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Soft skills like handling feedback and navigating conflict are learnable, not fixed personality traits.

A "positivity bias" in memory makes older adults forget how lost they felt when they were starting out.

Building from your strengths helps you grow faster than obsessing over what you lack.

If you're finishing college this spring—or recently did—this one's for you.

I keep coming back to something that happened about a decade ago. I was at a workplace event, listening to a speaker talk about the "millennial problem." The room was full of managers nodding along as popular authors warned that millennials lacked work ethic, couldn't handle feedback, and were going to ruin professional life as we knew it. These were good people, genuinely worried.

Then the speaker paused, smiled, and said something I've never forgotten: "Relax. They said the same thing about my generation when we were hippies."

The room laughed. And the tension broke, at least a little—because he was right.

The Oldest Complaint in the World

There's a quote that floats around the internet, usually attributed to Socrates, about how the youth love luxury, have bad manners, and disrespect their elders. The attribution is almost certainly wrong—scholars haven't traced those words back to Socrates. But the quote survives because it feels ancient and true. People have been complaining about young people for as long as there have been old people to do the complaining.

Every generation gets the same treatment on arrival. Boomers were self-indulgent. Gen X was aimless. Millennials were fragile. Now it's your turn. The specifics change; the script doesn't.

I say this not to dismiss the critiques but to put them in context. In a prior article for this column, I explored the soft-skill gaps that employers cite when hiring young workers—navigating conflict, regulating emotions under pressure, communicating in professional settings, understanding unwritten workplace norms. Those gaps are real, and I don't want to wave them away. But here's the part I want you to hear: Soft skills are learnable. They aren't fixed traits you either have or you don't. They come through reps—showing up, getting feedback, building relationships, stumbling, trying again. You don't arrive at your first job fully formed, and nobody reasonable expects you to.

Why Older People Forget

Here's something worth understanding about the people who critique you. As we age, our memories get kinder to us. Psychologists have documented a "positivity bias" in memory—the tendency for older adults to recall more of the good and less of the bad. It's a healthy adaptation; it contributes to the finding that life satisfaction often rises in later years.

But it has a side effect. When a 50-year-old looks back at 23, they remember the promotions and the friendships more than the tears in the car after a terrible day, the breakup that wrecked them for months, the boss who humiliated them, the nights they called home because they had no idea what they were doing. That stuff fades. And when it fades, empathy can fade with it. It becomes easy to look at a nervous 22-year-old and think, I was never that lost—when in fact, you absolutely were.

So if someone older seems impatient with you, consider the possibility that they've simply forgotten what it felt like.

What You Carry That We Need

Now let me tell you what I see when I look at your generation, because it's not all soft-skill gaps and phone addiction. I see hope. I see curiosity. I see a kind of audacity that comes from not yet knowing what's "impossible."

One of the great gifts of being young is that you haven't failed enough times to be cautious about everything. You'll attempt things that people my age would wave off because we tried something similar 15 years ago and it didn't work. But the world 15 years ago isn't this world, and the fact that something failed before doesn't mean it will fail now, in your hands, with your tools.

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The biggest problems we face—climate change, conflict, inequality, even the audacious idea of becoming a multiplanetary species—won't be solved by people who've already decided they're too hard. They'll be solved by people who haven't yet learned to be cynical about trying.

That's you. Protect that in yourself.

Building From What's Good

Positive psychology asks a deceptively simple question: What is good, and how do we amplify it? I'd encourage you to turn that question on yourself as you start your career. Instead of obsessing over what you lack, notice what you're good at and what energizes you—then build from there. That doesn't mean ignoring your growth edges. It means you'll grow faster from a foundation of strength than from a pit of self-criticism.

And about those growth edges: here's what I'd offer, not as a checklist but as things to keep in your back pocket. Learn to sit with uncomfortable feedback without immediately defending yourself—let it land; sort through it later. Practice saying hard things kindly and directly; most workplace problems fester because people avoid honest conversation. Get curious about people who are different from you, especially people who are older or who hold roles you don't understand. Find one person who's a few years ahead of you and willing to tell you the truth. And when you make a mistake—when, not if—own it quickly. The people who recover well from errors build the most trust over time.

A Word About the Long Game

You've probably heard some version of the finding that a large share of Americans are dissatisfied with their work. The numbers vary by survey, but the pattern is consistent: A lot of people end up in jobs they endure rather than enjoy. I don't say that to depress you. I say it because the search for meaningful work deserves to be taken seriously—not as a luxury, but as something worth pursuing over years.

Passion doesn't always arrive as a lightning bolt. Sometimes it shows up quietly, after you've gotten competent at something and realized you care about the people you're serving. Stay in things long enough to get good before you decide they're not for you. And if you find yourself settling into quiet misery, pay attention to that signal.

Your 20s are not a dress rehearsal for the part of life that matters. They are part of the life that matters. Make mistakes. Call people back. Show up early sometimes. Ask questions that feel dumb. Let yourself be changed by what you learn.

The world does not need you to be perfect. It needs you to be willing—willing to grow, willing to try, willing to care about something bigger than your comfort. You have more to offer than the critics suggest and more to learn than you realize, and both of those things can be true at the same time.

Go build something. We're glad you're here.

Blanchflower, D. G. (2021). Is happiness U-shaped everywhere? Age and subjective well-being in 145 countries. Journal of Population Economics, 34, 575–624.

Carstensen, L. L., Turan, B., Scheibe, S., Ram, N., Ersner-Hershfield, H., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., Brooks, K. P., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2011). Emotional experience improves with age: Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling. Psychology and Aging, 26(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021285

Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(10), 496–502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.08.005

Gallup. (2024). State of the global workplace: 2024 report. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.a…

O'Toole, G. (2010, May 1). Misbehaving children in ancient times. Quote Investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/

"What is good, and how do we amplify it?": Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive Psychology: An Introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5

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