A little mid-week vent
by chuckofish
I mean really.
I saw this recently released survey on a blog I read, that said 3 out of 5 Millennials believe that this is the most stressful time EVER in history. To 60% of everyone over 18 and under 35, no place/time in human history has had more human stress than now.
The survey included a Top 20 List of the stresses that are devastating Millennials:
1. Losing wallet/credit card
2. Arguing with partner
3. Commute/traffic delays
4. Losing phone
5. Arriving late to work
6. Slow WiFi
7. Phone battery dying
8. Forgetting passwords
9. Credit card fraud
10. Forgetting phone charger
11. Losing/misplacing keys
12. Paying bills
13. Job interviews
14. Phone screen breaking
15. Credit card bills
16. Check engine light coming on
17. School loan payments
18. Job security
19. Choosing what to wear
20. Washing dishes
Clearly the Millennials who took the survey don’t know much (or anything) about history. I mean it would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.
With nothing to compare their lives to, they have no idea how privileged they are. I don’t know about you, but I never take indoor plumbing for granted. And, boy, I am grateful for the fact that strep throat can no longer kill me. Or real Nazis. I may feel ostracized on occasion because I am a church-going Christian, but no one is threatening to burn me at the stake for my beliefs.
Sigh. To most of us adults, the stresses listed above are merely the minor annoyances of modern living. No. Big. Deal. In fact, Millennials have too much choice, too much food, too much leisure time, too much entertainment. They have way too much. Period. And they are not grateful for any of it. I can’t help thinking that the ancestors of these Millennials, who suffered and sacrificed to get to this country, would be very disappointed in their descendants.
Suffering builds character, remember?
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5).
But, hey, today is the first day of spring! Huzzah!
dual personalities 
Good grief! How completely ridiculous! They are so, so clueless. Excellent ‘rant’! That said, I am often surprised to discover that one of my students has been suffering some really dreadful thing with quiet fortitude. Take heart. They aren’t all shallow ignoramuses (though too many are).
I agree – though now our students are primarily Gen Z! My freshmen were born in 2001 😱
I can’t keep up with the changing generations! All I know is that they are getting harder to teach as the generation gap gets wider. It must be time to retire!
That list is truly pathetic. But the Calvin cartoons made me chuckle.
If it’s any comfort, I think these surveys are deliberately designed to outrage us. I mean, do we really expect people to say, “no, I think the most stressful time in history was the 1340s,” or the 1500s in the Americas or the 1950s in China? It seems to me that being self-centered and lacking a sense of history are not traits unique to Millennials.
You are probably right about surveys being designed to outrage us, but I do think there is a problem with people these days not knowing any history and not being able to put themselves in another person’s shoes, even if that person lived 100 years ago.