‘Snowflakes’ proving to be resilient

There was a popular myth post-election that a Yale professor had offered an optional midterm for students upset over Trump's victory, and it lit up social media quickly. I counted about a dozen Facebook shares from friends on both sides of the political aisle. Comments typed fast and furious spoke of this snowflake generation, these spoiled, entitled babies who were raised so dreadfully and coddled by their parents. More than once I read, "This is what happens when you give everyone a trophy!" That the truth behind the rumors revealed an entirely opposite story made no difference: This was another opportunity to make fun of those insufferable millennials and their need for safe spaces.

I am a work-at-home parent now, but before I gave birth to my children, I taught hundreds of millennials, this supposed generation of special snowflakes. I myself was raised in an upper-middleclass home with two parents. I went to summer camps, I went to college, and while there were some difficult times, I was sheltered from the realities that so many of my students lived with on a daily basis. But while my students were weighed down by matters I thought only existed in novels, they got themselves to school every day and worked hard.

During my second year of teaching, I sat in my thirdperiod class with two-dozen millennials as we watched the twin towers fall. The following year, my students zigged and zagged each morning as they hurried toward the safe haven of the school building to avoid being gunned down by the Washington-area Beltway sniper. They did not hide in their rooms under the covers, but instead they persevered.

This generation has never attended school without the dark cloud of school shootings hanging over their heads. Whether it would be fear of fellow students or fear of outsider attackers, these millennials went to school knowing that it was a place where someone might do them harm.

When I was young, the mass shooting in a Luby's restaurant in Texas shocked the nation. For millennials, a similar event might last only a day or so on CNN. This is the reality of the world in which they came of age: Their classrooms and their dorm rooms are potential targets of gun violence.