A few weeks ago I was on an airplane

sitting next to a young woman, maybe 23 years old

Over the course of the flight, talking to her, I discovered that she does this flight a lot

And the last two years, she has taken this same flight a hundred and fifty times.

She didn't like the flying, she did it for her job and her job...

she didn´t seem to like that much either

But she'd gotten a degree, so that she could get a good job and it had worked

and now she is working in a company where there are opportunities for advancement

But not unless you have more than five years of experience

and as miserable as spending this much time in the middle seat in coach sounds to me,

she was fine, she was happy, she was working her butt off doing a job that she didn't find that interesting, but she wanted a good life and she was willing to wait for it.

John I present to you: an American millennial

Universally ridiculed as entitled and self-centered

But in fact understanding the world in deeply different ways than previous generations

with new and unique pressures on their identity

and tasked with dealing with problems unlike anything our economy, and our country, and our world has ever seen.

During this week's recording of "Dear Hank and John" you told me

about an article you wrote for the World Economic Forum

Entitled "Why the Word Millennial Makes me Cringe", and I immediately ran to

go read that article as soon as we were done recording

because yeah, the word "millennial" totally

makes me cringe. Among a ton of good points you make

in this article, you mentioned that the word "millennial"

was not assigned to themselves by themselves.

It was assigned by baby boomers.

It was then later popularized

in articles and op-eds by other people who weren't millennials

that generally did one of three things

One: made sweeping generalizations about the most diverse group of young people in American history

Two: complained that a young person

was acting in a way that they did not expect them to

or three: gave other generations anxiety

about what these unknowable snake people are doing to America

so basically

one group of people created a term for another group of people

and then used that term

to talk about how scary they were and belittle them

and make fun of them

yeah, that's gonna make some people cringe

of course the original definition of millenial

the creation of the word

it was separate from all of this other like

let's use that term now to talk about how weird young people are

but it does not change that it's happened

and continues to happen

and it's a ah god

there may have been a time

when America was homogenous enough

to intelligibly talk about generational trends

but I think that time has kind of passed

like the idea that millennials are the first generation to have grown up with the internet

blindly ignores the fact that there are still

young people in America who don't have access to the internet

and in general these conversations tend to

replace the reality of the "young American"

with like "the kind of young American

that people who have opinions professionally tend to interact with"

all of this kind of makes me cringe a little bit

but additionally

we so rarely talk about the actual challenges

that young people in America face right now

both practically and existentially

many young people these days have been told

that in order to be valuable these days

they need to be everything

they need to not just find a good job

but to find a good job that is also extraordinarily impactful and meaningful

and while they're doing that

they might as well also find themselves in a perfect relationship

and eat ethically

and become a homeowner

and pay off their student loans

now I don't want to be mad at anybody for any of these things

I'm happy to cringe

but for the most part

these people are just trying to get clicks

'cause when it comes down to it, previous generations worked really hard

to make life better for me

than it was for them

and I really do believe that's the case

whether that's the fact that gay people can get married

or that I can get all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

and the rest of Netflix for just $7.99 per month

or that cars are much less likely to kill people now

but while solving problems

they also created problems

and also just put a tremendous amount of pressure

on the upcoming generation

to expect more of themselves

and of their lives

that's not the easiest thing to deal with

not least with things not turning out as planned

and it's very strange to me

that one of the chief complaints of the older generation

this generation that worked so hard to make life easier for their kids

is that young people these days

have it too easy

especially when it's increasingly clear that they don't

John, I'll see you on Tuesday