I love when people tell me there’s little hope for my generation. It’s probably one of my favorite things to hear while I’m at the stage in my life where I have to plan for my future. If I could love anything more, it would be when people tell me that the “smart kids” in my graduating class are the only hope, the only people who can actually make something of ourselves. There’s a large part of me that burn a little more every time someone tells me that my generation is a failure, but “Oh, not you, dear, only the other people your age.”

But why? Why does the last generation, the older people of my generation just write off all the people of my age? Is it because they think that everyone in my age group is a thug? Do they think that we could possibly make the world worse? Yes, the generation before us did so many beautiful things, like go to space and create the first computer. Let’s not forget about global warming and all the resources that were used up so quickly because no one thought it would run out.

Another thing that makes me uncomfortable is that everyone tells me that I could do better. When I tell people I want to be a nurse, people tell me I’d make a better doctor. It seems like people of my parents’ generation want to make us one up ourselves. I don’t really understand that. Is it really that important to everyone that only the “smart kids” succeed in life, that the people I’m grouped with are the only people who can make the world a better place?

Yet, when we break down from this underlying pressure, when we finally give into all of the standards that are too high for us to touch and we crack; we’re told to suck it up, told to just deal with it and move on and keep working. We’re told to ask for help, but some people look down on us, make us feel weak for taking medication for having chemical imbalances in our brains.

Before I started my sophomore year, I wasn’t used to failing in school. But I had my own set of problems and my grades slipped. I couldn’t say anything about school without my parents screaming about how I had a C in English and a D in Math because I was struggling with my own issues that I refused to deal with.

I find it a little strange that the people in my age group, the so-called “hope of the generation” are the ones that have the most pressure. Does every generation have this group of people? I’m sure the answer is yes. But has it been this severe for everyone else?

Maybe instead of focusing on all the negative things that are going on in my generation, people should focus on the positives; like how more people are going to college and getting better jobs. When my mother was my age, she said almost no one went to college because you didn’t have to. Maybe instead of punishing us for our failures, the past generation should look back at themselves and think about how they would have felt if these things were happening to them. Maybe instead of pushing us to be better, our parents and our teachers and the adults in our lives need to think about the amount of pressure that they give us when they hold us to standards that are too high to reach.

It would make the world a better place if we, the “hope of the generation,” the “smart kids,” were given a break every once in a while.