Dear "Silent Generation" and "Baby Boomers:"

You have given our generation a lot of nicknames: the Me, Me, Me Generation (also known as the selfish or selfie generation), Gen Why? (as in why worry?) and the Unemployables, to name a few. You call us narcissistic, lazy and dumb. You tell us that you fear for the future of this country.

Yet here we are, working unpaid internships on top of multiple jobs while simultaneously trying to maintain a decent grade average. 

You tell us alluring stories about how back in your day, you had to work all summer in order to save up just enough to pay for a year’s worth of secondary education — whereas we will be telling our kids, “Back in my day, I could’ve bought an island for less than the price of my college degree.”

Despite this, you tell us that we should feel lucky, because in this day and age we can do whatever we want to do, and we are supposed to consider this a freedom. “Follow your heart,” you say — yet you deny us this freedom, saying, “Remember, not everyone gets a trophy.”

Well guess what — I don’t want a trophy. I want a job, one that pays for something other than “youthful experience.”

But to you, bringing up any of this is akin to sitting around with our thumbs up our asses and blaming it on the moon. It’s not like we haven’t been trying. 

Many of you worked long hours to make the lives of your children — our lives — better than your own, and thank you for the opportunities you did give us.

But perhaps your generation did not stop to consider that you may actually be disrupting our future.

We aren’t asking for the world to be handed to us on a silver platter. But we also don’t want to bust our asses just to remain broke, paying off thousands of dollars worth of student loans in order to survive in the financial crisis we called an economy.

Our generation didn’t put the stock market into shambles. We didn’t mutilate the tax code beyond reason. And we most definitely didn’t get ourselves into crippling debt just for laughs. 

So who did? Who indigenized these banks and their loans — worthless pieces of paper — to these stupid, unreachable standards?

I’m not naive enough to think that these problems came about because a couple of people convened in a room and decided on the best way possible to screw over future generations. These problems are a result of long, complicated changes that came with unforeseeable consequences. I’m not blaming you, but I am blaming your “legacy.”

You are our parents, our mentors and friends, and we want you to be proud of us. But it seems to me that, like with cell phones and technology, you have no idea what you’re talking about. These are new problems as young and awful as we are. No amount of telling us, “we understand — we’ve been there,” will change the fact that no, you haven’t. It’s a different world now.

Of course, there will always be individuals who are lazy or selfish, but quit accusing an entire generation. Quit calling us dumb when we are statistically proven to be on track to becoming the most educated generation thus far — according to Pew Research Center’s “The Millennials: Confident, Connected, Open to Change” study, which states that “19 percent have a degree … 39 percent are still in college and 30 percent plan to earn a postsecondary degree in the future.”

We appreciate the progress you’ve made and the path that you’ve blazed for our generation. All we ask for is some respect. Don’t forget that you were once young like us.

Quit calling us the delusional ones. This is your mess, too, so take some responsibility. Stop calling our generation names, and take your own advice — grow up.

Morgan Redding is the Copy Chief at The State News. Reach her at mredding@statenews.com.