lalondes:
crystalzelda:
ameliaelizabeth:
TIME’s new cover makes me so mad I could write essays about it, but instead I’m going to keep job hunting since in today’s world a university degree means nothing and therefore like much of my generation, I’m stuck choosing between minimum wage jobs and internships that I can’t afford to accept in an attempt to pay off my tens of thousands of dollars worth of student debt.
I’d be interested in reading this article to see exactly what makes us entitled and lazy. Are we lazy because more of us are completing high school and going to college than ever before? Are we entitled because our standard of living is declining? Do we live with our parents because we’re too slothful to leave or is because our education costs are getting steeper and steeper while we’re getting less and less aid?
Tell us, Time Magazine, about how we’re narcissistic little slugs when we’re faced with an economic crisis that resulted in a lowering of our standard of living, an increase in tuition costs and how when we get out of our very expensive schools, more and more of us are going to end up working minimum wage jobs.
I also want to note that it’s really frustrating that the face of “lazy, entitled narcissism” is a young woman.
There was another article a while ago like this, article or editorial I forget, from I think People Magazine that essentially criticized our generation for not being as material—renting when there was an option to buy, using the internet to get a lot of things for free/way cheaper than we would otherwise, and in some cases altogether, just deciding we don’t need things like cable tv when the internet exists and reading it was both surreal and frustrating because the criticism seemed to be “why aren’t you wasting money you don’t have like everyone else? Don’t know know that’s just the way life works?”
I was exceedingly, exceedingly lucky to graduate with my BA debt-free. I have remained debt-free since graduation, however, because I don’t spend money. And by that I mean in an economic sense, I don’t even factor in to anyone’s equation. I receive Federal Aid, which means I don’t count as part of the workforce, unemployed or not, because at current, I’m not even looking for a job. Current circumstances make it pointless.
There are thousand of people like me. But we are not lazy. We’re not even hopeless or washed out, we are simply in situations where being part of a traditional workforce is difficult to impossible. When articles like that say “lazy” what they really mean to say is “not contributing to the current work force model” and that’s because the current model sucks. Generally speaking it’s getting to a point where it costs more to have a job (either in commute cost, cost of living just to be near enough to a job to commute) than we are being paid at the jobs we have. I experienced this when I last worked, almost five years ago as a substitute aid at the local school district. As an aid I earned 8.50$ an hour for weeks that were sometimes as scarce as 6-10 hours a week. 4.20$ of that when to getting back and forth to work every day. So if I worked a 10 hour week, (in two hour shifts, spaced out over five days)— 21$ of the 85$ I earned (before taxes) would go to transportation alone. It was a good week when I broke even on paying for how much it cost to get me to work. The only reason I didn’t quit was because I desperately did not want that on my resume, I honestly enjoyed my job, and I was *ding ding ding* living at home. Just goes to show that you don’t need to be drowning in student debt to have this particular problem.
That’s what articles like this mean when they use the term “lazy.” ”Lazy” to them means we are refusing to accept something they have foisted on us as a reality when it’s something they have manufactured for us to line their pockets. So yes, my generation is “lazy” and we’re fucking proud of it.
These are good thoughts, although I don’t really count, as I’m more the vision of the wasteland these articles love to point at.
But what’s interesting to me is a lot of these issues aren’t even just hitting people from my generation and the younger ones, alone. I have heard my parents and siblings talk about so many people and seen so many others online far older who are in the same boat.
Though the media paints that as “the return of multi-generational homes” and instead heaps the blame for the current state of the economy and the workforce onto convenient, young, financially paralyzed scapegoats.
