I'm a millennial. I'm a trophy child. I grew up in the big boom of participation ribbons and pizza parties no matter whether you won or lost. Because of this, I get a hateful bundle of words and phrases thrown at me- my whole generation does.

Selfish

Entitled

Spoiled

Unwilling to accept failure

Babies

But here's the part that always gets me: we didn't ask for these trophies. We didn't demand participation ceremonies or pizza parties. The same people who fling these hurtful phrases towards us are the ones who created this phenomenon. If we knew, when we were younger, that accepting the trophies and ribbons given to us for everything would cause this much backlash towards our generation we wouldn't have taken them. We would have refused that cheap trophy that stayed on our shelf till it was put in a bin in the back of our closets to make room for even more. God forbid, if we didn't put them up on display we would be "disrespectful" or "not thankful for the experience."

Did they really expect us, at six years old, to be able to articulate that we didn't crave this affirmation like we thought they did? You created praise junkies. We didn't turn to you at birth and say, "Acknowledge me! Affirm my existence and participation!"

Stop blaming us. Stop calling us entitled babies. We're currently twenty-somethings blindly trying to find our way through life. We don't need the constant jokes and menace towards something we didn't even ask for.

I want to give the trophies back. I want to give you all a participation ribbon for trying this whole encouragement thing out and failing miserably. But, hey, you tried!

We crave challenge and affirmation. We want to have our hard work acknowledged but to be encouraged to constantly improve.

Maybe you can try that?