I, being born in 1999, am a millennial. As most of our generation knows, we are looked down upon as a generation. (That’s right, not just a few of us, the whole generation is looked upon as terrible.) The people who are stigmatizing us as the worst generation are the baby boomers. Baby boomers are the generation that was born between 1946 and 1964, right after WWII concluded. The baby boomers are a huge generation of very opinionated people. (Don’t mind my downgrading of the ones who continually downgrade us.)

In the eyes of the baby boomers we are lazy, entitled, and unproductive in the work force. I would argue that this could be said of any generation of people in their late teens and early twenties. Practically speaking, most of our generation will change their mindsets on values and work as they mature. Although that should be an easy idea to comprehend, most adults do not understand it. They, the baby boomers, think that even though the oldest people of our generation are 36 years old and the youngest are 16, that despite our age we should have the exact same morals, goals, and work ethic as the elders of our country do right now.

Baby boomers do not see what kind of hypocrisy they are presenting by constantly downgrading our generation as a whole, when most of the insults are only appropriate because we are young. The reason they are able to make these comments is because we have not fully grown up yet. I understand that by age 36 most people should be more mature, and I’m sure they are. However the groups of millennials they are questioning are younger than 36—they’re in their twenties, still living the typical carefree life of a young adult, and that is completely fine.

The average life expectancy of men in the United States is 76, and the average for U.S. women is 81. That means we all have so many more years to learn the ways of life and figure out our morals and beliefs. We have been making a lot of changes to this world for the better (compared to baby boomers) and we aren’t going to stop there. We are going to continue our legacy, and leave our children with a better life than what we had (I know that is probably an every generation cliche, but it still fits). So here is to us, let’s beat our generation’s stereotypical label.