LOST
GENERATION
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
“I HAVE NO PLAN FOR THE FUTURE,
NO LIFE PLAN; ALL THAT COUNTS IS
STABILIZING MY SITUATION.”
that needed to happen.’”
She tries not to forget the sacrifices her family has made to help
her during her unemployment.
Her mother has taken time off
from work to take her to seminars
and financially supported her efforts to become a writer.
“We rely on each other, and I
am needed at home,” Odelola says.
“But she has made it clear that
if I need to go somewhere else in
order to see the fruit of my aspiration, then she’ll be happy to send
me on my way.”
Her social life has been dented,
but Odelola is grateful to have
friends who understand and accommodate her situation. “I don’t
really get hassled to come out all
the time, unless it’s free,” she says.
“And my really close friends will
come to see me and bring me edible
gifts, which is never a bad thing.”
She rejects the “lazy youth”
stereotype that has grown along
with the ranks of Britain’s young
and unemployed.
“My generation is very active,”
she says. “We enjoy being busy
and doing stuff, we have bred a
lot of entrepreneurs and selfstarters. Many of us have begun
building our own brands and
making a name for ourselves,
because nobody else will.”
But she worries that youth
unemployment is now so established that it has insinuated itself into the basic understanding
of British reality.
“You have to assume that
unemployment and youth are
not our government’s priority
right now,” she says. “I do
understand that it is also a sign
of our economic times — we’ve
been in like 22 recessions in the
last three years, and it’s getting
pretty ridiculous now. Nobody
knows anything and we’re
all just watching our
economy crumble.”
Peter Goodman and Chris Kirkham
reported from New York, and Stanislas
Kraland from Paris. With contributions
from Rodrigo Carretero in Madrid,
Mohamed Omar in Toronto, Charlie
Lindlar in London, Flavio Bini in Rome
and Jillian Berman in New York.