My expansion essay is mostly focused around Barbera Ehrenrich's "Bright Sided" essay, where she claims that America is seen as the most optimistic nation in the world. However these days, that can be considered far from the truth, especially for Dana Malbank, who wrote "Americans' optimism is dying", and shows national statistics that chisels down on Ehrenreich's claim. Malbank and his colleagues performed a national survey asking Americans if they believed their children would do better in life they did. The common answer is a bit pessimistic to say the least. Malbank says that "The gloom goes beyond the wealth, gender, race, region, age, and ideology. This fractious nation is united by one thing: Lost faith in the United States." Basically what this shows is that no matter who they asked, the answer was usually the same: that they believe their children won't lead better lives than them. Well this is quite a downer to students busting their rumps to get a degree, but this sort of pessimism isn't too surprising to be honest. I feel that we forget to realize what era of time we're living in. We're in a period where all of the good and bad can be seen at our fingertips. More specifically as a nation, we constantly live in a tense paranoia under the threat of terrorist activity, and on a related note, we all witnessed the biggest attack on U.S. soil. It's strange times that we live in. Scandal after scandal, beheadings broadcasted globally, and an infinite amount of finger pointing, both middle and index. It's shown that the older generation has little faith in the future of this country, but what needs to be known is that our younger generation has the opportunity to turn the nation around. I can't say I am optimistic or pessimistic about our country's future, all I can say is I have no clue what this country will look like in 30 years; but that's up to us, because us young folk will inherit it, and we know it's flawed. Hopefully we'll do something about it so we can prove the other generations wrong.