You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
heykellyjensen 's review for:
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
by Anne Helen Petersen
Some uncollected thoughts:
1. The first four or five chapters could be cut. They're pretty irrelevant to anyone who didn't grow up middle class and that's such a huge oversight for someone who is trying to write about an entire generation. It was irritating to see her declare that millennials grew up with parents in careers and the pressures therein and pause to think, no, no one in my life ever had a career -- they had a job to make ends meet. Those role models didn't exist in my life, and I suspect for others who didn't have the middle class childhood, that will be frustrating.
2. Once we get to the history of work, things get better. But nothing here is new.
3. That said, I think what Peterson really does is distill dozens of self help and socio-cultural theories that folks who don't regularly consume those stories (like I do) will understand. On that level, she succeeds in explaining why the millennial is so burnt out. But readers turned off by #1 aren't going to hang on to get to this -- I wasn't going to until I was encouraged to keep going since the other stuff WAS good. For burnt out millennials, that's asking a lot.
4. So for me, there was nothing new in here because I've read this stuff before. It wasn't insightful or eye-opening. I mostly felt like an outsider looking in to start, then felt like I've seen it and heard it before.
5. OBVIOUSLY it's systemic. But I say that knowing that #3 and #4 are true for me. Peterson purposefully doesn't offer solutions or a balm but rather means of having folks understand the why of the ways they feel. And again, beyond #1, she's successful. That said, I got to the end and wondered what my take away was supposed to be. I didn't connect and I knew this stuff already.
I'm not the reader for this book, and I think the framing of millennial here is misleading. Even in the beginning, Peterson says you can't collapse folks down into neat boxes. And yet, by not better articulating MIDDLE CLASS, she does just that.
1. The first four or five chapters could be cut. They're pretty irrelevant to anyone who didn't grow up middle class and that's such a huge oversight for someone who is trying to write about an entire generation. It was irritating to see her declare that millennials grew up with parents in careers and the pressures therein and pause to think, no, no one in my life ever had a career -- they had a job to make ends meet. Those role models didn't exist in my life, and I suspect for others who didn't have the middle class childhood, that will be frustrating.
2. Once we get to the history of work, things get better. But nothing here is new.
3. That said, I think what Peterson really does is distill dozens of self help and socio-cultural theories that folks who don't regularly consume those stories (like I do) will understand. On that level, she succeeds in explaining why the millennial is so burnt out. But readers turned off by #1 aren't going to hang on to get to this -- I wasn't going to until I was encouraged to keep going since the other stuff WAS good. For burnt out millennials, that's asking a lot.
4. So for me, there was nothing new in here because I've read this stuff before. It wasn't insightful or eye-opening. I mostly felt like an outsider looking in to start, then felt like I've seen it and heard it before.
5. OBVIOUSLY it's systemic. But I say that knowing that #3 and #4 are true for me. Peterson purposefully doesn't offer solutions or a balm but rather means of having folks understand the why of the ways they feel. And again, beyond #1, she's successful. That said, I got to the end and wondered what my take away was supposed to be. I didn't connect and I knew this stuff already.
I'm not the reader for this book, and I think the framing of millennial here is misleading. Even in the beginning, Peterson says you can't collapse folks down into neat boxes. And yet, by not better articulating MIDDLE CLASS, she does just that.