It is no secret that the “damn kids these days” are nothing like previous generations. We stare at our phones all day while tweeting every moment of our life. When we travel we usually just whip out the selfie stick, grab a quick pic for Instagram, and jump back into the air conditioned bus or hotel room. There is one way though that we are breaking all the rules, and that is in modern adulthood.

1. We are living with our parents much longer than any generation before
2. We are much less likely to own a house
3. We are much less likely to have children
4. We are much less likely to be (and stay) married
5. We are much less likely to hold a lifetime career
6. We are more optimistic
7. We are more likely to be weighed down with education loans
8. We are more likely to be unemployed in areas of our specialty
9. We care about different issues
10. We vote differently

So much so that we have also been labeled the “Boomerang” generation, since we leave for college and then come crawling back to our parent’s house for a place to stay and save while we work. The average millennial leaves the nest during their mid-twenties, since a college degree no longer ensures job placement.

While most of us are not in a serious relationship where we share a living space with a partner, we are more and more returning home after college to live with our parents, because it just doesn’t make sense, without a career or reason, to own a home. Plus, most of us don’t know how to fix problems in a house on our own anyways. At least if you rent, the good ole’ land lord will take care of that leaky faucet and shovel your cars out.

You’d think with apps like Tinder, there’d be quite a bit of pregnancy happening, but surprisingly not! Since we listened to our parents complain about having children for twenty years, we might have figured out that having kids isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or it could be the economy, you know if we don’t have a steady income, how can we pay for those diapers? We just can’t.

With over 50% of marriages ending in divorce, most of us have given up on the idea of a happy marriage and just decide not to do it. Who needs a piece of paper to say we are in love anyways? Am I right? Oh yeah, and it’s expensive! The average wedding in the United States costs $26,444 and we have a past riddled with college debt, and a future with a wild mortgage ahead. With all the different technologies and social media today, it is sadly much easier to cheat on a special-someone today than any other time before, and this contributes to the lackluster excitement for marriage.

Each millennial is expected to go through fifteen to twenty jobs in their lifetime, and that is after graduating college. Most of us work quite a few different jobs just in high school or college for spending money, never mind once we hit the career stage of our lives. This sort of job hopping is unlike any group before us, as we only last an average of four years at any one job.

Even though we endured multiple ups and downs in our economy, Millennials are the most up-beat about our futures. We will graduate high school. We will graduate university. We will get that dream job. American Dream? Maybe not. But dream job? You know it. We will love thy neighbor, even if he or she looks different or worships different. We want a better future, for you, for me, and for generations to come.

Now this one hurts me the most to write about – because I know it first-hand. I got an email the other day saying I am currently paying $1/day interest on my loan, and that’s after just one year, imagine four!? Ouch. If I’m feeling any sort of burn, it’s in my wallet. But seriously, the average college debt for a student today is $30,000 and that’s quite a bit of money.

You’ve all heard the stories of a friend with a Bachelor’s degree in some program like underwater basket weaving stuck working at McDonald’s for a few years until they find the right job. Now, I’m kidding about the underwater basket weaving, but there are actually minimum wage jobs like Mickey D’s that require, yes – require degrees just to say “would you like fries with that?” Ridiculous.

In the forefront of most millennials minds are the environment, social issues, and national security. If we can land a man on the moon in less than a decade, surely we can unite to combat climate change, so our children have a planet to live on. But if they have this planet, will it be subject to the current state of terrorism? Will there be bombings in major cities to rattle regions? We much responsibly try to end the War on Terror, as most of us realize we are not making much headway.

Now I don’t want to surprise anyone, but most of us are feelin’ the Bern. Why is that? He’s got some good qualities going for him. One, he’s not Hilary Clinton. Two, he’s not Donald Trump. That’s all I need to hear to give him my vote. Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that. He cares about the issues we care about, oh yeah, and he’s been doing it for almost forty years. Being eagle-eyed with how the future will go, he predicted the chaos of regime change as well as the terrible consequences of the Iraq War for the United States. Being a champion on the social-issue spectrum, he has long supported rights for all of the different ingredients (peoples) of America’s melting pot. Now as an old man, it’s like talking to grandpa again, except Bernie listens, and he takes us seriously. He isn’t calling African American’s super predators, and he’s not demanding a ban on the second group of people in the world into the United States, Muslims.

Surely it is not all bad, that we do things a little differently than our forefathers, but it is true, we are shaking the world up as we change it. Whether we vote for far-left leaning politicians or go to support our local environmental group, we are making strides every day just to raise awareness of the issues we care about. There’s a lot of competition in the economy right now, and we barely know what we want to do with our lives – so don’t worry mom and dad, we will leave the nest one day, just later than you left your parent’s house. Millennials are one unique group, from the economics of it all to our strong voices on the issues we care about, we are breaking all the norms of adulthood as we move forward in this ever-changing world.