Robin

“One common refrain I’ve heard from Gifted and Talented kids is how none of us really learned how to think,” he said. “We could just retain information so much easier, and most importantly, we had great reading comprehension, which is 90 percent of school assignments. Once I got to college, I realized how little I really know about studying and effectively learning and thinking rather than just reading and knowing.”
― Anne Helen Petersen, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation – A Cultural Critique of Capitalism, Debt, Hustle Culture, and Exhaustion

“The desire for the cool job that you’re passionate about is a particularly modern and bourgeois phenomenon—and, as we’ll see, a means of elevating a certain type of labor to the point of desirability that workers will tolerate all forms of exploitation for the “honor” of performing it. The rhetoric of “Do you what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life” is a burnout trap. By cloaking the labor in the language of “passion,” we’re prevented from thinking of what we do as what it is: a job, not the entirety of our lives.”
― Anne Helen Petersen, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation – A Cultural Critique of Capitalism, Debt, Hustle Culture, and Exhaustion

“Most of us would rather read a book than stare at our phones, but we’re so tired that mindless scrolling is all we have energy to do.”
― Anne Helen Petersen, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation – A Cultural Critique of Capitalism, Debt, Hustle Culture, and Exhaustion

“It took burning out for many of us to arrive at this point. But the new millennial refrain of “Fuck passion, pay me” feels more persuasive and powerful every day.”
― Anne Helen Petersen, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation – A Cultural Critique of Capitalism, Debt, Hustle Culture, and Exhaustion