Generation ?

So as I was sitting in my friend's Corolla scarfing down funnel cake after a delicious visit to the Miami Food Trucks, a discussion pooled up about our generation. When I was younger I would sometimes watch those old movies or tv shows where the older generation (usually from the WWII era) proclaimed to the younger Baby-Boomers just how easy they have it and how much harder they had to work than the kids of 'today'. I guess it seemed like a common theme that occurred in. After all, my own grandparents indeed struggled all that much harder than my parents to make their place in America, all of them being immigrants from another place. But well, as me and my friend had a laugh about it, we began to think about the reversal of all that and how it has defined our generation so much. We chuckled at how easy it was for our parents to coast through life without an education, on minimum wage jobs, and still managing to buy homes, own cars, start families, and take the occasional vacation.

So after an enjoyable 3 years in Japan, I return home with my B.S. in Communications still in tact and a lot of experience one would hope would translate into some job prospects. But now I am at a cross road. I want to be a lawyer but prospects are dim, more competitive, and costs for law school are souring. I find myself constantly number-crunching everything from lsat scores to mortgage rates trying to find that nice medium which will equal happiness.

I don't want to be a childless workaholic, but I certainly don't want a mountain of debt (that I can't live in) swallowing up my finances for the nest 20+ years.

So I am studying for the lsat and sending out job applications to places who probably have way more qualified candidates than me. And as a 25-year-old, I find myself craving stability more than ever. I'm ready to set down roots but seem unable to conjure up suitable (and affordable) soil to do so. So I write this wondering how many others in my generation are like me and are they okay with it? I definitely am not proud of the fact I've moved back home with the family but know the realities of the present. And it's not some pretentious feelings of superiority leading me to equate home-living with unsuitability in society, but rather I feel ever more burdensome, not just financially, but also socially onto my dad's life. I mean, I know he loves me and would always take care of me if he could, but I want to take him at some point. I don't want him to have to work so hard. I don't want him to have to work every single day of the week from dawn until far beyond dusk. I want to take care of him when he needs it.

So now I wait until Monday and see where I go from there.