Friday, May 21, 2010

I Failed Kindergarten

True story: they made me repeat kindergarten. I don’t remember the exact reason, considering I was only five years old. I do remember that my teacher, Miss Stives, was the coolest person ever, with that 90s perm, giant glasses, and don’t forget the shoulder pads. The good news is that I did eventually pass the grade, finish high school a year early, and get elected class president in college.

One of the characteristics of my generation is turning out to be our individuality. While our obsession with personalization can be ridiculous, there’s a lot to be said for our confidence in ourselves. We are who we are and don’t try to change us. We have redefined failure and re-accept the challenge to “boldly go where no one has gone before.”

We don’t need good luck because we’ve never had it. Most of us have grown up in dysfunctional families, each with their own unique blend of single-parent-blended-family-step-and-half-sibling chaos. If we can survive our screwed up childhood, bring on the future! How bad could it be?

So what if you fail classes, default on loans, get evicted, lose your job, and get dumped simultaneously? We may not be the most responsible generation ever, but we are strong survivors. We don’t always know what we want, but once we know what it looks like, we go for it. I like to think that when we’re grandparents some day, we’ll each be able to tell our unique stories about the time we failed kindergarten but kept going anyway—and had fun doing it!

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