely? Obviously something happened that affected a large portion of the population.
It’s not our fault.
It’s not our parents fault.
It’s our problem, however and we need to find the tools to fix it.
Knowing where these feelings are manifested is the first step to moving forward and we’re paving the road so younger generations can slide right on through!