A Letter to Millennials from a Gen Xer
Dear Millennials,
I don’t know if anyone has done this for you and I can’t speak for everyone from Generation X but I want to truly say “I’m sorry if we didn’t prepare you”.
In a way, we should have seen this coming.
I can tell you that I recall having conversations with my friends about our future job prospects. We even commented that we believed that our parent’s generation would probably be the last generation to work for an employer for 20 to 30 years, retire with a nice pension, and ride off into the sunset. We knew it then and this around the early 90s.
We knew that our generation and future generations would have to create their own retirement strategy. The employers our parents spoke fondly of were either not there, phasing out or were a shell of their former selves. We got it and we should have prepared you.
We remember when Malls were the big thing. We remember when they came and we saw them when they left. We saw it coming.
But take heart and let me share a few things with you:
1) Do NOT sit quietly.
Right now, we need you not to suffer in silence. We don’t know what it’s like to go from being in a classroom with your friends to solely being online. We don’t know what it’s like to go from looking for a job that was there to watching it disappear over night. We don’t know what it’s like to prepare for a world that you had no time to prepare. We don’t know and we need YOU to tell us.
2) Don’t let anyone sell you on that ‘Back in my day’ crap
When I was in college, during the summers, I worked as a dishwasher at Chili’s Bar & Grill. The money I earned helped me buy clothes for the upcoming school year. The money I earned helped me pay for my bus ticket from Arkansas back to Florida. The money I earned helped me pay for school supplies. I was financial aid, work study and scholarship to pay for a school that I was struggling to afford. I don’t know what I would have done if the job I spent two summers working for wasn’t there for those summers. And even though I was working $4 per hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (summer of 88 and 89), that money was VITAL for my college experience. And I was working Arkansas that had very limited job opportunities and this was when there was NO pandemic. So, for you, every dollar matters more than ever.
3) Know that you are NOT alone
Whatever you do, don’t think you have to face these challenges alone. Right now, there are so many of you who are looking for solutions for a problem that is not going away fast away. Whatever you do, you have people around you that want to help you face this challenge.
I want you to understand that I know you hate you missed your ‘in person’ high school or college graduation. I know you hate that you had to stay home with your parents because you job cut your hours and you lost your place. Right now, you are trying to figure out how to navigate a new world order in a world that no one told you would be new.
Just know that you are the NEW greatest generation because you will have survived something no other generation has to faced and we will see it through with you every step of the way.
Yours truly,
Anthony Reeves, A proud member of Generation X
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