How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation
“When we talk about millennial student debt, we’re not just talking about the payments that keep millennials from participating in American “institutions” like home ownership or purchasing diamonds. It’s also about the psychological toll of realizing that something you’d been told, and came to believe yourself, would be “worth it” — worth the loans, worth the labor, worth all that self-optimization — isn’t.”
I have so many thoughts on this piece, more than I can put into a comment here, so I should probably write a blog post and maybe I will. But this piece hits the nail on the head in one way that really struck home with me: all the things we're told to do to be successful won't be what makes us successful in the end. Full disclosure: I'm a Gen Xer, not a millennial, but as she talks about the optimization of childhood and more and more debt for education I was right there with her when she said it wasn't worth it. I've seen it in my own life and I've seen it so many people who I know.