When I travel the country speaking to audiences about the values and characteristics of my generation, the millennial generation, I often take questions from curious parents and bosses who just want to better understand their children or junior staffers. They don’t understand why their employees want to work strange hours or crave constant feedback and praise, or why their children don’t hold the conservative values they were raised with. I do my best to explain what the disconnect might be and from where it might originate.

But every once in a while, there’s an exasperated audience member who has “less of a question and more of a comment.” Typically that comment is total disdain for the next generation. They’ve got a gripe and they want to get it off their chest, I find myself having to shift briefly from an explainer to a defender of my kind.