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. As you write, make sure you refer back to specific details from the article. 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 (circa one page typed). This will be due on Friday, Sept. 12th.
Page 3 first paragraph
ReplyDelete“…but if you’re interested in how people become who they are, so much is going on in the adolescent years.”
I personally feel that the main idea of the whole article is in this sentence. This statement is also 100% correct. You form who you are when you are a teen. There are always a few cases where people turn their whole lives around once they are adults, but in reality, I agree that it all happens during the adolescent years. When one is in high school, it’s like Mrs. White said, people are in their own “bubble” and tend not to notice the world around them, which leads to people not knowing that the choices one makes as a teen can greatly affect your adult life in the long run. For example, with all the social media we have today, Instagram, twitter etc, it makes it so much easier to find information on people. So, if as a teen you post an inappropriate picture or say something offensive, that picture or those words stay in cyberspace forever, and your future employers can find those kinds of things. As teens, people tend not to think of those kinds of consequences, once again because we are in our “bubble.” As a teenager, most also tend to look at situations from the worst side, and that’s once again because humans feel things most intensely during adolescence. I think this is why most tv shows and movies are based around a group of teenagers, because that is when your life is constantly up and down. As a conclusion, I believe that who you are as a teenager is who you will become as an adult, and the teenage years are the hardest years of life.
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ReplyDeleteNot The Ordinary Breakfast Club
ReplyDeleteMarina Angelopoulos
High school ends. The four years spent confined within brick walls and tile floors is exactly that, a chunk of time. But why is it that one period of time can continue to define us throughout our lifetimes? In the article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" Jennifer Senior attempts to answer the question through extensive research into the social customs and the developing brains of adolescents. Although Jennifer compiles convincing evidence on how we can never escape high school, she also leaves room for some disagreement.
I agree with the notion that the experiences we have in high school shape our futures. That good or bad, those moments will stay with us forever, and that our developing brains are partially to blame. The combination of increased dopamine activity, inability to dial back fear responses, and being constantly surrounded by others in the same state makes every situation more intense, ranging from spectacular to traumatic. Kids our age are too rough, and the things we obsess over are not as important as we may think. We tend to aimlessly throw people into labeled boxes and the fear of being rejected hits too close to home. We spend immense amounts of time worried and stressed in our own bubble, and less time thinking about some of the negative reactions others may have to our what we do or say.
Now with that being said I disagree with the statement that "American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents". (Erik Erikson) I choose to believe that there is another way to look at high school other than a place equal to hell, and that is as the ultimate test of human character. That the way we learn to interact and behave reflects on the kind of people we will become in the future, the type of people we want to be. And that most of the social skills we utilize for life are learned between the ages of 14 through 18. Kids our age need to learn how to be gracious and kind to others through a series of trial and error. I'm not going to say that all high school kids are angels because that would be absurd, but I do believe that there is a capacity in children our age to go against the norm and really change the ways in which we behave towards each other. The blogs that our class is writing today are proof to that, as i'm sure none of us believe that being a bully or over-judgemental are characteristics that we aspire to have. All we can do is become aware, and test ourselves each day.
Identity Crisis
ReplyDeleteComing out of the “Until the Depression” portion of the article, there is a statement that is written, which says: “… kids create themselves on their own, and what determines those hierarchies is often the crudest common denominator stuff looks, nice clothes, prowess in sports, rather than the subtleties of personality.”
Honestly, from a student’s stand point, I could not agree more with this statement. High school is constantly surrounded with people who pretend to be someone they are not, or changing who they are, or what they wear for OTHER PEOPLE who they are most likely not going to see in them span of four years. Of course, everyone has their different reasons as to why they change; whether it’s to “fit in,” or to get someone’s attention, etc. But, what they should know, is they should not care what other people think about them, because they are their own person; as cheesy as that sounds (and believe me, I am aware) it is, or should be true.
By letting the fear of social judgment control you, it will make you look back and regret what you did. The fear of social judgment will eventually make you feel small about yourself. All these things can keep you from accomplishing big things that can affect you positively in the future. When you care about what others think of you, you are letting that person control your behavior, and destroy your confidence to make themselves feel superior compared to you; it makes me wonder if people still know what individuality means.
When you stop trying to impress others, you can express your true self more fully, and connect with more people. The less time and energy you spend on image management, and making your life presentable to others, the more time you can spend on things that you personally care about.
Emily Kate Nappi
ReplyDeleteleaving with a different perspective
When we enter high school we are excited, nervous maybe even scared. We look at these four years as the beginning of the end of our "childhood", because after high school we are on our own. Nobody thinks they will enter high school and leave with a whole new identity. You come out of high school with experiences that create you, they make you stronger, more empathetic, a broader view of the world. When you begin high school this is when your brain starts to be able to hold the capacity to form an identity for yourself. This causes questions such as "what type of person do i want to be?" or "how do other people see me?". But we ask these and have an idea of what we want but we don't chose who we are, high school experiences good or bad shape who we are we don't notice it till after, maybe we never notice. In high school we are most in impressionable, " In adolescence, the brain is also buzzing with more dopamine activity than at any other time in the human life cycle, so everything is a little bit more intense." High school doesn't stay with us, we leave high school, but high school does shape us.
Fate Will Not Be Decided by High School
ReplyDeleteKierstyn Gurney
We all have our own high school struggles. Whether it’s because of grades, family, sports, relationships, popularity or anything else, it will get to you in some way. Then we all have our own way of dealing with it, it may be bad, good or somewhere in between, but because of during our adolescent years “…the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain (known collectively as the limbic system) have a more significant influence”, it will impact us deeper than it would in our adulthood. We may remember those major moments but that doesn’t mean we will carry that struggle with us for the rest of our lives.
We won’t go to a high school reunion thirty years later and still hold a grudge on someone for doing something to us. People learn to let go and realize that some things just aren’t that big of a deal anymore. There will be things like our job and family that will be the main priority, and of course for everyone the situation will be different. We mature a lot in the little time we have to live.
They may have done all these studies about height correlating to earning potential and attractiveness to a sooner marriage, but that doesn’t give us a disability to getting out of the past. We will all eventually reach a point of adulthood that won’t include our adolescent self as much as this article makes it seem like we will. With the Pew Research Center discovering that the largest share of Facebook friends come from high school, doesn’t mean we will be the same way with them as we get older. Most of them were probably just names they recognized anyways. Just because you are Facebook friends doesn’t mean you are actually still friends, you can be acquaintances or just know the person and not have any sort of relationship with them to be able to click the accept button. That list of people most definitely can’t determine the personality and life your future self either.
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ReplyDeleteWe Should Blow Up the High School
ReplyDeleteBy, Sarah Kowaleski
Everyone may, quite thoroughly and somewhat irrationally, fear solitude. Especially since that burdening sense of inferiority and remoteness pursues a teenager as they are first becoming within greater consciousness of their genuine self.
So, with a likely inevitability, the revelations that mount your awareness are often times to be tested and denounced by your peers. Meaning, if the way you decidedly wish to express yourself has been deemed unacceptable by the implicit standards set habitually by high schoolers, you might wither into conformity to escape the isolation.
Although, even if you do express your true interests and personality, the OCD part of the human mind will forcibly categorize you, even obliviously, since the chaos of individuality would be too much to bear. Therefore, as the article Why You Truly Never Leave High School, by Jennifer Senior, accentuates, “unwanted identities and labels start during their tweens and teens.”
Once your status has been constituted by your classmates, you, too, may soon associate yourself as that one thing, whether it be, stereotypically, a Jock, Princess, Brain, Basket-Case, or Criminal. Moreover, studies have proven that by identifying with a certain crowd, you tend to exhibit some of these acquired behaviors and attitudes further into adulthood as well. For example, many Jocks exuded confidence even years after graduating, most criminals still opted to smoke, and a lot of the Princesses still depended on their attractiveness and charisma to gain advantages in life.
As these manners and values are implanted in the nation with each passing generation, the idea of “fitting in” consumes and plagues kids. They learn to waver at difference, particularly at their own, further enhancing the issues with intolerance and, accordingly, shame.
In the article, the author mentioned her former classmate, Larry, was working on a musical adaptation of the movie Heathers, the epitome of all concepts relating to self-image and how that combats society. In the film, the main character is somehow tricked by her boyfriend into murdering everyone who dictates the implied social hierarchy, eventually leading to him trying to blow up the whole entire school. He says, before this attempt, “People will look at the ashes of Westerburg and say, ‘Now there's a school that self-destructed, not because society didn't care, but because the school was society.’”
Metaphorically, I think we should try to blow up the school, ultimately aiming to diminish prestige and labels.
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ReplyDeleteHigh School Social Ladder
ReplyDeleteLauren Serotta
Everyone is climbing the high school social ladder. Everyone wants and tries to reach the top. If it is either a new outfit or a new boyfriend, we try our best to be socially accepted.
There is always going to be a social ladder to climb. Not everybody gets along with each other and that’s okay because you don’t have to be friends with everyone. People have different interests and beliefs. People with the same interests tend to hang out together and people with a different interest hang out thus the formation of groups. “High schools are big. There has to be some way of sorting people socially. It’d be nice if kids could be captured by all their characteristics. But that’s not realistic.” I totally agree with that statement, I believe that there will always be cliques. There is not really a way to eliminate them because as I said before people have different beliefs and interests.
Just think about the friends you have. Do you share the same interests that they do? Whether it’s a sport, subject, hobby, etc. In high school we tend to do anything we can to reach the top of that social ladder or to move up a ranking on the social scale. Even if it means hanging out less with your real friends and trying to fit in more with the popular crowd.
If you’re not fitting in with the people at the top, don’t worry; it is not the end of the world. Wouldn’t you rather hang out with your real friends instead of your fake friends? People get past high school. It is only four years of your life. Yes it is important to have a social life, but we are at school to learn.
All of this drama is just the whole high school experience and it is to prepare you for the real world. People need to stop climbing the social ladder and move forward in their life. We need to start thinking about things that actually matter.
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ReplyDeleteYou May Have Lost The Battle, But You Can Still Win The War
ReplyDeleteAfter I read the article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School", by Jennifer Senior, I came to the conclusion that high school is like a battlefield, it doesn't matter how many times one wins the battles, what really counts is who wins the war. Many times the strong prosper while the meek collapse in the real world.
But let me make myself clear when I say that you don’t have to be popular to be strong or that one most be a nerd to be meek. Because even though someone may have nice clothes and is nice to look at, doesn't mean that they're mentally strong or that they have more self-confidence then a more intellectual person does.
"It'd be nice if kids could be captured by all their characteristics. But that's not realistic." (Senior 6). Appearances aren't everything, although for some reason in high school and in life people seem to make assumptions based off of what another person choose to wear that day. Maybe Crosnoe is right, people feel the need to sort others socially, but wouldn't it be more beneficial if people stopped sorting others and accepted that people can be more than just one thing, they can be brainy, but they can also be athletic and attractive as well.
Continuing on what I said earlier about high school being a battlefield, just because the populars and the jocks seem to win the battle every time, doesn't necessarily mean that they will win the war. As far as I'm concerned high school, like Senior puts it, prepares us for life, high school is not the end of the world, not by a long shot. People get so caught up on just four years of their life that they forget to look at the larger picture.
Because lets be real, in fifteen years from now it's not going to matter if you were the jock or the princess, or if you won prom queen (well it may matter if you were the one to win). What’s going to matter is that you took advantage of every opportunity that was given to you, and that you tried as hard as you could to not let other people's misguided opinions of you and their cruel comments stop you from achieving you’re dream, whatever that may be. At the end of the day, you're the only one who can stop other people from putting you in a box and labeling it. You alone have the power to tell people who you truly are, not the other way around.
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ReplyDeleteI’m Not a Box , Don’t Label Me
DeleteLydia Kerchner
I hate to admit that the article is right, we do label our peers. I do it, you do it, we all label. I wish it weren’t true but let’s face the facts we can’t get to know everyone in the high school so we have to make up an identity for them when we can’t even come up with an identity for ourselves. The sad thing is that sometimes your labels actually become that person’s identity because they don’t know who they are and choose the stereotype you grant them.
The other issue is our labels aren’t even correct. We think that because someone is athletic that they shouldn’t be smart or that if you’re in all honors you shouldn’t be athletic. When did this logic make sense? After reading this essay I realized that this is terribly true and I wish I could change it but old habits die hard, for everyone.
I also found this eye opening to the effects on “groups” and how different people were affected later in life. I guess if you have people following you around all day telling you how great you are because they want to share the popularity limelight it can be damaging not to have that limelight. I think that the higher people build you the higher you fall. I also found it interesting that popular people are idolized is thought to be stupid, as mentioned above, because others are wary of intellectuals. I think this is because every person likes to think of themselves as smart and when a person around you is noticeably smarter than you get jealous .That is why intellects get their own box on the shelf of society. It was striking and eye opening to read this article and realize the test results and effects high school has on people both good and bad.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMaking the Grade: The Teenage Mindset & Why It Needs to Change
ReplyDeleteJennifer Senior writes at length about high school life in “Why You Truly Never Leave High School”. The article explores social structure and stereotypes. The psychologic facets of the jungle of hormones we like to call high school is discussed in depth. The article clearly states that “....humans really do feel things most intensely during adolescence.. they also happen to be working out an identity for the first time...preoccupied with what they appear to be in the eyes of others compared with what they feel they are.”
Which brings me to my question, with such different kids running around all trying to figure out their true self, is it ever possible for students to find something within them that dissuades them from sticking to the status quo? I can’t see why we can’t have a plethora of teens socializing out of their usual circles and talking to kids who aren’t necessarily seen as approachable? Now, I’m not expecting NHS to turn into the set of High School Musical, because the personalities of teenagers are what separates them from their peers, it’s what makes us unique.
We must break away from the social stalemate and realize that those kids your mother warned you about might actually be worth your time. But don’t expect everyone to have a tragic backstory, instead focus on the qualities that make them different and give yourself room to appreciate.
That mathlete who you find intellectually intimidating and only talk to when you need help with complex fractions could very well get the Nobel Prize someday. Appreciate that. That kid who does nothing but doodle in your chem class could be on his way to becoming a celebrated artist. Appreciate that. That girl who does nothing but go on and on and on about when she thinks the next Beyonce album is going to drop could have runner up status on American Idol in her future (because we all know the runner ups are the ones who really get famous). Appreciate that. Everyone could use just a little more appreciation and the world will be a better place, I promise.
Change won’t happen overnight, and it certainly won’t happen over Saturday morning detention a la Breakfast Club. It would be nice, but I’m no Molly Ringwald. One can’t just go with the flow in high school and give up the potential of having a closer relationship with a fellow classmate or having that one friend who always seems to be there for you.
Teenagers need to stop looking at their so called social, mental, and physical “setbacks” as barriers and see them instead as game changers. These are what make you stand above the rest, this is what separates you from the others, this makes all the difference. Staying true to who you are is what makes the grade, and this one should be an easy A.
So Much Happens in the Adolescent Years
ReplyDeleteErin Doyle
Throughout the teenage years, there are always difficult times, as well as easy times. Things happen during this time period that you will always remember whether they are good or bad. Some people may argue that what happens during our teenage years shape who we are for the rest of our life. I do not believe this to be true. While I do believe that many things in our adolescent years play a huge role in shaping us, I do not believe this time period completely defines who we are in the future.
"... those three or four years can in retrospect feel like 30" (Jennifer Senior). This quote describes what high school can feel like for some. It tells us that so much can happen that it can feel like a very long time passes. Science supports this concept. In the article, it mentions that the most vivid memories are those in your high school years. For some people, these memories may not be all good. The article suggests that, for most students, high school is full of shame. This is why the adolescent years shape so much of your future. Teenagers are more likely to remember the shameful things that happened to them in high school. There are also many lessons and principles learned by students in high school. These things are not just forgotten once high school is over. Teenagers are able to recall many things that happened during their adolescence that help define who they are in the future.
Teenagers become, in part, who they are by the experiences they have as a teenager. I do not think the adult personality is entirely based on the adolescent years. For example, the article mentions Kenji who was a bit of a nerd in high school. The article goes on to explain that Kenji never talked to the popular Glassman twins during his four years of high school. However, at the 25th high school reunion, Kenji talked to Josh Glassman. This shows how things can continue to change and skills develop throughout one’s life. There are many different paths that people take in life, and high school experiences are not the only factor in who we become. While high school does play a very important part in defining someone, other factors play an important role as well.
A Label Only Matters if You are Food
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” I have a totally different view of high school. It made me rethink who I think I am, who others think I am, and who I really am and why I think about myself in a certain way. Winnie Holzman wrote, “In high school, 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. What seems to be an unshakeable reality, is basically just a story that we learned to tell ourselves.”
This quote really made me reevaluate a lot of things. Why in high school do people think that wearing a North Face and Uggs, straightening your hair, and drinking Starbucks is the epitome of being a “white girl”. Some believe that being in math club and excelling in your classes makes you a “geek”. Others feel that being athletically inclined means you are dumb but makes you “popular”.
I believe that these are all just stereotypes. Stereotypes that we give ourselves and others. Often we dislike when people assign a label us with. Yet why do we label others? Personally, I do not see any good reason why we do this. I agree with Holzman when she says that these things are all just a story that we learned to tell ourselves. Still, I want to take it one step further than that. I believe that with conscious effort we can learn to stop labeling other people. I believe if there were no labels or social ladders to climb, high school would be a much better place to be. In a perfect world people would just stop judging one another and just be themselves.
However, I realize that this is not a perfect world and unfortunately it never will be. So instead of expecting everyone to change, we can only change what we do. Therefore we can stop labeling people. At the end of the day, I strongly believe that labels only matter if you are food.
“Helping Our Future by Helping Our Present”
ReplyDeleteMelissa Schaefer
Ever since our first day of kindergarten, the question is always “what’s next?” We are always so concerned about where our future is, but we never stop to think about us. During this period in our educational career, also known as high school, we feel extremely vulnerable. Every little mistake we make now feels like it will haunt us forever. It feels like the pressure of school keeps closing into us, and suddenly we realize that we have no time for ourselves.
And isn’t that what these years are about? Finding out who we are? Our identity? Coke or Pepsi? And when we do focus on who we are, it’s only about what others think of us. As teenagers, it’s our nature to pick and pry at who we are, but often times, it is in the most unhealthy manner. Self-acceptance can be so hard to come by whether you realize it or not. Basically,teens everywhere need to see that we are beautiful and it’s okay to see the good qualities that we possess. But who cares about that? Your future self definitely will. How you see yourself won’t just affect you now, but for the rest of your life. It’s what will separate you from the other person competing for the same job. Actually, that sounds even more frightening, but that’s not my point. Tp put it simply, you will go far in life if you believe that you can. In an article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior, there’s a quote that stands out much more than others. It says “The difference between you and me is that I knew in highschool I was beautiful.” (Senior 3).
Just love and accept yourself be true to yourself. Know that you don’t need to be the best athlete or singer in order to turn out great in your adult years. We will all be okay, we will take control of our future, and it will all turn out alright.
As we grow up, us students spend a lot of time together. From starting in kindergarten, to graduating high school, our class is all together from day one. As we learn the necessities for life, we are also educated in social skills such as making friends and also interacting with adults. Jennifer Senior, the author of the article “Why we Never Truly Leave High School”, states that teenagers today spend sixteen hours per week interacting with adults, and sixty with fellow classmates and kids their age. She also tells us that this is the opposite of how teenagers lived one hundred years ago. This fact explains so much about who teenagers are today.
ReplyDeleteThere are many positives and negatives to this. Some positives are, as stated above, are that we learn to rely less on our parents, and to lean more on ourselves and each other. This is extremely important because it is something that we will need to use for the rest of our iukh, lives. After graduating high school, the next step is college and the finding a career and living your life on your own. The people we go to school with can only carry us so far, so learning what it is like in high school to be independent is a huge advantage because it gets you extra prepared for what is yet to come.
Negatives that go along with this, is that high schoolers tend to interact with only each other. This can work in high school, but it is hard to learn the skills of communicating with adults once we leave. This can become problematic once we start new chapters in our life such as job and college interviews.
Obviously, there are many ups and downs to the lack of interaction with people that aren’t our age. We learn to be independent, but also forget some important skills necessary. If the teenagers today were able to communicate with others more easily, it could make the rest of our lives so much easier.
Bhavkirat Singh
ReplyDeleteThe High School Caste System Version 6.2.1
High School, the fours years of your life that will push you to your limit. The four most prominent years of your school era. These are the four years that you will either be noticed as a nerd, jock, the popular kid, geeky kid, weird kid, delinquent or even a "princess"(as Jennifor Senior dictates in her article:"Why you truly never leave school"), it's the one place place your put into a caste system. High School is the one place that people will steriotypically address your personality,"Oh he's asian he must be a nerd". High School is also the one place where you won't get enough of the Iphones, the (i)messaging, Instagram, Snapchat, but last but not least "Selfie!!!".
After reading "Why you truly never leave High School" By Jennifor Senior really got me thinking especially about the portion about shame and guilt. When Jennifor says that "The first time our kids don't get a seat at the cool table, or they don't get asked out, or they get stood up that is such a shame trigger, she says. It's like a secondary trauma..."(which was a great comparison by the way), really justifies the fact that there is a caste system in High School. High School, after a while of thinking about it, really isn't that a place all the kids go just because "ooh I wanna go to UC Berkeley, or Stanford, maybe even Oxford"(or a good college out there), but in reality they get up at 6:00am to socialize with their friends.
I never really though about that, I thought that kids actually came to High School(especially NHS) to get a good education(like myself) and become successful in life rather than to socialize the majority of the time. Maybe it's Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreigers's fault(inventors of Instagram) for creating such a popular app tp socailize with. Or maybe it was Mark Zuckerburg with his world famous Facebook app and messenger.
You know what let's not blame it on these intellectual folk, maybe it's the students that need to make the correct choice. Maybe the caste system in High School isn't so bad at all, in my opinion maybe it's just the students that need to decide whether they want to succeed in life or struggle. If they want to struggle, then sure go out and message your best friend while your chemistry teacher trys to teach you something new. Be a lazy slacker, but on the other hand if you want to succeed in life and make a difference than get up, try your hardest in your classes, do all the homework that you are assigned and just simply study. Oh and no more "lol, btw, ttyl" in school anymore it is time to concentrate.
Alright maybe I was a little rude, but this is what my opinion is for people I think that they should be tryning their hardest if they simply want to be successful.People will iprobably have a different opinion than me after reading this artcicle but it is their game plan and that is how they want to do everything. Overall, I think that this article really changed my view on High School is working and functioning. I guess the social apps in use today were inevitable for teenagers today. So to end this blog, since we are not in school.......ttyl. SENT 8:34
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We Are All Philosophers
ReplyDeleteBy Rhiannon Gaylord
“What seems like an unshakable reality is really just a story we learn to tell ourselves.”
When reading the article Why You Never Truly Leave High School, this is the one line that caught my eye above all the rest.
The subject of “reality” is something that philosophers, scientists, and sleep deprived people at two in the morning like to discuss. It’s the sort of thing that makes my head spin, a concept that I’m not sure I will ever understand. At the same time, it is the sort of thing we all will surely find ourselves pondering as we get older and our natural and insatiable quest for answers drives us on.
The question that I ask is three words, short and to the point: what is reality?
Why, you may wonder, is she discussing this? This is pretty silly. And yes, it may well be. I quite agree with you.
It probably does not matter much, and the answer – if there is one – likely won’t provide much insight nor help me in any way. Even so, this is the question I have turned over and over in my head until I have been forced to turn away from it entirely. It is a train of thought with a thousand unexpected twists that can leave you trusting nothing. Is the nature of reality what truly is, or how it is perceived? Is reality relative? If it is, can things no one knows about or remembers – tiny tidbits of history, unrecorded and unknown; facts yet undiscovered, and perhaps never to be found – can these things be considered a part of anyone’s reality?
I thought about all of this, and fully intended to write my post on the subject. It would be interesting – I would discuss it, and give my point of view. It would be original (hopefully) and it would (again, hopefully) be fun to write.
As I thought more, though, what truly began to stick out to me was the ever-present human obsession with knowledge. As long as we have been introduced to it, and even when we haven’t, we seek more and more. And I don’t mean this in terms of school – I’m sure many of us, including me, are hardly riveted by the quadratic formula, and none of us are kept up at night with excitement over research for a Global project – but I do believe that it is in human nature to want to know things. We all ask questions every day, big and small; we all think, whether extensively or in small doses, and wonder about all manner of things. We all have our own point of view, and even when it may not matter in the end, even when it is not practical, even when it will change nothing, we all form opinions and want to know. We are all philosophers. I honestly think this is an amazing thing, and the framework for our own reality.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCliques Will Last
ReplyDeleteDanielle Feldman
High school isn’t some sort of complicated experiment. It’s school, a place to learn and socialize. It’s up to the student to make the most of it. It’s four years of your life, you decided what you want to do with it.
In life, in or out of high school there will be cliques. Cliques are simply just groups of people who are similar and have things in common. Cliques are fine to an extent. You cannot control the groups in high school and people can most certainly not control who become friends with whom.
This doesn’t stop when you leave high school. “If you put adults in a similar situation, you’d find similar features” (Senior 9). I completely agree with this quote. This quotes saying that if you just take a bunch of random adults and put them in a building together it would be just like high school. The reason isn’t because people aren’t over their adolescent years it’s because they are going to get along with people they can tolerate and therefore “cliques” will develop once again. That’s not necessarily a bad things it’s natural to prefer people who are like you. Social groupings will never leave, throughout life you will run into people you won’t know or like but you just handle it maturely and find people you do like.
Another thing with cliques is people work themselves up and cause the drama about who they “need” to be friends with or sitting with the so called “cool” group at lunch. They are so caught up into all the drama that people don’t realize that is a just lunch table. It is a group of people sitting down at a plain normal table, while eating just like everybody else. There is nothing special or magical about that lunch table. No one says there is anything special about it but it’s the people who are not sitting at that particular table who title it and make a bigger deal than it actually is.
So don’t let friend groups be a big deal. High school is about finding your own interests. It’s not about what table you sit at, or making fun of the nerdy kid, or bashing the popular girls, it’s simply about you. The sooner people realize that and stop making those four years of life such a huge deal, then the fewer problems they would have. In reality cliques will stay cliques and finding people who are similar to you isn’t a bad thing.
Become the Better Person
ReplyDeleteBy Erica Wasserbach
When you really think about high school as a whole, it somewhat resembles a smaller version of the outside world. In which it is divided up into social classes, you have the popular people, where in high school are the ones who everyone aspires to be, and in the real world are the most successful. Then you have the people that everyone questions their purpose in the world, same goes for the people out in the real world that have failed to make a living. Some people may say that high school doesn’t really prepare you for what’s next in one’s life, but if you learn the right things and take away the right experiences, it could help you out greatly in the long run.
High school can prepare you in both academic and social ways, but what American schools have lost touch with over the years is how important that social aspect should really be. And the answer is, not that important. To some in the everyday high school today, it means the world. But to others, they couldn’t care less about what goes one in the halls, as opposed to what goes on in the classroom. And usually the ones who put forth the effort in their younger years will be rewarded in the long run.
After reading the article, Why you Truly Never Leave High school, an interesting statistic popped out to me. When adolescents were asked to list their best friends, only 37% of the friendships were mutual on both lists. This statistic proves that the social aspect of high school is not the real reason why you are there, or should not be at least. The reason that you attend high school is to prepare you for college, which will then get you a future job. Sure the idea of there being people that are better than one another can carry over into the streets of the real world, but that is only the half of it. Why don’t you just start now and become the better person and focus on what we are truly in high school to accomplish, and then maybe you can become that better person. In conclusion, that small world of high school, may not be such a key to who you become after all, because in reality the definition of "popular" then and now and now are completely different things.
What Defines Us More: Appearance, or Personality?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Jennifer Senior’s article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” I began to wonder about change. Most of my thoughts turned towards the differences between changes in physical appearance, and changes in personality, and how much both of these attributes truly defined us.
When we grow up, it may seem like we don’t change a lot, personality-wise. As Senior said in her article, our personalities begin to set in stone during our years in high school. Things like our favorite genre of music and our favorite movies carry over into our adulthood. The way we act and talk during high school also make a large impact on our adulthood. However, I began to question how much our personality truly defined us. When you are asked to think of someone that you know, you most likely think about what they look like first, rather than how they talk or act. So is this impact easily identifiable?
Obviously, our appearance is something that easily defines us. However, after we leave high school, we obviously undergo changes in appearance. Now, for example, say someone you knew in high school suddenly reunited with you. Would you be able to determine who they are by physical appearance? Probably not. However, if they were to tell you their name, you would immediately picture them as a young, high school student. You would probably not think about how they spoke or acted.
Does this mean that appearance is something that defines more than our personality? Is it really true that our personality is not something that truly defines us? Does this mean that changes in personality aren’t as easily recognizable as changes in appearance? I’m highly inclined to agree. I mean, in one way or another, we all look different, but there are and will always be people who talk and act almost identically. So, in conclusion, while it is a bit depressing, I believe that your appearance is your most defining feature, and change in personality is unfortunately less recognizable than your appearance.
Meghan O’Connell
ReplyDeleteLiving In Our Own World
As a teenager who is in high school, school is most likely your whole world. Maybe you are involved in sports, clubs, music, or other extracurriculars, but most of them tie into school in some way. As mentioned on page 5 of Why You Never Truly Leave High School by Jennifer Senior, us children tend to create our own sort of world through school due to mostly spending time with each other and not as much time around adults. Until we graduate, high school is our entire world as a teenager and all we really know for the most part.
As much as we try not to, everyone gets caught up in their status or social standing at some point throughout high school. For the four years we spend in high school, many kids are so focused on making themselves into something that may or may not be who they are in order to be who they think could be accepted. It shouldn’t matter what you look like, or if you are an athlete or very smart and focused on schoolwork, but unfortunately for us it does. We all try so hard to be something that may not even matter as soon as we walk out the school doors for the last time. We create this whole little world for ourselves to live in and to us every little thing that happens as a teen feels like its life or death. In reality, all of the things we do in high school and the way we are raised will of course shape who we are in the future, but the small details like what clothes you wear or the amount of attention you get from others won’t dictate who you grow to become.
After four years of living within the social hierarchies of high school, every kid deals with it in their own way and assumes their own personal role. Sure, being cool and knowing exactly how to act within the confines of your grade may seem great at the time, but as soon as you leave the world of high school, theres a whole other world out there. Learning how to act among your fellow classmates is not really very helpful in terms of knowing how to conduct yourself in our real society outside of high school. Staying true to who you are and what you want is the most important thing you can try to do as you navigate through the difficult four years of high school. Even if who you are isn’t appreciated or accepted in the social bubble of high school right now, doesn’t mean you won’t be in the future.
Products of Our Past
ReplyDeleteEvents that occur to one during their high school year’s will surely affect their adult lives in some, if not many ways. Although, how we react and overcome these situations all lead back to one thing; how we were raised. This article refers to how from the ages zero to three, our brain might potentially be wired already. Meaning who you are could be who you developed to be at age three. Your senses are growing and also things are evolving such as functional and emotional regulation. As we become older, we still absorb things from what is happening around us. We silently carry things with us from high school to home and vice versa.
Kids are fighting battles every day and you would never know. Most likely you would not be able to guess either. They could be internally or within a family. Whatever it is leaves a solid imprint on the way you interpret and look at things. In the article, it addresses the development of your prefrontal cortex. This is what can make teenagers so dramatic, impulsive and difficult to reason with. This creates emotions and situations to seem more intense than they really are. A kid who may take something as a joke while another might take a rude statement to heart. We will do one or the other based on experiences. Those of which only we as individuals have had.
Students will tend to subconsciously think about their parents schooling and success as compared to their own. Whatever they may come across, they will be looking at it with the experiences of their loved ones in their minds. We all measure success differently and feel varying degrees of pressure from school, family and even ourselves. Another relevant thing the article touched upon was the high level of fear in adolescents. One can believe, at these crucial times in our lives such as high school, the pressure is on and the fear of being held back by past events and not becoming what we strive to be is greater then ever.
Larissa Vassolas
ReplyDeleteThe Perfect Paradox
Throughout the entirety of the article "Why You Never Truely Leave High School," by Jennifer Senior, there seems to be one common theme: the science of the teenage brain. What I find amusing about this is the fact that those conducting these experiments to understand the teenage mindset are generalizing, when, in doing that, completely destroy the point of the test.
The teenage demographic is one of the most diverse, especially when each one of us is constantly trying something new to see if it brings us closer to our "true selves." By performing experiments such as these, you are sucking our individuality right out of us, and therefore creating the "teenage robot." This is the predictable teen, the average of everything, and what adults will associate with all people of our age.
I, personally, think that tests like these are useless in determining what a person will turn out to be as an adult, or trying to understand an adolescent's brain and mindset.
The article also mentions an experiment dealing with fear. Some teenagers were asked to identify what emotion was on the face of the person in the picture, and then a group of adults were also. I found it slightly troubling to see that the article basically implied that the unanimous responses of the adults was the correct emotion depicted. While they could very well be right, the article dismissed the answers the teenagers gave, it made me feel like they were cast aside. The author also spoke about most teenagers acting out of different kinds of fear, the main one being "fear of rejection."
I'd like to end this with a response to the "fear factor." Whether or not you fear rejection, it should not matter what other people think of you. You should always be trying to better yourself and not waste your short youth trying to please other people that you probably won't see again after this 4 year experience; at the end of the day, the most important person in your own life, is you. Why not try to make the best you, you can be?
The Only Thing We’re Really Entitled to is the Hard Truth.
ReplyDelete-David Buhrmaster
I think I must have writer’s block– or maybe I’m just procrastinating too much. Or perhaps such an unfair, unreasonable assignment is too difficult for the likes of anyone. Who knows? It just seems like the harder I try to focus and write, the more daunting three-hundred words seem. This is a recurring problem that I seem to face on almost nightly basis.
Oh, woe is me! How could anyone expect me, an adolescent high school boy with ADHD, to focus on a single task for hours a night; especially when there are so many other pressing matters on my mind?
I not only have eight hours of school to trudge through every day; but I have to run for hours after school in XC, a girlfriend to be there for, Boy Scout Troop to run, clubs to attend, drum lessons, and not to mention all this crazy emotional friend drama that clearly must be more difficult than anyone could even imagine. Being the special & unique child I am, I must definitely have more problems and things on my mind than anyone my age has! Right??
WRONG. In fact, VERY wrong.
There are hundreds, no, thousands, no, millions upon millions of kids out there who face so much supposed struggle in their life. I’m not even talking about “the starving children in Africa,” no, I’m talking about kids and teens of American suburbia who have been taught to mope around feeling sorry for themselves when they experience even the slightest of hardship.
Adolescents in this age have been taught by their parents, their teachers, the media, and society that they are special and unique. This mindset, symbolised in my mind by the receiving of the notorious “participation trophy,” may boost self-esteem when they are young, but it has resulted in the gross overestimation of their significance and entitlement.
I admit it, I too am a victim of this process. I too learned to believe at a young age that I am entitled to the best possible, well, anything and everything, because “I’m special and different, and other normal people don’t know how hard it is to be me.”
The truth is, everyone our age gets to feeling that way. Kids of our age have been sheltered to the point that maybe it’s not the harsh environment of high school ruining us: maybe it’s our sense of entitlement that so ill-prepares us.
So sure, I have ADHD, and yeah, I have Lyme disease, you sure bet I have a lot of extra-curricular activities. So what? We as a generation are so busy worrying and feeling sorry about ourselves that we fail to see the big picture: that we all have problems. Some harder than others, but we all have our own obstacles to overcome, often similar to those of our peers. We fail to see that once you do the math, it turns out no one really has it that much harder than the next guy. Our generation needs to start accepting the hard truth, that we are all not entitled to be treated like the shining stars we are told we are. We need to make our own ways in this world, instead of riding on the fantasies that society has conveyed to us.
At the end of the day, we high-schoolers are all just a bunch of equals. We just like to pretend that we’re not.
High School Culture Can Damage Troubled Teens
ReplyDeleteIs the hierarchical, judgmental culture of high school a result of adolescent groupthink, or do high school experiences intensify parts of the adolescent mind that are already there and just human nature? Jennifer Senior explores adolescent emotions, high school stereotypes, and the correlation between the two in context of adult behavior in the New York Magazine article, “Why You Never Truly Leave High School”.
Acceptance or fitting in to a peer group is central to high school life. Peer pressure can make adolescents act differently in different groups. Perhaps this is why high school is an environment that brings out the worst in human nature as teens compete in the social hierarchy. Psychologists Joseph and Claudia Worrell Allen point out that teenagers spend 60 hours a week around people of their age groups.
Survival is a basic part of human nature. Robert Faris argues that if you put adults in a setting with a bunch of strangers, you would find similar patterns as those in high schools with teens. He says “…people divide into tribes, form alliances, and vote one another off the island,” this quote reminds me of Lord of Flies, a novel where human nature and instincts in young boys are studied in a more intense light than in reality TV shows. Faris points out that adults act the same as the adolescents supporting the theory that “you never truly leave high school”, but his observation supports the idea that it isn’t high school, but rather the way humans interact.
In 1974 Marina Abramovic, a performance artist, did a piece called Rhythm 0 in which she tested the boundaries between performer and audience. She laid out 72 different objects on a table in front of her and told the audience they could do whatever they wanted with them while she remained motionless. The objects included, but were not limited to, a knife, a gun, a rose and a feather boa. The audience started out timid, but they soon became violent. One person held a gun up to Abramovic’s head while another took it away. This experiment showed that while not all people are bad, many are, and they were not even put in a high stress environment or pressured to act a certain way.
One in 100 children is a psychopath, but whether they are born that way or whether events have shaped them to become the way they are is the question. Are children born with a clean slate? Some children, unfortunately, are subject to a difficult upbringing. Whether or not they move past this unscathed affects their disposition in later life. Do their experiences shape the way they fit into the human nature spectrum? If a child grows into an adolescent that is already damaged by this time in their life, the trials faced as a teen will most likely worsen their mental state. This can be explained by Laurence Steinburg, a psychologist at Temple University. His study revolved around the prefrontal cortex of the brain; right before adolescence it undergoes a burst of activity. Any change a teenager is exposed to during this time will make more of an impression. Looking at the horrible instances of school shootings and adolescent violence, one has to wonder. Does the harsh, shaming culture of high school intensify a psychopathic tendency?
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ReplyDeleteShreema Chandrasekar
ReplyDeleteEnglish 3B
Where we go from here
High school, in my opinion, is the bridge leading to adulthood. The first day of ninth grade is very nerve-wracking, since you don’t know where you’re going, how your classmates are going to treat you, if your teachers are friendly, etc. There’s a lot of pressure on your shoulders, because from then on, every single day for the next four years matters. Moving up from 8th grade is a big step; the school is bigger, and the classes are harder. Nobody is going to treat you as a child, because you really aren't anymore. There are a lot of changes that happen, and you only have a summer to get ready.
Everybody is self-conscious in high school, because they are afraid of what people are going to think. Being stuck with people you have to see every day can and will make you very conscious of their actions and disapprovals towards you. “It’s not adolescence that’s the problem,” insists Faris. “It’s the giant box of strangers.” (WYTNLHS, 10) Students are trapped, being required to come to school every day, because if they don’t, they risk suspension and other major penalties. All high school students will at some point, go to through personality changes, no matter how much they want to resist change. And that may be their own choice, or most likely because they want to fit in, be included in anything, everything. I don’t think anything as drastic as completely different personalities occurs, but nobody leaves unscathed. Everything is a competition, and we all have to fight and claw our way to the top, whatever that may be.
In 30 years, none of what happens now will matter. There will always be problems, but the self-consciousness and the little insecurities we have now will now longer matter as there will be bigger issues to deal with. I think that everybody knows that, but even if you are brave enough to take a step into the unknown territory, there will always be the terror of messing up. If something you do doesn’t fit the status quo, it will stay there, just circulating around the school for a long time. After all, you have to see these people for the next four years, so anything and everything you do is marked down, and you can’t escape it.
The only thing high school is meant to do is prepare us academically for higher education, and then have us ready for the rest of our lives. But now in today’s times, students care much more about the social aspects of school then the main reason that they come for. Sure, school also teaches us many other important life skills, like how to make friends, how to be social, and how to be confident, but people usually have to go through the tough parts to learn that lesson. And those tough parts can be brutal, but that’s what you have to get through to be ready for the rest of your life.