The millennial generation — the first to have lived entirely inside the mature meritocracy — appreciates these burdens most keenly. Elite millennials can be precious and fragile, but not in the manner of the special snowflakes that derisive polemics describe. They do not melt or wilt at every challenge to their privilege, so much as shatter under the intense competitive pressures to achieve that dominate their lives. They are neither dissolute not decadent, but rather tense and exhausted.
The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits.
(“Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift – look out out kid, they keep it all hid”, Bob Dylan)