For homework, as you read the article, apply the “notice and focus” strategy that we learned in class today. You can take notes in the margins—this will help you arrive at an idea that you will write about on our class blog.
You can write about anything that interests or strikes you based on what you read. Keep your post centered around one main idea, insight, or observation you came to while doing the notice and focus strategy. As you write, make sure you refer back to specific details from the article as you develop and explore that idea with more depth.
Note: This assignment asks you to write about an original idea you have. Please do not repeat other classmates’ ideas. This means that you need to read previous blog entries before submitting yours for everyone to see.
You can write about anything that interests or strikes you based on what you read. Keep your post centered around one main idea, insight, or observation you came to while doing the notice and focus strategy. As you write, make sure you refer back to specific details from the article as you develop and explore that idea with more depth.
Note: This assignment asks you to write about an original idea you have. Please do not repeat other classmates’ ideas. This means that you need to read previous blog entries before submitting yours for everyone to see.
Don’t forget to construct your entry with your audience in mind. Your personality and your voice in writing is what makes a blog engaging. Also, avoid writing long paragraphs—long blocks of texts are difficult for readers on a computer to digest. Remember to include a catchy blog post title—you want your entry to stand out from the rest! Your blog entry should be approximately 300 words long (about one page typed).
Sean Amberger Blog Comment: Why You Never Truly Leave High School
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the article assigned to us for homework over Labor Day weekend I found myself thinking about minor differences between some of the studies.
The first, and by far the most obvious is between two studies discussed near the end of the article. The first one, which is discussed on page 10 and was performed by the
National Bureau Of Economic Research, came to the conclusion that people who were popular in high school would go on to become more successful in life. Those who scored in the 80th percentile on the popularity test earned 10% more money than those who scored in the 20th percentile. This would appear to lead to the conclusion that popularity in high school leads to a greater likelihood of success in later life.
However, a study covered on page 11, which was performed by three psychologists, one of whom was named Jacquelynne Eccles, came to the conclusion that girls who were popular in high school (named “princesses” after Breakfast Club) had lower self-esteem at the age of 24 than the “brainy girls”. This was most likely a result of the fact that the “brainy girls” could use their intelligence as a source of self-esteem, while the princesses were reliant on the opinion of others, as well as their looks and luck. Due to the fact that higher self-esteem is generally considered beneficial (Brene Brown, who discussed shame on pages 7 and 8, states that shame that comes from high school can have a lasting negative influence throughout life), one would expect that the brainy girls, who were unpopular during school, would not have that such high levels of self-esteem.
Another example also involves the study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Gabriella Conti, the first writer of the research paper, stated that she considers high school to be a place where adolescents learn how to properly navigate social life.
This is contradicted by the 1961 book entitled the Adolescent Society which states that the society of teens, “ focus[es] teen-age interests and attitudes on things far removed from adult responsibilities.” A similar sentiment is echoed by the National Home Education Network, whose website says, “Children spending time with individuals of all ages more closely resembles real life than does a same-age school setting.”
After noticing these contradictions I began to wonder if the author had a preference for one result over the other. I ultimately came to the conclusion that the author’s opinion definitely leans away from the study performed by the Bureau of Economic Research. The author states, in her own words that,” during puberty, kids have absolutely no clue how to assess character or read the behavior of others”(Senior 9). This indicates she does not consider high school to be a place where proper social behavior is learned.
The anecdote given at the end of the article, by the author, describes the people who had been popular at his school appearing “uncertain”, “nervous, and being, “more generous.” (Senior 11). She then describes her high school as “perdition.” (Senior 12).
Edit: I accidentally cut out the last part of my comment. It said that, "The author's personal experience of the author lines up with the study that shows popular kids are likely to have lower self-esteem once they grow up. The description of high school as damnation also seems to indicate that she does not consider it an essential part of social development."
DeleteHomeschooling: The Solution to High School Traumatization?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” by Jennifer Senior, attending public high school can leave you scarred for life, feeling inadequate, unpopular, and fashionably challenged. By skipping the public high school experience, the prefrontal cortex could have a better chance of normal formation. Could homeschooling be the answer to producing a successful human being without post traumatic high school syndrome?
As this article mentions, adolescents in a typical high school are isolated in an environment with others around their age. They are lumped together, sharing common anxieties, fears, and insecurities. This creates a “teenage biosphere,” a sort of independent bubble of teens separated from reality. The teens become so caught up within their own high school society. The book, Lord of the Flies comes to mind. This lack of communication with the “real world” makes it harder for them to transition into adulthood. The problem would be avoided in the homeschooled setting as the impressionable adolescents would have increased exposure to different age groups through their parents, family, and siblings. And it is doubtful any parent would shove their child into a locker which appears to be one of the article’s interviewee’s most memorable experiences in high school.
With homeschooling, the next generation could be a more compassionate, empathetic society of individuals who focus on the present and the future rather than relive the horrors and brutality of high school for the rest of their lives. And best of all, by not attending public high school, there is no need to worry about getting a seat at the cool table.
The Dark Side of Homeschooling
DeleteSure, homeschooling has some downsides. Drivers Ed. means learning to drive Mom’s minivan with the younger siblings in the backseat screaming “we’re all gonna die!” And high school sports are reduced to bingo night at the church with Grandma on Thursdays. Then there’s the dating pool… non-existent. Still, it beats the perdition of public high school.
While reading Jennifer Senior’s article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” I found myself constantly asking the question, does high school truly never end? And I’ve concluded that yes it does, but I can understand why Jennifer Senior might feel like it does not and why Paul Feig refers to life as “perpetual high school” .
ReplyDeleteDuring high school many of us experience our first real taste of independence, of responsibility, of real life, but high school is not what life out of high school is like. During life outside of high school you are not going to be worried about things like popularity or who is dating who, you’ll be worried about how you’re going to make money to pay whatever bills you may accumulate and to buy food to put on the table everyday, you’ll be worried about getting to work on time and earning that promotion that you've been wanting. Sure some things you learn in high school will follow you into your life after high school. For example, the coping strategies that we develop for any kind of stress, anxiety, or aggravation that we might encounter in high school will help us later in life, and perhaps that's why Jennifer Senior and Paul Feig say that you never leave high school.
It seems like Jennifer Senior and Paul Feig are focusing on what may happen in high school and how it may impact people’s personal lives. They are focusing on the coping strategies, and the isolation and bullying that some people might deal with in high school that might have impacted their self esteem and sense of self worth in the future, but they are not looking beyond that. If they were to look beyond that they would see that yes, things that people encounter in high school and things that people learn in high school are very important and very significant to people’s personal development during their high school years because, as stated in the article, “Just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs our ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self reflection undergoes a huge flurry of activity.” Making the time we are in high school the prime time for personal development so everything that happens to people in high school has a greater impact on what person they become.
So yes it may feel like life is just one long continuation of high school for some people if all they're thinking about is their time in high school when they learned coping strategies, or when the dealt with bullies and how these things impacted them but if they would look beyond that they would realize that there are very few similarities between life in high school and life out of high school.
In “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior, Paul Feig writes, “I have always referred to life as one perpetual high school.” The fear we experience in high school forces us to shape how we react and cope whenever we are put in a “giant box of strangers.” The thing about fear is it can be misinterpreted; it can look like aggression, shyness, cockiness, or insecurity.
ReplyDelete“At the time they experience the most social fear, they have the least control; at the time they’re most sensitive to the impressions of others, they’re plunked into an environment where its treacherously easy to be labeled and stuck on a shelf.” This quote closely relates to the idea of fear because kids feel that high school is one of the hardest places to try new things. For example, you constantly have pressure on you from your peers and you can feel the fear of judgement.
Something that really caught my eye was on page 7. The author talks about how we cope with the fear and pain. We can move away from it, we can move toward it, or move against it. I found this so interesting because I think this closely relates to how we do everything in life. There are people in the world who take fear straight on and overcome and there are the people who try to just blend in with it.
The biggest take away I had from this article is every high school student is experiencing fear in some way. Though it related to a small study, the author felt that the way teenagers mistake others’ fear defines the high school experience. After reading this, I can look around the halls and classrooms of Niskayuna High School in a different way knowing that everyone is learning to cope with their fear maybe just in a different way than me.
How is it that we are constantly reminded of our four years in High School
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior I came to understand so much of what goes on at the high school. It left me asking myself if there is ever a time where we will truly ever leave high school. And I came to realize that yes, our bodies do but not our minds. Our identity, our memories, our happiest and worst moments, are all mostly associated with those four, “short” years. “Somehow those three or four years can in retrospect feel like 30.”
“During times when your identity is in transition”, says Steinberg, “it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability.” This quote made me grasp the idea that when we are shaping our personality and figuring out who we are, all that usually takes place at the high school, and that is the reason as to why we remember everything that happened during our adolescent years so vividly. Those times were when we were put to face the world and all of reality. And how we deal with that pressure is what makes us who we are. But while trying to figure out all of that, we discover that the high school is a very hard place do that kind of self-discovering. “At the time they experience the most social fear, they have the least control; at the time they’re most sensitive to the impression of others, they’re plunked into an environment where it’s treacherously easy to be labeled and stuck on a shelf.” And because of that, teens aren’t able to experiment new things and find out who they truly are because of their fear of being judged by others.
I also think that the reason that we are always looking back at our high school years is because the social ties and the memories can be accessible any time you want. “In 2011, the Pew Research Center found that the largest share of our Facebook friends, 22 percent come from high school.” So that makes it hard to actually leave all of high school behind if we are constantly reading about it on our timeline. We are always reminded of those years where we became the person we are today. That may be a good thing or a bad thing. And that, is us who decide which one.
Emotional Conflicts of Adulthood Rooted to Adolescence?
ReplyDeleteCan many emotional struggles of adults be traced back to their adolescent days? Page 5 of “Why You Never Truly Leave High School” talks about a test on fear conducted on humans and mice of all ages. The study found that teenagers remained fear-stricken many days after the test was done, unlike most of the other ages tested.
Some may be surprised by this, but it all makes sense. Although adults deal with tough situations in their day-to-day lives, teenagers are generally facing these for the first time, and they take it like a huge slap in the face.
Teenagers are brutal to each other. They beat each other down, in addition to beating themselves down, which results in low self esteem. Teens face fears of being rejected, not just in social situations but as they find themselves entering the world of jobs and the rest of their futures. In just four short years of high school, a kid goes from entering a new, scary building to trying to figure out who they want to be for the rest of their life.
These situations are stressful. As Erik Erikson wrote, “It seems safe to say this: Most American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents.” Though high school itself is not terrible, the competition and pressure of it all can weigh down on a person and can result in emotional issues in their future.
In addition, the end of high school signifies the beginning of a new chapter of your life. A chapter which signals that you need to become a person for yourself and show independence. For the first 18 years of your life, you’re shown how to do things, you’re sheltered from the big scary world by your parents, you’re allowed to make mistakes because you’re only a kid. But the realization that you might no longer have this protective layer, is frightening to most people.
This is why studies show that the stage between childhood and adulthood is frightening. Because in just four “short” years, you’re expected to grow up and find out what you’re supposed to do and who you’re supposed to be for your entire life.
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ReplyDelete"Princesses" and "Brainy Girls" The Latest Stand
ReplyDeleteOne of the themes of this article that stood out to me was the self-esteem and future implication of being “brainy girls” and “princesses”. I think this stood out to me because we are all part of an abnormal high school. Even though we do have “Brainy girls” and “Princesses”, clicks aren’t as distinctly defined and highly valued as in other schools. In Niskayuna High School people can be a part of many different “clicks” stretching between different grade levels. Studies did show that when “brainy girls” and “princess” categories of girls were 16, the “princess” had a higher confidence level than the “brainy girl” yet when they were tested again at the age of 24, less than a decade later; the “brainy girl” was found to have a much higher self-esteem level. Then, a follow up study was done at the age of 40, the results remained the same. “Brainy girl” came out on top again with a much higher self-esteem level than the “princess”. This was intriguing, since earlier in the study it was declared that your view of yourself, affected you later in life. If you thought yourself as beautiful, you were more likely to earn more money, have a husband, and have better mental health.
In high school the “brainy girls” may not have been beautiful, but they were smart, and that fueled them to do better, and achieve a better future. During high school years “brainy girls” couldn’t achieve popularity using their advantage, their brain, but they did have more to offer on the inside. They may not have been as beautiful as “princess” girls, who could only offer their outside beauty, but they did have a whole different form of beauty, unique only to them, and this was found on the inside.
Whereas the “princesses” relied on luck, public opinion, and good looks to get them through high school. This was what they learned from high school, and it stayed with them throughout life. That’s what they adapted to, that’s all they knew, so that’s how they now lived. Unfortunately, no matter whom you are, good looks fade, and popularity doesn't last.
One might say that relying on your looks is like playing the lottery... the habit doesn't prepare you for life at all, but if that's the case, then why do the Kardashians make any money off of anything? The answer: they got lucky.
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ReplyDeleteHigh School Students Are Not Adults
ReplyDeleteThroughout the article, "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" by Jennifer Senior, one main idea that stood out to me was the concept that in high school, a student should not be misjudged as an adult (they are not yet adults). In high school, students are very far from being considered adults. They are just young people who are trying to figure out what life is all about and where they fit in. They are still developing physically and psychologically. As Senior stated in the article based on research, “But if humans really do feel things most intensely during adolescence, and if, at this same developmental moment, they also happen to be working out an identity for the first time sometimes morbidly, often curiously, preoccupied with what they appear to be in the eyes of others as compared with what they feel they are, as the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson wrote then it seems safe to say this: Most American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents.” Senior is thus opining that students in high school are going through so much at this important time in their lives, and during this period they are so vulnerable that they should not even be sent to high schools where cruel treatment by peers is common. If teenagers are too fragile for high school, how can they be considered adults who have to make difficult decisions on their own, handle responsibility, and be financially independent?
The author believes high school students are too immature to know what true reality is. They have no idea what is right verses what is wrong, who they are, etc. On page 8 of the article, Winnie Holzman, the creator of My So-Called Life, is quoted as saying, “… we become pretty convinced that we know what reality is: We know who looks down on us, who is above us, exactly who our friends and our enemies are. The truth of the matter is that we really have no clue. [W]hat seems like unshakeable reality, is basically just a story we learned to tell ourselves.” This passage relates a lot to the novel the Lord of the Flies in which the boys who end up on the island, are just kids who have to take care of themselves by hunting, making a shelter and fire, and surviving. And the outcome of such major responsibilities with no adult supervision or guidance is chaos. The children lose touch of their consciences and can’t tell right from wrong. As Ms. Senior implies, today’s high school students are a lot like the boys in the novel. They are only kids, and do not know what is real and start to generate a culture with their own independent and often misguided values and priorities. They are not ready for adult responsibilities and they should not be treated as adults.
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ReplyDeleteTo be honest, it’s kind of unfortunate that so much of our adult lives apparently are affected by who we were in high school. The way things work in high school is radically different from the way things work in the real world. So our high school years shouldn’t have as much of an effect on our lives as adults as it probably does.
DeleteWhile it may be true that your brain develops significantly when you’re a teen, it’s also true that teenagers think in a different way than adults. Teens tend to operate more on emotion and impulse than adults do. As a result, teens have a reputation for not having very good judgement, and doing stupid things. But once we become adults, we learn more about how to master the art of common sense. Well, some do anyway… but that’s not my point! What I mean is that while teens are more mature than they were before, they aren’t adults yet. Many of them want to be treated like adults, but as much as we hate to admit it, we’re not adults! We’re not fully prepared to find our way in the real world, because we don’t know how to as much as adults do.
So in my opinion, there really is no reason for high school to have such an impact on you after it’s over. After all, it’s only four years of your life, which is only a small fraction of your life, so why should it matter so much once that part of your life is done?
You should check out a New Yorker article titled "The terrible teens." It's all about why teenagers do things impulsively rather than logically, doing things that rational adults would never do (so they claim).
DeleteCould Being Treated More Mature at a Young Age Benefit You?
ReplyDeleteIn the article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” Jennifer Senior’s ideas relate to the effect high school has on adolescents. Jennifer says on page 2, “Inside I still feel like I’m 15 to 18 years old.” She also says that many studies prove that your memories from the ages of 15 to 25 are the most “vividly retained” throughout your life. It makes sense that Jennifer feels this way because your teenage years are a big part of your life. They introduce you to new emotions and ways of thinking that you never thought of before.
On the bottom of page 5, Jennifer tells us that until the Great Depression, most American teenagers didn’t even graduate high school. Most of the adolescents in the 1900’s had to work for themselves, or help their family out at home. These children didn’t have to deal with the constant self-esteem issues, anxiety and stress that modern day high school students do every day. Instead they were treated more like adults at a young age, which prepared them for their later years.
There was a quote that stood out to me on page 5, “Most American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents.” The amount of anxiety the student go through mixed with the pressure of trying to figure out what you want to be, when at the same time being treated like children, is overwhelming. In school you are being treated like children but being expected to act like adults, this is bound to have long-term effects on you.
These children in the 1900’s had more responsibility and were treated more mature. Teaching kids how to be mature and be able to interact with all age groups through joining the work force at a young age encouraged those kids to expand their minds. Jennifer says, “Something happens when children spend so much time apart from adult company. They start to generate a culture with independent values and priorities.” She says that instead it would be more beneficial for children to spend time with individuals of all ages since it relates to real life, rather than a same-age school setting.
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ReplyDeleteWhy and How Social Hierarchies are Made.
ReplyDeleteMost high schools know the most popular kid in school, or the popular group in others. They are usually athletic, smart, attractive and basically pleasing all around. High schools, especially Niskayuna, are huge. They could have over 1000 people just in one school and a couple hundred just in one grade. Somehow in this very large system, people need to know who to look up to, and who can sort them into their proper groups.
Upperclassmen, in all schools, have more privileges. Seniors can drive, get an off-grounds pass while freshman stay in study hall with their homework and overwhelming themselves. Seeing this, the students with cars or even just a license, people start to think, these people are better than me. Social classes are made on our own by what we see and think of the others around us. If people based others on their personality, our high school experience would be completely different. When we are walking down the street and see someone dressed in a different way or with a physical characteristic we do not find appealing, we will judge them and think we are better than them all because in high school that is how we judged others and others judged ourselves.
When we are in high school, typically we are between the ages of 14 and 18. That is a very prime time in our development, so our feelings are much more intense, as Jennifer stated. When we feel the most sensitive, afraid, vulnerable we are put into a place where everything we do, wear, or say is judged and we are automatically placed into a part of the hierarchy. Rather we are nerds, athletes, or princesses, there is a label for everyone.
Of course, we cannot choose our labels, but we can choose how we present ourselves. Brene Brown says, "Shame is all about unwanted identities and labels. And I would say that for 90 percent of the men and women I've interviewed, their unwanted identities and labels started during their tweens and teens." Brown says that between ages of 10 and 18, people labeled them whether they wanted it, liked it or deserved it. Social hierarches are only formed on how you acted, dressed or looked and all because of our need for power structures.
ReplyDeleteTitle: Adolescence; The Blindfold Slipping
Every adult tells me to enjoy my teen years, but how am I supposed to do that when my world is constantly falling apart around me? My emotions are just loose horses racing in 4 different directions, or a huge wave gargling me back and forth in its pitch black mouth for what seems like infinity.” Well I guess this is growing up” -Blink 182.
Taking off your blindfold when you are a conscious person is a completely mind boggling experience compared to when you couldn’t even speak before. In Why You Never Truly Leave High School, one paragraph describes the process of a teen's advanced consciousness saying “ It turns out that just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex, ...undergoes a huge flurry of activity, giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of a self.”
These changes in the prefrontal cortex loosen the blindfold, presenting the first important glimpses of the outside world! Jennifer Senior provides evidence to the importance of these glimpses by describing the reminiscence bump here,“Give a grown adult a series of random prompts and cues, and odds are he or she will recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence.”
In conclusion, the start of adolescence and the journey through and even after it, as described in Jennifer Senior’s article, Why You Never Truly Leave High School, is like the slow unraveling of a blindfold, and when that blindfold has left your sight, you will be able to see through the eyes of an adult because you are one! But this does not mean the blindfold has disappeared. Instead, the blindfold stays around your neck unnoticed, until the wind blows it back in your face for a quick second, but it was too quick to even realize your vision was once covered again
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DeleteIs high school really as awful as this highly persuasive author would have you believe?
ReplyDeleteIt appears that most of the previous blog posts have decided to completely agree with the reading, so I would like to take a different approach to the article. While I was reading, I was struck by how pessimistic the author was about your social class. It almost seemed like the author, Jennifer Senior, was saying that if you aren't popular in high school then you are doomed to a life of making less money, having relationship struggles, and eternal depression. I can't argue that some of the points based off of statistics were true, however the author would take the stats and then talk about them as if it was a death sentence.
Furthermore, this was one of the most inconsistent articles I have read in my life. One second the author is talking about how the nerds or "brains" of high school will have low self-confidence and make less money, and the next moment they are talking about how the "brains" girls go on to make more money than their once-popular peers who suffer low self esteem and make little money. Also, I could not help but notice the author's VERY STRONG bias towards building their point at all costs, because they almost never mentioned any opposing points of view to their own ideas.
Despite its pitfalls, this article did have its charms. I definitely agreed that social class can be brutal to its adolescent victims, but it lead me to wonder if the benefits of high school outweigh these negatives. As the author pointed out, there will be social classes once students leave high school, so perhaps being in such a socially restrictive environment prepares our youth for the real world. I didn't agree with them that high school causes these social classes in the adult world, as there have been tight social structures around since the dawn of civilization, leaving this argument complete rubbish. Also, I believe high school is great for forcing teens to talk to one another, giving them valuable social skills in real life. If everyone were home schooled, you would have few to no friends growing up, no experience talking to people your age, and all around sub-par social skills. However to the author's credit, high school does really affect many people for life in highly negative ways, so the article does have merit.
To wrap things up, my feelings of the article were that it was the most persuasive article I have ever read that was also inconsistent and highly biased. In the author's defence, can you ever read any article that isn't biased without getting somewhat persuaded? Perhaps even my blog comment with all its own bias was enough to make you think much more negatively about this article than before.
-How We Are Letting High School Define Us and Why We Should Break the Cycle-
ReplyDeleteThe obvious recurring theme of "Why You Never Truly Leave High School" is how high school affects who you are, even when you leave it, and ends up following you throughout your life. Although many of Jennifer Senior’s explanations were compelling and I agreed with many of them, isn’t it also quite possible that we are letting high school define who we are, instead of truly being defined by it?
One of the first points Senior makes, is about how the memories of high school stick with most adults, and this “reminiscence bump” contains some of the most prominent memories we have. Reinstating what she said, it is because that period of adolescence is the first time we really define who we are, and our emotions were so much stronger, they stick out in the mind. I agree with those explanations and I also believe that time seems to go much slower the younger we are, making the years of high school seem longer- furthering these memories to stand out even more.
Because these memories are so pronounced to us they will affect us much more than other memories during our lives. If we saw ourselves a certain way in high school, then wouldn't we look back and perceive ourselves in the same way? And if that's true then wouldn't we end up continuing to be way? For example, if someone in high school wasn't that popular, and therefore did not have a lot of friends, it's possible that they could see themselves as antisocial due to the fact they ended up spending most of their time alone. And then when they leave high school wouldn't they continue this, even though they’re in a completely new environment?
In high school we are “working out an identity for the first time.”
"...for the first time."
Emphasis on "first".
Perhaps people forget that we are constantly redefining ourselves as we learn and do new things. And of course if you've already created an identity for yourself, it can be really difficult to uproot yourself into a new one. In most ways high school is much different than real life. Therefore it is especially important to fit yourself based on life outside of high school when it's over, and to continue changing and improving yourself for better.
It’s time to stop living in the past.
It’s time to start focusing on who we are and who we want to be right now.
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ReplyDeleteMaybe it’s not our fault
ReplyDeleteI found this article to be a very interesting read; it did not conform to what I was always told about high school being a happy, safe place. Ms. Senior made it perfectly clear that teenagers experience several difficult challenges in the social scene, which hurts their self-confidence and makes them feel inferior and ashamed. I think it’s possible that adults could be the root of their problems they face during their adolescence.
There were several places in the article that shows how adults are at fault. On page 9, developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg explains that “high-school values aren’t all that different from adult values. Most adults don’t like cello or marching bands, either.” It seems adults have a bigger influence on a teenager’s interests and judgements of others.
Teenagers tend to look up to adults because they are older, so they are responsible for setting the best example for them. If a grown-up expressed hostility towards a certain group of people, their child may be willing to do the same without knowing why. This could apply to thousands of children nationwide, and they could become teenagers who feel a need to bully and not treat everyone the same.
Ms. Senior illustrates from a scientific perspective how teenagers aren’t mentally prepared to be the best version of themselves. On page 4, she states that “the prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing in adolescents. It’s still adding myelin, the fatty white substance that speeds up and improves neural connections, and until those connections are consolidated...the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain have a more significant influence.” Adolescents have a harder time dealing with their emotions and how to regulate them. They are inclined to speak before they think, instead of the other way around. They don’t have control over that, so it’s difficult to say that making mistakes resulting from their emotions is completely their fault. If adults taught children the best possible manners and prepared them for what’s to come before high school, teenagers can better handle themselves and be able to enjoy those four long years.
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ReplyDeleteIs High School Really That Inescapable?
ReplyDeleteSocial hierarchies are prominent everywhere civilization exists. No matter where you are in the world there will be some sort of ranking among the people living there. Everyone is branded based on their peers observations of them. They get pushed and pulled into various categories. The author implies that our past high school lives and identities are like a vast shadow threatening to consume you, even after you leave. That’s not necessarily true.
They talk about this a little about the hierarchies in the article. “What determines those hierarchies is often the crudest common-denominator stuff” the article states, “looks, nice clothes, prowess in sports rather than the subtleties of personality.” High school is full of different groups that teenagers get assigned to. The upper class in high school consists of the populars. Which is made of jocks who are good at sports and princesses/queen bees who are pretty and rich. Then you have your middle class, the normals that don’t really stand out and the brains. Then finally, the lower class of druggies and criminals.
Who you are in high school, who people think you are, doesn’t have to control who you are in the future. For example, the brainy girls from the paper titled Peer Crowd-Based Identities and Adjustment were unpopular and had low self esteem in high school. They didn’t let that hold them back. Later on in life they had gained confidence and success. Also, the author, Jennifer’s friend Kenji is a great example. In high school he was a quiet nerd who loved orchestra. Now he is outgoing and confident software engineer. He let go of his high school self and blossomed.
Not everyone takes the step to free themselves of their shadow self. The princesses from the same study and the brainy girls mentioned above were popular and confident back in high school. They relied on looks and the opinions of their peers, and they never really stopped. Their luck eventually ran out, and years later they lost a lot of their self esteem.
No matter where you fall in your high school hierarchy, you don’t have to let it define you. You can let it go and choose your own path. Who you were then does not have to control who you are now. The only way it will, is if you let it.
In the article, Why you Never Truly Leave High School, the author, Jennifer Senior, touches on key points about what it means to be a high schooler, both scientifically and from a normal person's point of view. She first introduces the science of the article with saying how perception and appearance of one's self greatly influences the rest of their lives. She mentions height, weight, and attractiveness as some of the most influential things on lives after high school. This makes perfect sense to me. Right now I have I perception of who I am, and when someone tells me to think of myself I think of this person. This person is an altered image of what I believe I am, based on what other people appear to think of me. So, as the article says, this perception of yourself never goes away because you never really get to meet yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe article also says that adolescents are stuck in a biosphere of their own without the influence of adults or children on us. Jennifer Senior claims that adolescents start to generate a culture with independent values and priorities. James Coleman, a renowned sociologist, states that teens have interests and attitudes on things far removed from adult responsibilities. This is written like it is a bad thing but in reality isn't so bad. Kids, especially adolescents, should be removed from adults during high school because it helps to transition to college and the real world where you are stuck with just peers and no “adult” figures present. Also it lets teens develop at their own rate around the people they spend most of their childhood with.
The last point I want to bring up is that the article is stating that high school is something you never really escape, rather than leave, and that it is full of social hierarchies and shaming, but for me high school has been the best time period in my life so far. I have had the chance to meet new people who I wouldn’t have met otherwise and have opportunities that I would not have at any other place during this stage in my life. So when I look back at my high school experience in the near future, I hope to remember all the times when I felt I belonged rather than all the bad experiences that Jennifer Senior is writing about in this article.
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ReplyDeleteThis article really made a push to stress the importance of many themes. One such theme was the importance of personality, and how it can affect later in life. A study was done by Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist at Temple University, showing how personality is very malleable in adolescence. The study showed people’s personality is most affected during adolescence.
ReplyDelete“If you’re interested in making sure kids learn a lot in school, yes, intervening early in childhood is the time to do it,” says Steinberg. While early on may be the time to peak an interest in academics, people’s personality really changes in their adolescent years. The prefrontal cortex in our brain is still developing in adolescence. Because of this, anything people are exposed to in this time can make an impact on their personality. It is also when people are establishing their self-image and self-concept, so some people will think “I am the type of person that likes X or dresses like Y.” In this day and age, many of the impacts made on adolescents are made by celebrities and people on social media. That can make a huge impact on people, depending on how closely they follow the person. Those impacts will carry over into people’s adult life. “...the music you listen to for the rest of your life is probably what you listened to when you were an adolescent,” says Steinberg. That is just one example of how impacts in adolescence can change someone’s adult life.
Beauty Standards In High School Affecting Our Adult Lives
ReplyDeleteby Sabrina M. Gumpher
The easily perceived central idea in Jennifer Senior’s “Why You Never Truly Leave High School,” is how high school builds the foundation of our identity and then shapes and molds us into who we are, even after we graduate. Senior also mentions that what we look like and how attractive we are considered in high school has a big contribution to our later self esteem, weight, marriages, and mental health.
Self esteem evolves as we create an image of ourselves through our experiences with different people and activities. Senior briefly defines high school as a place full of distinct individuals put into a school with other individuals based on the location of their home. Thus, being combined with these different people, self esteem is created. We constantly compare ourselves to the others around us, especially at an adolescent age. During this time good-looks is looked at more than intelligence. We use trends, media, and fashion to set this standard of beauty we must follow to be considered pretty, or attractive. In our adult lives we continue to use this psyche to define what is beautiful and what is not.
In most societies and cultures, being skinny is deemed more attractive than being overweight or obese. Senior talks about a study showing that people who are considered a normal or healthy weight tend to have a higher self esteem. The study also shows that people who are heavyset at the age of twenty one, were most likely that way in high school. This makes sense because people who are considered “heavy” usually have low self esteem and with low self esteem there is low motivation. While we go into adulthood, we continue to have the mindset that thin is considered beautiful setting yet, another standard of beauty from high school to adulthood.
Attractiveness in high school has remaining effects that can determine the likelihood of marriage. Senior mentions a monograph by Robert Crosnoe that talks about how if you were attractive in high school, you have a higher chance of marrying. Usually partner relationships are held through attraction, therefore, the more attractive you are the higher chance you have of holding a relationship together. This again shows that beauty standards from high school will continue to affect your life even after you leave.
Overall, beauty standards in high school affect our mental health. Senior talks about people who fit most of these beauty standards in high school are considered more attractive, have higher self esteem, and a better mental health that carries on to your adult life. With a better mental health you have better earning potential and are more capable of doing and achieving things, and beauty is a large part of self image and self worth. This is why high school never leaves you because the beauty standards in high school continue to affect you in adulthood.
Four Years in the Big House
ReplyDeleteWhy You Never Truly Leave High School by Jennifer Senior seemed to shed a lot of negative light on High School and how it can change people very drastically. The article mentions how people will try to avoid shame, divide themselves into groups either willingly or unwillingly, and become a either a completely different person upon leaving (like Kenji), or staying relatively the same, but with the reputation they carried throughout high school (like the Glassman twins). After collecting my thoughts after reading the article, I realized that all these things happen in another tax-payer funded building: prison. Yes, it seems that the jokes that we made during Elementary school have become a grim, disturbing reality. I don't just mean like how "the principal is the warden" or "the food may as well be prison food" though, the similarities go on a much deeper level than that.
There are various parallels to prison in the article itself. For instance, in the article, Jennifer Senior writes how "the more concerned kids are with popularity, the more aggressive they are." Stick any group of humans in isolation, and there will always be conflict over who gets to be top-dog. This however becomes extremely apparent when the said groups of people are teens who according to the article are "notoriously poor models of self-regulation", or adults that aren't afraid to break laws. Trying to keep the top position on the social pyramid is very important to both groups, whether it be not allowing a junior to park in your spot, or not letting someone that's been in for 6 months on the top step of the courtyard. Another example would be how everyone in both prison and high school, gets divided up into social groups, or "cliques". In high school, it seems to be based on personality (princesses, nerds, etc.) or habits/interests one would have (jocks, goths, etc.), whereas in prison, it could be anything from what you're in for, to how long you've been in. Either way, it is done to form a bond to protect one another from the influence of other groups.
Some of the vocabulary and phrases used in the article by Senior also led me to draw some comparisons to high school and prison. "People literally divide into tribes, form alliances, and vote one another off the island", "it's the giant box of strangers", and "a time of unrequited longings" are phrases that I would not be surprised if someone thought they were describing a prison. However, the one word choice that opened my eyes to the whole topic of this post was when Senior referred to high school as a "linoleum-L tiled perdition." I at first didn't know what this meant until looked up the definition and was blown away by how the author compared a four years of schooling, to a state of eternal punishment and torment.
Do I really feel that it's fair and sane to compare something like high school to prison? It was only after reading the article that I came to this conclusion, but I would be very interested to see the opinions of other people on this topic that have not read the article, to see if they have something similar, meaning the article was right, or something entirely different, meaning that either the article was wrong, or I simply got a different meaning of the article from what the article intended. Either way, I know that I will never look at my four year sentence of learning and socializing the same again.
Adolescence is the key to adulthood
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the article “Why You Never Truly Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior, I found myself wondering what it is about high school that makes the adolescent years such a credential stage in one's life. Sure we don’t realize it at the time, but high school significantly shapes the human kind into the adults they are today.
Paul Feig wrote “ I still feel like I’m 15 to 18 years old, and I feel like I still cope with losing control of the world around me in the same ways.” But why would such a successful person like Paul Feig continue to live in the past? And I realized that it is; the awkward stages, the embarrassing moments, the overcoming various struggles that we humans have to deal with in order to become successful adults. No child is perfect and adolescence teaches us those lessons.
“Though adolescents may want nothing more than to be able to define themselves, they discover that high school is one of the hardest places to do it.” Crosnoe mentions. As a fellow high schooler, I think I can relate to the fact that I look to identify myself with a group or as a certain type of person. But I’ve also realized that it’s not so easy to find your nitch, especially when that nitch might not be at the top of the totem pole.
It might seem like a pretty easy task to fall into a group that most relates to the morals and interests that you too believe. But in just four short years of our lives, we are dealt with the most social fear and sensitivity to the impressions of others, which leads to kid’s falling into a group that most likely doesn’t fit their character. One that may just be part of the “popular” group and not something that we necessarily like. Leaving us with just one more of many adolescent barrels, that were meant for us all to cross.
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ReplyDeleteIn the article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" Jennifer Senior asks the question why is high school so different from the adult world. Laurence Steinberg, one of the country's foremost psychologists, answers that they aren't actually that different. I think that's true, because most of us aren't being ourselves in school; none of us want to be left out or bullied because we're considered different. So we all try to blend in and that can make us miserable although we feel safe because we're hidden. What makes us unhappy is having lost our sense of being individuals, the opportunity to express our own ideas. When we're feeling miserable we tell ourselves that this is just a couple of years of our life and after high school we'll be free to be whoever we want to be.
ReplyDeleteBut what we don't realize is that often the "real" world can be like a bigger version of high school. We're still going to be shoved together with a bunch of strangers with whom we have nothing in common. There will still be groups that don't accept other groups, because of their looks, how much money they make, what college they went to. Sadly there will still be bullies, both emotional and physical.
But I hope that by the time I've started working I'll be surrounded by people who are mature and independent, who can communicate and work together toward a common goal and who can accept responsibility.
Yet I think that, like the article says, we're still going to be judged by our appearance and those don't blend in will still be considered weird.
Saga Strandén
Remember Me… The Permanence of High School Memories
ReplyDeleteThe human memory is a mystery. I envied people who could remember birthdays and phone numbers. Not only do I have difficulty remembering these facts, but I am constantly forgetting to bring in my lunch box as I am getting on the school bus. However, after reading the article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior, I question the benefits of having an impeccable memory during the most emotional years of any human’s life, adolescence.
The article’s recurring theory is that memories from adolescence can carry on into life as an adult. The reason that memories linger after teenage years is due to the way the human body receives all experiences and emotions during adolescence. A phenomenon known as the “reminiscence bump” describes how between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, memories are more aptly retained than during any other times in life. This “reminiscence bump” is caused by the significant experiences throughout the high school years that bring about intense emotions relating to different issues such as, dealing with relationships, bullying and not fitting in with other kids at school. Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist at Temple University, states that “it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability”.
Another reason memories from adolescence transfer to adulthood is that the part of the brain that coordinates human’s ability to control impulses and reason, the prefrontal cortex, is still developing as a teenager. Increased dopamine activity levels in the brain also make every emotion and experience feel more intense which can make teens appear overly dramatic. The exaggerated intensity of our emotions during high school could be another explanation as to why adolescence is such a memorable time in our life.
I free wrote for a while, and I looked up a number of things while writing, and the result didn't fit in the reply box. So this is a link to my response, titled "Why you never truly leave high school"-- Inconsistent and Inaccurate.
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1-918Q4BaSC-ccnxlYY_4EWQVHFVbIf4CcwTxabwQBYo/edit?usp=sharing
The article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School," truly spoke to me as one who is in the midst of high school and who, at this stage, really believes that I will "never truly leave" high school.
ReplyDeleteThe writer has many points, but the points that I can really relate to are the points on height, weight and physical appearance. Her point that height affects me personally as somebody who grew six inches in a year. I see how i get a different reception from people now, rather than when I was a 5'5" eighth grader, and I do feel more sure of myself now that I'm literally in some cases head and shoulders above people. As a taller person, who happens to be in the midst of high school, I see personally how height can massively affect your self-esteem. A shorter person may never benefit from the same self-esteem boost as a taller person. This is an example of how you truly never leave high school as the effects of your height follow you throughout your life.
Weight is a controlled factor to a point, as some people can fight their genetics but so much. some people, like myself, are naturally thin while other people may be thicker than most, which is perfectly fine. As it is known weight effects people's physical well being, as well as physical appearance. Senior, in this article, explained how the weight of somebody can affect them mentally, especially with their self-esteem. According to the article, if somebody is overweight during their adolescence, they are more likely to have a lower self-esteem than of somebody who is a normal weight during their adolescence. A low self-esteem can affect mental health as you move forward in life. This is another example of how one truly never leaves high school as your self-esteem will carry on with you throughout your life.
Beauty standards are very well a part of high school. Senior mention in this article that those who fit the beauty standard of high school are seen as more attractive. Those who are more attractive in high school tend to have a higher self-esteem and better mental health as they carry on into adult hood. A better mental health will increase your earning potential, and have a much better self image of yourself than someone who is seen as unattractive during high school. This is another example of why you never leave high school as physical attractiveness may change, but your self image will carry on with you throughout adulthood.
The article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" by Jennifer Senior clearly defines high school as primarily a negative experience, one that defines much of an individual's behavior for the rest of their lives. What surprised me, however, was just how much of an impact high school has; a study mentioned in the article found that boys who were in the 80th percentile of popularity in high school earned 10 percent more than boys in the 20th percentile. It is truly appalling how consistent the social division is and how long it stays with you.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, high school is very similar to caste systems that divide societies into classes. And while they may not be apparent in modern times, systems of class do exist nearly everywhere, and in the U.S. high school may be a kind of preview, if you will, of your class later in life. For example, the outspoken jocks may always retain that extroverted personality, and the hard-working valedictorians such as Kenji generally become successful through their efforts later in life. In Hinduism, you started in a specific class and stayed in it. Is it not the same concept, to a more mellow extent, now?
Funny thing is, the classes that high school goers are dumped in are most likely the most defined in our lives, the closest to the Caste systems as in Hinduism. The question is, why are the many societies that have existed or do exist compelled to divide and label people so rigidly (jocks, nerds, druggies, Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Shudra)? Why do people have an innate need to label individuals?
Who Am I and Who Will I Be?
ReplyDeleteBased on the article Why You Truly Never Leave High School by Jennifer Senior
High school can be a pretty daunting place, especially when you’re trying to transition from middle school. There’s confusion about how to get to classes, what you need to bring, what kind of friends you’ll make, but most importantly, who are you, and what’s your plan?
Most people think they know who they are and who they’ll turn out to be. But according to Winnie Holzman, creator of My So-Called Life, in reality, most people really have no clue about their own identity as an adolescent, and it’s “basically just a story we learned to tell ourselves”. The way people view you greatly influences who you want to be. But at this tender age, high schoolers just want to find a group or clique to be part of. These groups usually identify themselves as jocks, populars, brains, normals, druggies, outcasts, or sometimes none. But, is that really you?
There’s no rush to try to be someone you may not even be. People change over time, sometimes more drastically than others. For example, Kenji, Senior’s high school friend, was an orchestral nerd who kept to himself. He later became a successful software engineer and was able to earn instant respect. At a high school reunion, he was invited to a party by a jock from high school, someone he would’ve never dared to talk to before. In other words, Kenji transformed from a nerd into someone way better than a popular or jock. However, if he hadn’t believed in himself he could have missed many great opportunities.
By thinking ahead and having in mind what type of person you want to grow into can help guide your decisions as an adolescent. Peer pressure is a strong factor, but don’t let that blur your goal. So, when you picture yourself as an adult, don’t limit yourself to popular, brains, etc., because nobody is just part of one group, but a unique combination of groups that form each individual identity. So, who will you be?
It’s What You Make Of It
ReplyDeleteWhat is the difference between shame and guilt? You could argue they are the same things, the only difference how you put these feelings to use.
In the article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” on page seven the author states, “Those who have spent a lot of time thinking about guilt, for example have come to the surprising conclusion that it’s pretty useful and adaptive, because it tends to center a specific event and is therefore narrowly focused enough to be constructive.” I believe that this statement is very true although it is hard to accept. Whenever you hear the word guilt all you can think is negatively. The feeling is that you have done something wrong and regret it. I will admit guilt plays a big part in high school and even when your adults, but you have to learn to cope with it. Although it is even hard for myself to handle this emotion correctly, I feel once you do, it makes everything easier.
As for shame, Jennifer Senior says “Shame on the other hand, is a much more global, crippling sensation. Those who feel it aren't energized by it but isolated. They feel unworthy of acceptance and fellowship; they labor under the impression that their awfulness to hide.” To me this seems like a very popular feeling for most high schoolers whether its social shame, or even feeling shame because you aren't smart enough. In this story the author talks about how many parents of teenagers talked to her about re-experiencing the shame of high school once their own kids start to experience the same familiar scenarios of rejection. The problem is, most parents still don't know how to deal with the trauma they had from their high school experiences. So thats why its better to feel that guilt and put it to use, instead of grieving on shame.
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ReplyDeleteWhy Social Media Only Makes Being a Teenager Worse
ReplyDeleteIn the article "Why you Never Truly Leave High School" it explains how your adolescence impacts you for your entire life because you are developing physically and mentally most during this time in your life (ages 13-25 about.) It is mentioned during the article that social media connects people past high school and that impacts your experience after high school and even college. It is very evident that although social media does make adolescence fun and is a great way to waste some time, social media is a big hurt to self-esteem and mental health which are already every fragile during adolescence. Social media makes people compare themselves to other more making the popularity pyramid even stricter. I know from first hand experience that social media can be used negatively to hurt others, which as teenagers we feel every small hurt that happens in our lives so much stronger than we would as an adult because of the amount of developing we are going through during adolescence. Mental health is very easily effected during adolescence, making it the worst time to have social media as an outlet for bullying and destruction of self-esteem. It is very common for mental health issues that form in adolescence to follow you into adulthood, studies show that 75 percent of people with fear related disorders can trace the root of it to earlier ages. Another thing that social meaning fuels is fear of missing social events because you weren't there (as us teens like to call FOMO- fear of missing out.) Most times an event only seems fun because social media has constructed it to seem that way when in reality it could be an awkward party that no one had any fun at all at, but this is part of high school, everything seems better through the eyes of social media. Overall, social media has caused more problems than it does help, because of it being an outlet for such bad things such as cyber bullying and self comparison. During this period of development and fragile mental state, social media only fuels the pain that follows most adolescence through to adulthood.
Is the Author Right?
ReplyDeleteReading this article provokes many thoughts and ideas. But the real question is: Is the author right? It can really go both ways. Whether you think this article is true or not depends on what you hold important. The way you think and make decisions is based upon your experiences as a child and throughout adolescence, which is what the author conveys to the reader. The way you experience high school, the friends you had, the teachers you had, all affect the way you think and act. However, despite their lasting influence, these things definitely do not predetermine your salary or job position when you are older.
If you had a lot of bad experiences after speaking out or doing something different, then you’re probably going to grow up to have some anxiety, or to be a little shy. This is what the author means when she mentions “the connections in your brain speeding up,” and “everyone’s first experience of sentient madness.” Obviously people don’t just develop a personality when they go to high school, as it’s a much more gradual process. But adolescence seems to be when people are hit hard with all of their emotions, feelings, and states of mind, due to their previous experiences that now have an affect and/or toll on the person’s sense of personal equilibrium.
The author refers to high school as a food chain, a hierarchy of people, with the most “popular” people at the top. But high school isn’t really like that. It’s more of a web. An intricate interlinking of friends, enemies, and others. People with more friends connected to them doesn’t make them better, it just means that they happened to be in the right place and time in which they met a lot of people with the same interests, values, and sense of humor. Just because certain people might have more friends, does not mean that they are somehow destined to have an easier time in life. Life just isn’t that simple.
Stereotype Station
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading the article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” by Jennifer Senior, I noticed certain words being used over and over again. I know not every word is different, that much is obvious. However, I continued reading and noticed these words were being used to describe people.
The first word that stuck out to me was “football player.” While the word was not used every other sentence, it still stuck out to me whenever it came up. “They were a popular, football-playing, preposterously set of identical twins” (Senior 1). While of course nothing at all can be hinted from that, it can be after reading the second use of it. “He had no idea what it was like to be a football player or a cheerleader.” (Senior 1). By reusing this word it came off as a little bit derogatory. While the polar opposite kind of person had the same few words used every time as well.
“Kenji was a closeted, half-Japanese orchestra nerd” (Senior 1). Once again, this is not that bad, however in another quote it sort of shows another side. “Like Kenji, Larry was brilliant, musically gifted, and hidden away behind awkward glasses during most of his adolescence” (Senior 2). It seems that whenever the author brings up whatever a nerdy kid did, it seems to look down upon music by mixing music and negative connotations next to each other. However it is not just music related words, it’s pretty much anything that that person was good at.
My initial reaction to this was much worse, but after checking over the reading I noticed it was not as bad as I thought it was. For all I know, it was not even intentional. Some of it was facts, but by using these negative connotations it sort of made it look as if the author did not care for that kind of person. However, the truth is for the reader to decide.
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ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHigh School Is not Just a Box of Interacting Strangers.
I found this article to be very interesting in that the author, Jennifer Senior provides some very persuasive arguments regarding her thoughts on the alleged horror that is today’s American high school. Nonetheless, what I found surprising was the repeated referral to high school as a “Box of Interacting Strangers.” The Author argues that in high school, our reputation and notoriety is left to be determined by people we barely know. Coming from Niskayuna, a school of moderate size, I beg to reason that this may not always be the case.
Having been a student of Niskayuna for many years now, I have developed many close relationships with my peers and had the chance to get to know many of my teachers. Although I may not know everyone, I can safely say that the hallways I walk on a daily basis are not filled only with judgemental strangers as the author may have lead you to believe.
I agree that adolescents have the tendency to pass judgments on one another, and I know for a fact that these labels can be shallow and unimportant. However, I disagree with the notion that the opinions of strangers define us. Senior even affirms the unimportance of the labels strangers make in the article, “What determines those hierarchies is often the crudest common denominator. Stuff, looks, nice clothes, prowess in sports, rather than personality” (Senior 6.) As a reader I refuse to believe that these shallow labels accurately shape our reputation. Especially one that we will carry with us the rest of our lives.
In sum, I choose to believe that my value cannot be justly determined by what I wore to school today but rather should be determined in totality by my values and contributions as a person. Even though the author makes many accurate descriptions of the values of adolescents I also disagree with the idea that high school is just a “Box of Interacting Strangers.” The relationships I have formed up to today mean much much more than a few shallow labels.
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ReplyDeleteSociety’s Bad Side
ReplyDeleteReviving Ophelia-Saving the Lives of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher is an eye-opening book that all people should read. The book dealt with the idea that society influences adolescent girls in many ways that affect their lives and who they become. The book discussed points such as girls going to extremes like being depressed and having potentially fatal eating disorders just because they wanted to fit into society’s standards of what the ideal girl should be and look like. The author is a therapist and was able to share some of the most unfortunate and scary examples of the extremes that girls take just to be accepted by society and their peers. One girl went to the extreme of becoming bulimic and forcing herself to throw up every time she ate any food or binged. This girl ended up having health issues in her esophagus and and stomach because her food couldn’t be digested properly.
That being said, I believe that all people should read this book. I don’t think that people understand how much society is negatively impacting girls in adolescence. These girls are at a fragile state in their lives and are under so much pressure at the same time to develope themselves and become their own person. Males and females of all ages should read this book so that they know what their specific impact of their opinions is having on girls in adolescence. Just by a teenage boy calling a girl a silly name without thinking or understanding what effect this comment could have on her, could lead a girl to thinking she is worthless or to become depressed. If grown ups only respect girls who are thin and “beautiful” this is adding to society’s rigid views on how a girl could look.
Everyday people judge adolescent girls and make assumptions about them without knowing any information on them. If people are aware of the consequences that these assumptions have on people, the percent of girls in adolescents with depression might go down because people will not judge girls based on their looks or how much they weigh. I think that this book is perfect at pointing out all of the ugly outcomes of society’s harsh judgements.
I remember when I was with another adolescent girl who said that the only reason she likes a certain celebrity is because she’s pretty. I don’t think this individual would have made that comment if she had read this book. Is she along with society implying that girls who don’t wear a ton of makeup and have some acne are ugly? All girls are beautiful. This book has been eye-opening to me because I have realized this. Society needs to change their views on girls and think of the girls with acne as being just as beautiful as girls without. I realized this in the book when I saw examples of girls who do not eat for days and have no friends because they start to believe these judgements and don’t believe in their own self worth. It made me feel a great deal of empathy for these girls and now I know that the problem can easily be fixed. People need to read this book so that they may change their ways and as a whole, society can be changed to value girls as who they are and be more accepting of all different individuals.
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ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nlLVST0cP5CjXl1Qf4FxrnalfyCIwtt6EqgI_jC-UmI/edit#slide=id.gebaa22871_0_117
ReplyDelete