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I'll admit I used to be a snob about being friends with someone a decade older than me. When I started grad school, I gravitated toward the other 20-year-olds in my cohort, thinking I'd have more in common with them than with the Gen Xers who wore out-of-style jeans and talked about starting their own families. At 22, I felt like I was oceans apart from someone nearing their 40s.

The tables turned when I found myself in an office full of Gen Z employees and I was the older one, clinging to delusions of youth. Really, I had just turned 30, but to a 20-year-old, I assume I was practically ancient. My only comfort was a gray-haired Gen Xer, 20 years my senior, who took me under her wing. She would confide in me about raising two teenagers, and I w

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