I am 17, but as a 17 year old, if we’re looking at the media you expect me to be hanging out with high schoolers and going to parties and making out with people all night while posting selfies to my snapchat the summer before the last year of high school, right? Wrong. Perhaps you might also think I’m dancing on top of cafeteria tables with the rest of my senior class while spontaneously singing-also wrong (not going to lie, if high school musical were real it’d be either really cool or really creepy).
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No sadly, the life of “Generation Z's” high schoolers is nowhere near as spontaneous or as exciting as anyone not in this generation thinks it to be. Especially when you’re 17 and all you really want at the moment is the security of a full time decent paying job in your desired career industry when you venture halfway across the country to get a degree but these dreams may not seem distant to you, they’re drifting farther from me.
As I was scrolling through the pages of Zillow and Apartment Guide, as one does on a Sunday night, looking for when I make the trip on what I’ll be able to afford with my current part-time job, the side of the street in downtown LA started to look really appealing. Sadly, making $10 an hour and working two 4 hour shifts a week will not really cut an $800 per month rent much less any food or anything else. Here’s where it goes into someone’s head, “Well geez, stop complaining and get a better job!” To random person, if I could get a better job, I would but sadly writing articles once a week and working public relations for a nonprofit currently pays nothing because guess what? I am not legal.
When people my age usually say “I’m not legal, yet.” you’d think it would be for club entry or getting into certain concerts or maybe even signing off on their own forms or buying cigarettes and lottery tickets but no, not lately. “Sorry sweetie, your resume’s good and all but we don’t hire under 18,” if I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I’d almost have enough money to make the first payment of my student loan (which is probably about the same amount as whatever is below).
Then comes the person I tell this to (my mom), saying “Well you’ll get better opportunities later?” really, I will?! Then why in anyone’s name is there a cooking show and a sewing show where eight year olds compete and make award winning stuff. If I’m 17 and I can’t pick up a basic marketing job but one of these little rascals starting drama over stealing fabric and garlic from one another on TV at 8- who would you hire? Someone who’s 18 and just now getting into the industry or someone who’s 9 or 10 and has already been on TV to be proclaimed as one of the best in their field? Sure, there’s always going to be people better than you-of course.
It terrifies me to look around and see the drastic difference in generations. On one hand I could be competing with a professional 10 year old for a job but on the other hand I could be competing with a 30 year old who works with me 2 shifts a week at a department store-it all depends on infinite probability. Sadly, I know nothing about infinite probability other than, well, it’s infinite.
As someone who’s already been accepted into college at 17, then now there’s the big thing- the money. Gladly, the state of alligators and confederacy and that one ass who goes by the name of “Rick Scott” and the presidential candidate dropout “Marco Rubio” decided that financial literacy in economics was needed. It’s pretty much the only good thing either of them have ever done for the state other than, you know, waiting until our last year of high school to give it to us. So, you know this economics class I’m taking online made me make a budget- thanks. So I basically have to work 2 or 3 part time jobs to make upwards of $40,000 annually to live semi-comfortably in Los Angeles and not be in total crippling debt.
In summary, I’m 17 and life is just a trip and I’m trying to comprehend it at the moment.
