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Mar 10, 2021Liked by Anne Helen Petersen

My teen uses "yeet" a lot and it took me ages to get him to explain to me what it meant. I think of it as akin to the very niche and short-lived "hork" of my late high school years.

Love this, thank you! Despite my being a Gen-X-er, the "weary ideas" thing definitely resonated.

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I graduated top of my class in '93 in the midst of a severe recession, only to land my first design job (as a part-time design librarian) in '95: two years post-graduation, competing against a cohort of '92 to '95 graduates, all desperate to enter the job force. The anxiety and worry cost me my sanity for a while (I suffered from depression in '94) - but ultimately shaped me into the professional I became, which is one that always makes time for students, always finds a way to connect them to someone. It is profoundly difficult, and my son is in 2nd year journalism, so this really hit home for me. I just hope that out of this will be beacons of hope and resilience (and that my son will find someone to help him get in the profession he loves so much...)

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I’m a Gen-Xer, and the moments when I realize I’m no longer young come when I notice how history seems to keep repeating itself every 10 years or so. I also graduated college in 1993, only to enter the world of the McJob, when you had to do multiple interviews for retail jobs at Blockbuster and Borders. It took me seven years, three interstate moves, and two stints in grad school to finally get a full-time benefitted job in my field. It’s so frustrating to see the exact same thing happen to new grads over and over, after 9/11 and during the financial crisis and right now in midst of the pandemic. And the financial stakes get higher with every downturn: expenses get higher and debt loads increase and we continue to eat our young.

Thank you for this piece. I don’t have kids, but in recent years I’ve been doing a lot of mentoring and coaching with younger people who are just getting their start in my field. One of the best thing about them is that they question so many practices I simply accepted. It’s long overdue.

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Oh, this is RELEVANT to me this week. Until a week ago, I had made like 5 TikToks ever and had about 100 followers. Then I made a sarcastic 58 second video about the Covid vaccine (Summary: It ain't new, Brenda, so go get it) and it had 850 thousand views and 20 thousand comments before I turned them off. This happened the weekend I turned forty. It has been BANANAS and I do not like antivaxx TikTok.

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One aspect of this that I have thought about a lot in the context of American millenials v. Gen Zers is the impact of political events. The Great Recession and COVID were/are nonpartisan in their effects (although not necessarily so in terms of their causes or handling), but politics can shape the way you /feel/ about your circumstances and your future just as profoundly, and I feel like Gen Zers are just looking at a different, much bleaker roadmap.

Like, Obama's victory was for me (as a teen Democrat/liberal) an immensely exciting and wonderful and hopeful thing that was one of the only times I really felt like the Kool-Aid about young people being the future of the nation actually resonated with me! Have Gen Z ever had even an instance of their hard work and activism being rewarded in such a momentous, bending-the-system-without-breaking-it way? Honestly, I don't think the generation that had to get accustomed to school shooting trainings could even grow up in a way that would allow for my adolescent "Hope and Change" flavored hope to be nurtured at all.

I know political things can't be simplified in such stark terms, and maybe I'm just being tremendously naive, but I imagine at least some of the political discussions young people in the left are leading these days are rooted in a difference in outlook that can only come from watching a man like Trump become president in your formative years. It's got to be.

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Thanks for this. I graduated college in 94 with a degree in English and have spent the last 25+ years working in the financial services industry. One of my kids graduated HS last summer and is taking a year off from school. My other kid is a junior in college and floundering. We've had an entire year of trial and error and still have not really landed on a satisfactory learning-at-home setup, but hopefully making enough progress to not get thrown out at the end of the semester. So many internships got cancelled last summer and this that the competition is incredible. It's awful to watch your kid flounder and go from dean's list to academic probation and not be able to help.

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I liked this. Thank you.

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I am so glad I read this. It takes me so long to find a favorite writer and it happened with this piece

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