We Can't Be Categorized: Why Gen-Y Is More Than Just ‘Entrepreneurial'

We are considered the entrepreneurial generation.

We're the go-getters, the be-our-own-bosses, the do-anything people.

They’ve done studies on us, taken polls and watched our behaviors and habits, just to try to get a little bit closer to figuring out how our brains are hardwired.

What they’ve found is significant, sure. It’s numerical and scientific, based on facts and figures.

It can be hypothesized, tested and repeated. They're the basics to any experiment or research.

But what the research seems to lack are the actual individuals behind these statistics.

It's missing the humans that make up Generation-Y, the feelings, emotions, hopes and dreams that cloud the minds of 20-somethings all over the world.

Researchers see the drive and passion, but what they fail to find is the force behind that drive.

What’s the reason we continue being the most aggressive, competitive and successful generation?

I sit, watch and read all the opinions of researchers and newscasters.

As they write in their logs about their findings and tell me who I am and who I am going to be, I can’t help but question not only them, but also myself.

I can’t help but feel I am going to be doing something bigger than owning my own company or opening up a Starbucks franchise.

“Bigger?” they question.

Typical Millennial, never satisfied.

Typical Millennial, she still doesn't know what she wants to do.

Typical Millennial, she'll realize when she gets older.

When I graduated from college, I sat among thousands of these “typical Millennials.”

Hundreds and hundreds of soon-to-be-adults were about to embark on the biggest adventures of their lives: the “real world.”

They tell us it’s the biggest adventure, they tell us graduation is one of our greatest accomplishments and they tell us the time will come when we figure out what we want to do for the rest of our lives.

Well, I hope they’re wrong.

I hope they do another study in the years to come and find all of us living as starving artists who aren’t building empires, but building lives.

I hope they find we’re not all sitting behind desks every day, doing God knows what on Excel.

I hope they find our successes aren’t based on our annual incomes or how good our health insurance plans are.

What I hope they find instead are individuals who are following their hearts, people who are waking up every day and doing new things that they love, things that fuel their drive and passion.

I hope they find happy people.

I hope they find people who get to travel the world and visit communities in unseen lands.

I hope they find people in love, people who are in real, passionate, crazy love.

I hope they find families who are still together and dinner tables that don’t have a microwavable meal or iPhones at every place setting.

I hope they find the people who we — Gen-Yers — really are.

I hope they find the artists, the lovers, the dreamers, the thinkers and the doers.

I hope they find those naïve kids who you only care about when they buy out your Fortune 500 company.

We aren’t just a group of people who make for good test results, and we certainly aren’t people who are just going to sit by and wish our lives away.

We aren’t the type of people to wake up every morning just because we need a paycheck.

We’re the type of people who will figure out how we’re going to survive doing what we love.

This generation has a lot more to offer than entrepreneurial spirit.

We have a lot more thoughts in our heads and a lot more ideas to bring into this world.

Behind these “they don’t know what they’re talking about" kids, there are individuals who are full of dreams, plans, ambitions and voices that deserve to be heard.

Maybe you’ve been around longer than us, but we’ve had glimpses of the world through your eyes and want to experience the world through ours.

So call us naïve, stick us in a survey or push our crazy ideas aside, but you’re the ones who don’t know any better.

Just wait and see.