One Millennial’s Perspective on Education, Money, and the Conservation of Soul
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 02:58PM After 24 months, mother had a strong suspicion that I utilized my dimples to con her and maintain baby privileges of being carried everywhere. In a last ditch effort to call my bluff, a previously uninvolved aunt sat on the edge of the bed where I happily played, and took out a crisp dollar. “Nikki, Darling we all know you can walk. Now, come prove it in exchange for this pretty dollar.” As the family story goes, I promptly got up, walked over, took the dollar, and sat back down, laughing uncontrollably at my easily accessed fortune. The point of this repeated tale, as is the point of any family fable, was to establish my familial label as a smarty pants charmer, able to outwit and gain simultaneously. A year after the story, my father left, then, at age 10, my emotionally abusive stepfather stole all of our money and household possessions and fled the state. With no money, furniture, or next move, my mother creatively explained the art of resilience asserting that I would be expected to believe and utilize the family fable by having faith in my ability and propelling life forward.
As I grew older, I didn’t think of money relative to greed - that ideology is reserved for individuals of privileged wealth, I thought of money as a way out of specific hardship and my resilient tool of choice, given the family label of wit, was education. School, therefore, was a ‘frenemy’ I had to publicly annihilate in order to gain recognition in my deserved path to financial freedom. Despite academic accolades, I was constantly being punished for insolence because I thought authority figures within my private school were ignorant of the difficult socio-economic world that I lived in daily. Assuming backgrounds, I asserted that ‘the system’ didn’t take into account what it was like to work as though your identity depended on it, sleep in fear that your future unborn child’s father would abandon you, or view existence as a never-ending ball you had to keep airborne in order to claim independence. I wasn’t going to school solely to learn, although I enjoyed that as well, I was going so that I could use the system of education to propel myself, my loved ones, and all who shared the same economic hardship without the educational privilege that I did, forward into opportunity.
I got into Brown University, wrote an economic thesis on the Reproduction of Class Stratification in Jamaica, graduated as a triple concentrator with academic honors, began working for Donald Trump, bought my first condo at age 24, created an impressive financial portfolio, and then, to my horror, watched all the jewels in my ornately decorated armor begin to fall as I too disintegrated into the soul bearing hole of disgust. Not until I worked with a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, zealots who considered themselves smart based on their financial power, which they arrogantly abused daily, did I realize that working within a system to change a system could prove counter-intuitive if the two systems were morally opposed. I also realized that my own perpetuation of that structure, despite, intentions, could backfire into self-loathing. My soul began to ooze out of my progressively educated ears and slap me in the face everyday that I entered the leech-filled hellhole of a corporate cubicle. Everything about my existence depleted me and, after being caught staring into my ‘I’m a billionaire and you’re not’ tricked out computer screen, crying, I was let go due to inactivity, and, I’m sure, suspected depression.
Education and I worked through this painful process together and, in the end, became closer. By both personal and educational measures, I knew too much to forget an elitist educational system designed to economically rape the underserved and then justify programmatic injustice with a pointed finger at a privileged token. If I were to be that educational token, I wanted to use my ‘privilege’ to aid others. However, after corporate life, I realized with dismay, that jobs centered on helping others tended to be volunteer or stipend-positions, while jobs with any semblance of financial stability, what says abundance, tended to be part of the machine I couldn’t stomach. Moreover, to make matters even more excruciating, my mother and grandmother had worked multiple jobs to send me to Brown and now, with my education and financial success paving a yellow-bricked pathway to early retirement, I barely treaded water when the Great Recession hit. I felt as though I had let them down. For the first time in my clever little life I spent some time guilt-ridden, confused, praying, and sad.
After a long celebrated pity party for one, however, I grew bored of my depression and re-ignited my natural born fire. I decided to think outside of my immediate concerns, channel energy into productive work, and embrace my personal struggle as part of a shared national issue, built upon historical consequences that needed to be expressed. Working at nonpartisan, research, and advocacy organization, Demos, helped my process of renewal because I received documented insight into the direct link between education and economic gain and the extent to which my generation’s educational prospects were being hindered. Additionally, I began to understand how, specifically, the greatest economic downturn since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression, was crippling the future of Millennials on a greater scale than any other age bracket nationally. According to Bloomberg.com, during the time period of, December 2008 – to December 2009, the employment rate of 16- to 24-year-olds in the United States fell by 1.78 million. This accounted for one-third of the total estimated drop in employment. Furthermore, according to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds reported having a full-time job in 2010 compared to 50 percent in 2006.
Though select individuals in other generations had the insight to discuss the Millennial plight, I feared that neglect of the generation’s authentic voice would only prove to be a negative and potentially detrimental shock to society’s metaphoric system once the thought patterns of today’s young adults took effect. Something had to be done. According to Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking, a Connecticut-based research firm that studies young people in the workplace, as a result of these statistics, and inherent overall culture of the Millennial generation, “the recession has confirmed a skepticism that’s very deep for Gen Yers (a.k.a Millennials) that there is no such thing as job security. You’ve got to be a free agent to pay the bills.” In order to be a successful ‘free agent,’ Millennials have become increasingly interested in varying avenues of communication and networked opportunities in order to independently take control of their own destiny.
In keeping with my generation, I decided to create a literary platform that allowed Millennials to speak on their own behalf about issues directly affecting them, and then apply their notably unique experience to the ever-changing present and future culture. After writing a concept and requesting submissions, I received an extraordinary amount of writing samples that were then narrowed down and assembled. With confirmed contributors working diligently on expressing their experience through written word, I asked Justin Rockefeller and Maya Enista, Board member and CEO of Mobilize.org respectively, to write the compilation’s forward and they generously agreed. Maya, with my deepest gratitude, put me in touch with Morley Winograd, who introduced me to Alex Steed, and the eager trail of interconnected support has continued at a humbling rate.
I didn’t ‘fix’ the system after all, and my story, thus far, doesn’t prove me to be an economic oracle with the ability to eradicate destructive systems single-handedly, but I do know there is collaborative empowerment in communication. Despite my experiences and fabled aptitude, I am not rich - but I am educated and, if God continues to give me grace, I, along with the thundering voices of my generation, will one day utilize that power to impact. Mark our words.
Oneca Hitchman is a contributing writer.
