My bosses wrote OpEds coinciding with the 15th anniversary of September 11th about updating our view of the National Guard (http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/11/opinions/national-guard-critical-component-america-military-anderson/index.html) and about evolving our approach to fighting extremism (https://medium.com/@rlleaders/creativity-wins-7df3e3409e59#.g6kv5sn3s). It got me thinking about how 9/11 shaped my generation, so I figured I get to write an OpEd, too.
I was 11 years old on September 11th, 2001 when my middle school went into lockdown. The teachers weren't allowed to tell us why we weren't switching classes anymore or why the buses were on their way to take us home. We got whispers of small bits of information from the kids that snuck their cellphones to the bathroom - something had happened in New York and now there might be bombs in DC. But we didn't have answers until we got home and watched the planes on loop on CNN then went straight to Yahoo to look up who Osama Bin Laden was.
In retrospect, I understand why the teachers weren't allowed to tell us anything. My middle school was in Silver Spring, Maryland - directly outside of DC. Many of my classmates parents worked in the District, as did my mother, and it would have caused a lot of panic to tell us that a plane had been flown into the Pentagon. My mother, who thankfully worked nowhere near Arlington, was evacuated from her office building and when they were officially released, she and her coworkers were advised against going underground. So, instead of taking the Metro home like any other day, they joined the scores of others walking out of DC. They reached their coworker's apartment and then were driven to another coworker's house in Bethesda where my father could go pick her up.
Looking back on that day, neither my parents nor I could remember why I didn't go with my dad to pick up my mom. I couldn't remember how many classes I had already sat through when school went on lockdown. But I remember exactly where I was sitting in Ms. Pateriya's world studies class - next to her desk and the TV cart, which we asked her to let us turn on even though it probably wasn't even hooked up to cable in the first place. I remember the way our family room was set up, and Kaylan and I looking up Bin Laden as we watched the news. I remember knowing this was a big deal and that it meant we were going to go to war.
My father was around the same age - 10 years old - on December 7th, 1941 when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor. He said it was a quiet day, a normal day, until he turned on the radio and heard the news. And he immediately went to the kitchen to tell his grandma, "It's started," because even at 10 years old, he knew that our country was ramping up to joining the war, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was exactly what would allow us to finally do so. And he went on to believe the propaganda, to participate in paper drives, to support the war in what small ways he could as a pre-teen.
That's kinda the irony of adolescence - it's a strangely helpless time because you're old enough to understand most of what's happening but you aren't old enough to react, to do much in response. After all, we hadn't elected the government officials that sent us to war, and few of us could vote them out of office before they sent us into Iraq. Pearl Harbor and WWII informed my father's generation and now September 11th and the "War on Terror" have informed my generation - "The Millennials."
What defines a Millennial is not that we're coddled, that we got participation trophies, that we're self-centered or entitled or lazy. What defines us is that we came of age around the millennium when two big things happened - the internet became pervasive and September 11th launched us into a military conflict that has lasted for 15 years. Between these two groundbreaking events, we completely changed the way we as Americans view and interact with the world, each other, and information. And it's especially clear in the way Millennials engage with the world - and the way other generations react to Millennials.
We didn't get a choice in going to war - a war that's lasted for more than half of my life now with no end in sight. We didn't get a say in the economic policies that led to the crash in 2008, sending our generation out into a recession and a worse-than-stagnant job market. And despite how easy it would've been to become pessimists, Millennials mostly became idealists that are striving to make big changes in our country.
So, don't call us self-centered when we tell our elders that we don't want to do things their way because, frankly, it didn't seem to work so well. Don't call us entitled when we express our frustration at earning wages that haven't increased commensurately to inflation. Don't call us lazy when we demand a work-life balance because no generation before ours had the access to this level of 24-hour portable communication that enabled *work* to so easily infiltrate *life.* And don't call us coddled because our formative years were informed by a massive tragic event that launched a seemingly never-ending war, pushed us further toward extreme partisanship, and forever changed what we and the next generation view as "normalcy."
On the anniversaries of September 11th, there's always a lot of talk about unity, about supporting our troops and our first responders, about never forgetting what happened. And by September 12th, somehow much of the country manages to forget these notions. This year, try to remember. Remember that Millennials actually put unity into practice by embracing social networks that connect people from all walks of life. Remember that our troops are now largely Millennials. Remember that Millennials experienced monumental changes as we came of age. And don't dismiss our criticisms or our ideas.
I was 11 years old on September 11th, 2001 when my middle school went into lockdown. The teachers weren't allowed to tell us why we weren't switching classes anymore or why the buses were on their way to take us home. We got whispers of small bits of information from the kids that snuck their cellphones to the bathroom - something had happened in New York and now there might be bombs in DC. But we didn't have answers until we got home and watched the planes on loop on CNN then went straight to Yahoo to look up who Osama Bin Laden was.
In retrospect, I understand why the teachers weren't allowed to tell us anything. My middle school was in Silver Spring, Maryland - directly outside of DC. Many of my classmates parents worked in the District, as did my mother, and it would have caused a lot of panic to tell us that a plane had been flown into the Pentagon. My mother, who thankfully worked nowhere near Arlington, was evacuated from her office building and when they were officially released, she and her coworkers were advised against going underground. So, instead of taking the Metro home like any other day, they joined the scores of others walking out of DC. They reached their coworker's apartment and then were driven to another coworker's house in Bethesda where my father could go pick her up.
Looking back on that day, neither my parents nor I could remember why I didn't go with my dad to pick up my mom. I couldn't remember how many classes I had already sat through when school went on lockdown. But I remember exactly where I was sitting in Ms. Pateriya's world studies class - next to her desk and the TV cart, which we asked her to let us turn on even though it probably wasn't even hooked up to cable in the first place. I remember the way our family room was set up, and Kaylan and I looking up Bin Laden as we watched the news. I remember knowing this was a big deal and that it meant we were going to go to war.
My father was around the same age - 10 years old - on December 7th, 1941 when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor. He said it was a quiet day, a normal day, until he turned on the radio and heard the news. And he immediately went to the kitchen to tell his grandma, "It's started," because even at 10 years old, he knew that our country was ramping up to joining the war, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was exactly what would allow us to finally do so. And he went on to believe the propaganda, to participate in paper drives, to support the war in what small ways he could as a pre-teen.
That's kinda the irony of adolescence - it's a strangely helpless time because you're old enough to understand most of what's happening but you aren't old enough to react, to do much in response. After all, we hadn't elected the government officials that sent us to war, and few of us could vote them out of office before they sent us into Iraq. Pearl Harbor and WWII informed my father's generation and now September 11th and the "War on Terror" have informed my generation - "The Millennials."
What defines a Millennial is not that we're coddled, that we got participation trophies, that we're self-centered or entitled or lazy. What defines us is that we came of age around the millennium when two big things happened - the internet became pervasive and September 11th launched us into a military conflict that has lasted for 15 years. Between these two groundbreaking events, we completely changed the way we as Americans view and interact with the world, each other, and information. And it's especially clear in the way Millennials engage with the world - and the way other generations react to Millennials.
We didn't get a choice in going to war - a war that's lasted for more than half of my life now with no end in sight. We didn't get a say in the economic policies that led to the crash in 2008, sending our generation out into a recession and a worse-than-stagnant job market. And despite how easy it would've been to become pessimists, Millennials mostly became idealists that are striving to make big changes in our country.
So, don't call us self-centered when we tell our elders that we don't want to do things their way because, frankly, it didn't seem to work so well. Don't call us entitled when we express our frustration at earning wages that haven't increased commensurately to inflation. Don't call us lazy when we demand a work-life balance because no generation before ours had the access to this level of 24-hour portable communication that enabled *work* to so easily infiltrate *life.* And don't call us coddled because our formative years were informed by a massive tragic event that launched a seemingly never-ending war, pushed us further toward extreme partisanship, and forever changed what we and the next generation view as "normalcy."
On the anniversaries of September 11th, there's always a lot of talk about unity, about supporting our troops and our first responders, about never forgetting what happened. And by September 12th, somehow much of the country manages to forget these notions. This year, try to remember. Remember that Millennials actually put unity into practice by embracing social networks that connect people from all walks of life. Remember that our troops are now largely Millennials. Remember that Millennials experienced monumental changes as we came of age. And don't dismiss our criticisms or our ideas.
