My life at Gresham’s
As a headmaster claims millennials have a grit deficiency, Daisy Buchanan argues her career took off when she chose to be choosy
Another day, another flurry of accusations for millennials to defend themselves against – this time, their deficiency in “developing grit and a grateful attitude to work.”
So said Douglas Robb, head of the £33,960-a-year Gresham’s School in Norfolk, on the school’s website this week, writing that while “there used to be a real sense of pride associated with doing ‘an honest day’s work’, whatever the role might have been… some youngsters now approach job interviews the same as they might approach buying a luxury holiday.”
Robb blamed social media and reality TV for the fact that we might not be clamouring for a role in fast food, or one that involves “receiving abuse from members of the public”. Last year, the Tea House theatre company was criticised for a job advert that sounded similar to Robb’s tirade – for a full-time role in London with a starting salary of £15,000 per annum. It’s worth remembering that calling someone “entitled” is often a way of undermining their ambition and devaluing the cost of their labour.
Indeed most of Robb’s criticism centres around the idea that when it comes to work, my generation, born between 1981 and 1997, aren’t prepared to put up and shut up. In the US, research suggests that we’ll jump ship if we’re not happy, with 21 per cent changing jobs in the last year, and 60 per cent describing themselves as “always looking for new opportunities”.
Yes, it’s a deviation from the career paths of our baby-boomer parents, for whom sticking with one job for life is commonplace – but in the frenetic modern world, staying anywhere for long is nigh-on impossible. After I graduated, I was fired from my first proper job, fell in love with my second, left to go freelance and then quit a third because it was making me miserable.
To Robb’s mind, this would surely be evidence of my lack of “grit”; had I been as enterprising as he and his Gen X contemporaries – who, lest we forget, were once dubbed Generation Slacker – I’d still be in that first job, tilling the fields of mortgage PR. I suspect my teeth would be ground to the gums, my nails gnawed to the knuckle and by the time I got to my late forties, I’d be having a full-blown midlife crisis.
In my case, deciding to leave a role that was making me unhappy was the bravest thing I’ve ever done. When I was offered a top job in journalism, I was delighted, and desperate to prove myself. It seemed like the position I’d spent my twenties working towards. But I quickly became anxious, miserable and confused, as it became apparent that the job I’d been offered wasn’t the one I’d really been asked to do. The big title, and the sense that I was “lucky” to be there, exacerbated my anxiety, and made me feel trapped. Putting my mental health first and quitting didn’t feel like a choice, but my only option. I felt like a failure, yet
‘I suspect our parents drank more than millennials, to make their jobs bearable’
as soon as I went back to freelancing, I flew. Exactly a year after I left, I gave a TEDX talk on the pressures facing millennials and I landed a book deal, appeared on TV and radio and worked as a consultant.
Robb says that millennials should be grateful for what they’re given, but my career took off when I let myself be choosy. Data tells us that millennials are drinking less (dull!), and I suspect this is down to most of our parents’ generation drinking to make their jobs bearable. We, meanwhile, walk away before we get that miserable.
Robb may disagree, but I believe that my own chequered work history and that of so many of my millennial peers is a story of grit. Our successes have come from trusting our guts and creating our own paths. Of course a laptop isn’t the coalface, but just because we’re constantly staring at screens, that doesn’t mean we’re not working hard. I don’t think anyone should have to justify their work ethic, but I’d like to tell Robb about the evenings and weekends I spent waitressing to bolster my paltry intern stipend, the 5.45am alarms I’ve set to meet deadlines, the events I’ve spoken at and set up to raise money for mental health, and the fact that as a freelance writer, I effectively have two full-time jobs – writing, and being my own manager, accounts department and HR team – and I do this because I love it.
It was his generation who said they wanted to “have it all”; conversely, my generation is much more realistic – we don’t want it all. According to Deloitte’s Millennial Work survey, 50 per cent of us would take a pay cut to find a gig that matched our values, and 90 per cent of us want to use our skills for good. We’re earning 20 per cent less than our parents did at our age and a study at the end of last year found that half of millennials had a “side hustle” – a moneymaking hobby that they pursued in addition to their full-time job. Take Zoe Sugg, 27, a Youtuber worth an estimated £2.5million – all because she started her business in her bedroom.
Perhaps we are more delicate than generations past, but is it weak to care about equal opportunities, justice and kindness? Our elders malign these values as “political correctness gone mad”, but we’re taking on the big battles: following last week’s horrific school shooting in Florida, it is the teen survivors courageously lobbying for greater gun control. A Harvard study predicted millennials could be the first generation to successfully alter gun laws in the US.
Millennials are also the lifeblood of #Metoo, propagating a muchneeded zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment. As many women in their fifties and
‘We may still be in teenage bedrooms, but from them, we’re building empires’
sixties have shared the terrible things that happened to them, I’m sure that, looking back, shrugging off that kind of abuse with a “put up and shut up” mentality now looks grossly unfair.
We don’t think there’s anything to be gained from suffering quietly – we’re loudly challenging the status quo, and that takes guts. More importantly, we’re not necessarily seeking power and glory, but are committed to doing the right thing.
From the outside it might look like we’re slow to grow up. Economic circumstances mean that many of us are still in our teenage bedrooms, but from them, we’re building empires. We just have different priorities from our parents. their jobs came with perks, pensions and paid holidays. When we’re not getting those, why shouldn’t we demand fulfilment and career satisfaction instead?
I’m under no illusion that we are perfect. But we’re flying in the face of adversity, and we have grit to spare. Our critics say we’re lazy, but there’s nothing lazier than making assumptions about a whole generation.