Darya Mead shares her concerns about her kids’ futures as they get ready to graduate from college.
This June, both my boys graduate from the same University in Seattle. The Master’s student went to a UC for his BA which was way more affordable. For all of it I am grateful, grateful to have shepherded my babies to this point. That said, I have a ton of genuine fears about their futures. Putting aside the state of the world, country and general culture in 2026, the crushing student debt they’ll both have is certainly a ball and chain, if not utterly paralyzing.
They’re smart, capable young men, and I do still believe on some level that the world is their proverbial oyster, but was it when I was their age? I mean, I graduated from college in the late 1980’s with no debt, nuclear fears, AIDS killing friends — and the terror of it coursing through my veins — and then the Wall fell, the first Gulf War started and I moved to San Francisco.
It was a bad recession; I had three gigs; none paying more than $10 an hour. The difference is I could afford an apartment; albeit with roaches and other unseemly activities under my window every night. Life was fun, and the go-go 90’s took off. Eventually, I picked one of the three jobs, got great health insurance, worked my way up the food chain, met their father and we even bought a small house.
It’s been a financial roller coaster, but we did it, raised two Gen Z fellas who have a lot to share with the world. Perhaps the optimism and can-do spirit I arrived with all those years ago is a quaint and esoteric chapter relegated to the dustbin of history. It’s a new AI era, the country deeply divided and hope in short supply.