By the time I was 31 years old, I was overseeing a budget of $30,000,000 and managing a team of 10 people, 9 of whom were older than I was. My star rocketing up the career ladder, I was the very definition of “ambitious”. I owed my achievements to long, long hours of hard work, dedication to school work and a willingness to do whatever task was required, no matter how menial.

This is exactly why it galls the hell out of me now to hear young people explain away their self-righteous sense of entitlement by simply saying that “they’re ambitious”.

princessbride Ambition is what drives ordinary individuals to achieve extraordinary feats. It’s what makes us climb on the work horse when our friends are off backpacking around Australia. When that damned bucking bronco pitches us head over heels into a giant puddle of defeat, ambition helps us ignore the swamp ass of failure. It is what keeps us from realizing that our head is cracking in two while we’re bashing our skulls against the walls of corporate America.

It is appalling when young people use the word ambition to explain away their inability to listen and their aversion to rolling up their sleeves and doing the work. Ambition without perseverance, without the sweat-filled beads of long experience, is about as valuable as a one-legged, blind, deaf and dumb dog…which is to say not at all.

Newsflash kiddos – your coworkers don’t care that your mother says you’re great. Your high school guidance counselor’s assessment that “you can be anything you want” won’t qualify you for an extra bonus in the Christmas paycheck. The only thing that matters in the office is whether your boss thinks you’re great – and if he or she happens to be 5+ years older than you, likely they’ll be judging you on your ability to complete a simple task without requiring a babysitter (or your mom) to hold your hand while you do it.

If you want more money, a better title and a bigger office, you need to wake up and smell the day-old coffee burning in the office kitchen, and then be the one to make a new pot. Good things come to those who work their butts off and impress the hell out of their supervisors OR to those born with a silver spoon in their mouth. If you don’t fit either of those categories, no amount of whining that “waiting for a promotion or a raise is demotivating” is going to sway your boss.

You can write the word “ambitious” on your resume 150 times, hell you can even tattoo it to your forehead. But without the sweaty armpits and eyebags to back it up, it’s just going to smell like “entitlement” to the rest of us.

Author

Lynn Morrison is a smart-ass American raising two prim princesses with her obnoxiously skinny Italian husband in Oxford, England. If you've ever hidden pizza boxes at the bottom of the trash or worn maternity pants when not pregnant, chances are you'll like the Nomad Mom Diary. Catch up with her daily on Facebook and Twitter.

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