15. What this woman really wants is love and attention. But she calls it“gratitude”. And she will never get gratitude or love, because she demands it. She thinks it's her due.

36. He is earning $ 75,000 — a sum beyond Scott's reach today, but not his expectations.“I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college ldid ,"Scott said , " and then I worked hard through college to graduate with thegrades and degree that l did to position myself for a solid job.”( He majored inpolitical science and minored in history. )

35.“I'm fortunate to be at a company where there is some security ," he said,adding that he supports Scott in his determination to hold out for the right job."Once youstart working , you get caught up in the work and you have bills to pay , and you losesight of what you really want ," the brother said.

34. Her oldest,David Jr. , 26 ,did land a good job.Graduating from Middlebury College in 2006,he joined a Boston insurance company,specializing in reinsurance ,nearlythree years ago,before the recession.

33. "No one on either side of the family has ever gone through this," Mrs. Nicholson said, "and I guess I'm impatient. I know he is educated and has a great work ethic and wants to start contributing, and I don't know what to do. "

32. The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is worth of $ 175, 000 , have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son.

31. That millennials as a group are optimistic is partly because many are, as Mr. Kohut put it, the children of doting baby boomers —among .them David Nicholson and his wife, Susan, 56 , an executive at a company that owns movie theaters.

30. "As frustrated as I get now, and I never intended to live at home, I'm in a good situation in a lot of ways, " Scott said. "I have very little overhead and no debt , and it is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work. Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job. "

29. The jobs are catch as catch can. He and a friend recently put up a white wooden fence for a neighbor, em bedding the posts in cement, a day's work that brought Scott $ 125. He mows lawns and gardens for half a dozen clients in Grafton, some of them family friends. And he is an active volunteer firefighter.

28. Like most of his classmates, Scott tries to get by on a shoestring and manages to earn enough in odd jobs to pay some expenses.

27. "Going it alone," "earning enough to be self-supporting" - these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends. Of the 20 college classmates with whom he keeps up, 12 are working, but only half are in jobs they "really like . " Three are entering law school this fall after frustrating experiences in the work force, "and five are looking for work just as I am, " he said.