This generation has no appreciation for hard work and determination. We’ve managed to find the easy way out of everything.

Our idea of socializing usually involves a hand-held device, most food comes from the drive thru, 16-year-olds drive luxury cars and every dollar we spend comes from our parents’ wallets.

We’ve been told by many of our family members, teachers and mentors that we don’t know what hard work is because we have never had to do it. We’ve been told we think money grows on trees and we don’t know the stress of the “real world.”

While some of us do get more financial support from our family than others, a majority of our generation works harder than any other.

Students work two or three jobs at once to pay for school. They study, pay bills, get married, raise families, stress and struggle with everyday life just like any middle aged American does because the job market demands it. There are no exceptions.

A high school diploma alone isn’t worth much anymore, and employers want more than a degree. They want job experience, volunteer work, campus involvement, multiple languages and so much more than just  specialization in one field.

Because of the world the current economy has built for us, if we don’t somehow do it all and start out on top, we will always be on bottom.

Our mentors leave the competitive job market just in time to collect a well-earned retirement check and this generation will enter it with no guarantees.

We don’t know if we’ll receive retirement money, have decent healthcare, be able to afford a home or have the money to pay the rising cost of tuition when our own children step onto a university campus.

So what if our parents want to help us now? Why does it matter if our dinner is handed to us from a window or if our cars have a certain name on the back?

Our parents worked hard to provide for their children’s future and this generation is going to do the same.

We’ll work, travel, create and grow just as any generation before us has. And those that find the easy way out of everything? There’s a word for them: innovators.

They’ll find the cheapest, simplest way to do something and make it even cheaper and easier.

It’s the innovators that create smartphones, ecofriendly cars and other technology that changes the way people live forever.

It’s the students that work multiple jobs during the day, feed and bathe children at night and study into the wee hours of the morning that have the drive to do anything and everything they need to succeed.

We may be privileged, but we are far from lazy. If this generation isn’t living in the “real world” now, what world are we living in?