This is a Audible original for the month of October written by Buzzfeed journalist Anne Helen Petersen, who has written a handful of other recent books, and among other things has a PhD in Media Studies. The book is a long article and series of interview with various millenials from around the country and a variety of background and professions discussing elements of their stories, their education, the cultural language that have led them to the kinds of burnout that many of are familiar with, and what are some of the things they do and talk about in their lives.
I am 37 and in the higher age end of millenials. I also have older siblings who are more squarely in Generation X. A story I talk about a lot with the difference in that divide is how when my brother went to college (a state school) in 1997, he was offered all but a free ride, not by money found by his school, but through federal grants and student aid. Three years later when I went to a state school, I was offered zero money. My parents’ finances had not changed — as a teacher now, I make more than both my parents made combined in 2000. So while he walked out of college with $1000 worth of debt, my parents and I combined for about $45k. Through grad school and trying to make it during years of working on a dissertation, I accumulated a lot more debt, and I am hoping to have it paid off (fingers crossed) with the Dept of Ed public service agreement relief program.
This book channels those feelings of anxieties, where you did what you were told (when you were 17) to do in life, and it’s killing you. And then when you talk about it, you’re told it’s your fault, for any number of reasons. And I will be honest, while it’s boomers who did the dirty, I often find it’s the Gen X near-peers who do a lot of the scolding. Even on Pajiba, some of the Gen X posters there have expressed similar sentiments about how millenials, who made exactly the same choices they did, are to blame for their situations, without acknowledging that the landscape changed in the meantime.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48354641-the-burnout-generation)