Don’t you just love precocious, privileged 22 year olds with the luck of a lottery winner who have GOT IT ALL FIGURED OUT!

Yeah me neither. 

Oh honey, no you don’t have a fabulous life because you did everything right and everyone else didn’t. Cause trust, that ain’t even it.

And you’ve been working how long now? I was pretty sure that it was my killer work ethic, mad organizational skills, smarter than the average cookieness that lead to a rapidly increasing paycheck until I hit 25 and got laid off for the first and only time. I still, 12 years later, haven’t recovered from that financially even though I have continued expanding my skill set and responsibility levels since then. 

But you are a special snowflake who will beat the odds of everyone around you, I am sure. Just don’t look too hard in the mirror or your unshakeable faith that you are where you are because your deserve it more than someone else might crack a little. I mean, of course you went to a private university with tuition that is almost $40k a year all on your own merit. I am sure that poor kids, like say my kid, will have all the same opportunities that you did if they work just as hard. Oh wait, no they won’t. My kid will be starting at a community college. He won’t be able to do the unpaid internships that you did to bulk up your resume because he will have to work a minimum wage job somewhere to help pay the $3500 a year tuition at the CC plus books and transportation.

Kid also wants to be a writer, btw. My advice is “Get a degree in anything else. Anything that will pay the bills. You’ve seen how little money writers make. Get a degree in something that will pay the bills and write at night.”

Now I am not cruel, Special Little Snowflake. I don’t wish bad things on you because you are ridiculously lucky and privileged and sound a wee bit like a Jr. Randian (and 22 is way too old to be a Jr. Randian. Anyone who sounds Randian after the age of 15 is kind of a stupid and immature shithead). I save that kind of hate for the Gwyneth Paltrow’s of the world. But let’s be realistic. There is a pretty good chance that you are going to fall on your face. Maybe not now. Maybe not at 25( when I did.). But the economy being what it is and employers being what they are (stingy, even the best ones, and more mindful of the bottom line than of Special Snowflakeness) you are probably going to suffer at some point. So I wouldn’t go all bellybutton gazing at your “lack of struggle”. It will happen. In the mean time, you should meditate on the words hubris, privilege, comeuppance.