Melinda Mac

My job is to work with and engage undergraduates. My master’s degree is in College Student Personnel, i.e., to educate and advance college students. I’ve been working with 18-22 year olds since 2005, and was one myself just before that. I’d like to think of myself as relatively hip with the kids these days, and was recently employed at an art school, where I even put myself with the masses of these hip kids and took classes alongside them. 

Anyway, to give you that background, the CEO of where I am employed came into my office the other day and inquired of whether I knew what “YOLO” meant. Say what? Huh? Why, no, I have no idea. He has two young daughters at home who were educating him on this concept.

Of course, I fired up urbandictionary.com, and this is what it gave me: YOLO is the acronym for “You Only Live Once.” Buzzfeed also breaks it down as “To recklessly pursue fun while throwing long-term consequences to the wind,” and claims it to be specifically for 16-22 year olds.

And then the nearly 30 year old me, thought to myself, “Kids these days!” 

Because I cannot, whatsoever, identify with being 16-22 and imagining the concept of only living once. Because I am a Millennial. And not only am I a Millennial, I am the first of the Millennials. The class of 2000, born in 1982. 

In second grade, we were pulled aside to start the process of being told we’re special. We were the high school class of 2000 and we’d be the first to change the world. Who cares about that class of 1999? They’ll be partying like it’s 1999 and no one will care, because, they, are not special.

In high school, I graduated as valedictorian, I took 4 different types of dance and music lessons, I was president of my local teen AMBUCs, I delivered Meals on Wheels, I was the Cross Country team manager, I was in Show Choir (yes, it does exist outside of Glee), madrigals, orchestra, band. I took AP classes and early bird classes all 4 years at 7:00 a.m. so I could fit in every single opportunity I could. I had straight As from 6th grade throughout high school. 

The 90s, when I was in high school, was also the midst of the rise of the AIDS epidemic. If you only lived once, you’d get AIDS and die. We saw our heros, Pedro Zamora and Magic Johnson practicing YOLO and we became entranced in the fear of such behavior, especially involving and practicing safe sex (don’t get me started on kids these days and lack of safety!). We were all wearing red ribbons and passing out condoms at school was new! Being responsible and living for the future was at the height of this movement.

And in college it didn’t stop. While I did slow down a bit (at least in terms of getting those straight As), I was crazy involved on campus— I was president of the presidents of the sororities, orientation leader, resident advisor, you name it, and I was in it. All while maintaining an on campus job and pretty decently good grades. Because I needed to get into graduate school! I needed a resume and I needed good GRE scores! 

I got into a good graduate program, fully paid for, housing, tuition, and even got a stipend. They paid me to get a master’s degree. And shortly thereafter, I got a job! 

And my first job was miserable. In my first year, I got personally sued by Bob Saget (a story for another time). I worked for two different Gen Xers who didn’t believe in this whole mantra of “You’re special! We appreciate you! Yay you! You’re a winner!” that I’d been taught since that day in 2nd grade.

Then the economy tanked. Every single Millennial was laid off, rolled around in credit card and student loan debt, and sat around and wondered what all that work in high school and college and possibly graduate school was for. I eventually was hired for another job. That job had salary freezes for over 3 years. I was offered another job at a much higher pay raise, only to have the position cancelled after I accepted. I, along with most every other Millennial, experienced no rewards from doing everything right to be successful. 

And this is what the younger generation has witnessed. They see these bitter 23-30 year old Millennials with what to show for? Living in their parents’ basement or working in a dead end cubical job? Laid off? Why should they work their asses off to be successful only to be miserable anyway? YOLO is a direct correlation to the economy and the Millennial generation. It did not exist without the bitter 30 year olds desolate after all that drudgery. 

And all that we Millennials are left with is FOMO.

That’s the Fear of Missing Out. Our own acronym for us Millennials.

As you have probably heard by now, unless you live under a rock, MCA, Adam, of the Beastie Boys died today. At the age of 47. From cancer. 

I’m wildly upset. If you would’ve told me last week that a Beastie Boy would die next week, I don’t think I would’ve believed you if you told me I would be affected like this. I obviously am upset because someone too young died from a horrible disease.

But I’m profoundly thinking of how artists like MCA have affected my own life. A girl from Danville, Illinois, a place where there wasn’t an alternative radio station that you could put on in your car, unless you happened to get close enough to Champaign, where you could pick up 107.1, the college station. Hip hop existed, but wasn’t accessible to a white girl in Central Illinois, as it was Tupac and Biggie and Dre, which was not quite my style. 

When I heard Hello Nasty and “Intergalactic” for the first time (yes, I realize they had music before that, but I was in high school when Hello Nasty came out), I was mesmerized. You know when music opens a world to that girl from Central Illinois when three dudes from Brooklyn introduce something she didn’t know existed. I barely knew Brooklyn existed. Music can do that, and the Beastie Boys did that for me. A cross between hip-hop and alternative music, I was hooked. My favorite was also “Song for Junior,” though there are no words— but only music with a flute playing as the melody (I am a flautist myself). What the Beastie Boys created for people was accessibility and art and an introduction to something completely new, while being able to cross cultural lines and influences.

Besides all this personal connection to the music of the Beastie Boys, I also realized today that I obviously will never see the BBs perform live. It’s over. In my 20s, I’ve made it a point to see all the music that inspired me growing up that I never got to see, because a) my parents would’ve never let me attend concerts such as these, and b) because I lived in Central Illinois, where bands like Smashing Pumpkins weren’t making many appearances. In the last few years, I’ve seen Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo Fighters, Fiona Apple, Weezer, just to name a few (The Cranberries in 2 weeks). But the Beastie Boys, who had scheduled a 2009 Lollapalooza appearance, only to cancel because that’s when MCA got sick, I will never see.

And that makes me feel old. And that makes me feel sad too. Like someone who is an icon to me is allowed to die, and not in a freak accident, not from a drug overdose, or drive by shooting, no, because he had cancer, at 47 years old. 

He’s only 18 years older than me.

I want to send MCA all my love, and please rest in peace. Hope you’re doing some Sabotage wherever you are.

Also, here is a link to the Beastie Boys’ official statement. I didn’t know MCA was such an amazing person in the philanthropy world too. Wow.

A friend of mine just lost his father recently, and another friend of mine is on the brink of losing her parent as well. My thoughts and prayers are with the both of them.

I’ve started to reflect on this. How it makes me feel incredibly old. My friend’s dad is much too young to be leaving this world. But this is the start of it. This is the time when our generation starts losing our parents. We’re busy celebrating 30th birthdays and babies and marriages and happy things, but now this will be the start of yet another trend of our aging selves.

My grandmother passed away in February of 2007. All my friends drove the hour south of Chicago to Kankakee to be there for the wake. It was devastating to lose her, but she was 86 and her time on this earth had come to its end. We were at peace with this, as much as you can be when you lose someone very important to you. My friend who is losing her dad even came down for her funeral. That same year, my best friend’s grandfather passed and we made our way to Harvard, Illinois to be there, because that’s what you do.

I didn’t imagine 5 years later, almost to the day, that we’d all be sending updates to each other about someone’s father. That it would already be time to start saying goodbye to the ones who brought us on this earth. Like I said, this is deeply saddening to me and just makes me feel ancient.

I hope and pray that all of the parents of the Millennials, the Baby Boomers, stay in our lives until we are able to walk down the aisle, give them 8 grandchildren, and all live til they are also 86. But I know this may not be the case and this is the beginning of losing the generation before us.

All my love to you John and Molly and all others who have lost their beloved parents.