Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Ann told me. “No one in my family did. High school, which had pushed us to go to college so hard, did no real prep whatsoever. I showed up at college, started classes, and was rushed to the ER my first week when I thought I was having a heart attack.” It was a panic attack—the first diagnosis of anxiety issues that have never gone away, especially after she graduated with $56,000 in loans “right before the economy went to shit.” Today, Ann works at a nonprofit in New York, and is trying to throw as much money at her loans as possible. She’s never missed a payment, and has an 800 credit score—about as close to perfect as you can get. But when she thinks of burnout, she thinks about that student loan payment—over $500 a month, which means maybe they’ll be paid off by the time she’s forty-two—and how exhausted she is with paying for a mistake that was sold to her as a solution.