You have been sheltered, babied and generally unexposed to reality. You’ve been deluded to the actual workings of the real world. No worries, you’re not an alien or Manti Te'os fake dead ex girlfriend, you’re just a member of Generation Y.
A generation of young adults separated by a technological chasm, hyperbolizing the generational gap to insane proportions. You’re a generation of entitlement. You want everything because you feel your awesomeness is a gift to this green earth, and you are destined to achieve a deluge of success without the slightest of efforts.
Congratulations, you are insane. Have you forgotten who produced the machines that have made our lives one-click-simple? Have you sufficiently tossed aside your parents? Grandparents? The people who emigrated from the security of their home countries in search for a better life and future?
I can’t imagine the slum life was easy as they tore and clawed their way up the ladder. But it didn’t matter, they thought only of you and the dream that your generation might prosper by the fruits of their labor. They worked tireless shifts to put food on the table and get you through school so that you might garner a better education, a brighter future and a real stab at the American dream.
Of course we have take it all for granted and because our lives have proven so simple, we feel like the world should bow at our feet and bend to our whims, just like it did when we were younger.
Unfortunately, the world doesn’t really function that way and people of this generation only seem to realize that in their mid 20s. Sure just like the rest of us you have been promised the treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. The foolhardy promise that if you go to school, get good grades, pass (cheat) your SATS, go to a good college, get a degree, get a masters degree, you can get an amazing job right out of college and live happily ever after. But like Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and our high school sweet heart, these idealities are scrapped by the wayside.
We are gullible and naïve. When things don't go our way we grasp at simplistic, quick solutions. We panic and call ourselves depressed, and wash down prescriptions of xanax and adderol, which we eventually sell to our friends anyway.
Our generation suffers from ADD; we can't focus on anything for more than five minutes without checking our Facebook. We are judgmental, but hate being judged and we constantly worry about fitting in. This is why you are not ready for the real world.
You’ve been sheltered all your life. Your life is a labyrinth of short cuts that have suffered the least effort with the most reward. We are naïve enough to believe that we can outsmart anyone. High school is bullshit; college is a party with a few sporadic hours of cramming. Did we really think that finding the easy way out and turning everything into a party would prepare us for the real world?
We’ve lost responsibility. We nag and complain when things don’t go our way. Instead of diverting culpability, why don't we all find ways to develop a better self, a self that can actually tackle the world that is ahead of us?
This is a wake up call, for those of you who believe everything is going to go exactly the way you planned it, for those of you who feel entitled to everything because you were a part of a frat in bumblefuck America. Congratulations your Greek letters have absolutely no relevance in the real world. Hazing isn’t sufficient work, in the real world you might have to engage yourself.
You are not prepared for the real world because you are not responsible for your own actions. You think that there will always be someone there to bail you out. You might have realized this right out of college, 22-years-old, with a worthless piece of paper in hand and no job offers. You might have realized this after Grad school in their mid 20s, two worthless papers in hand and a world of anticlimax at your feet. Just because you were an office bitch one summer doesn't mean you can say you are experienced in a certain field.
Sure this may sound harsh, but at the end of the day, it is the truth, and the further we try to run away from the truth, the worse it actually gets. Our creativity is stripped from us in school, we are made into robots with textbooks that we slave away memorizing. A textbook cannot prepare you for life or tell you what to do in real situations.
The world is a cold place and it will never bow down for you. Anything you want out of this life, you are going to have to go after and take it. Stop being such a baby and learn to decipher the some sort of will that will bring the some sort of way. You are the only one responsible for bringing it out of yourself. A textbook cannot teach you life. Take a chance, or go outside of your comfort zone, because the worst thing that can happen to you is that you actually learn a valuable life lesson.
We have been doomed from the start. Society feared us and wanted to turn us into robots. They wanted to thwart our innovation so that we can justify slaving away for a company for 30 years because it is the right thing to do. We are here to tell you that it is not. Don't dwell on the same hackneyed phrases that so many people rely on: "I don't know what I am going to do with my life.”
No one is going to have an answer or a solution to your problem, only you can. No one will help you in this world. This place is made up of two types of people: those who make themselves into something and those who wait until they turn into nothing. The decision is ultimately yours. There is nothing we hate seeing more than a wasted talent and a wasted life.
The real world is brutal. You couldn’t have even fathomed it when you took out that gigantic loan in hopes that its purpose would help prepare you. It doesn’t care about you. You need to get your priorities together and stop merely existing, but you need to live and fight for the things in which you believe.
If you choose not to fester in a lifetime of mediocrity, what this country is currently suggesting, you’ll fit right in with the rest of us who have given up our citizenship to sun bathe on the French Riviera. The choice is yours.
Preston Waters | Elite.
