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 & focus strategy. As you write, make sure you refer back to specific details from the article to help you develop ideas and connections 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 & focus strategy. As you write, make sure you refer back to specific details from the article to help you develop ideas and connections 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 (circa one page typed).
Does High School Prepare Students For The Future Or Cause The Future?
ReplyDeleteIn the middle of page ten in the article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School”, Jennifer Senior writes a very interesting question: does high school well prepare people for adult social life, or is it to blame for it.
The years of high school are the years that people usually separate into groups based on how they think they identify. These groups are easily comparable to those represented in “The Breakfast Club”, as explained in the article. There are jocks, princesses, brains, basket-cases, and criminals in all schools.
I was not surprised to learn that many people view life after high school very similar to their lives in school. Robert Faris explains on page 9 of the article that if you put a bunch of random adults with few common bonds into a giant building, they would break apart into groups just like the ones in high school, and just like the ones shown in "The Breakfast Club. They would separate based on common interest. Faris says that this is seen in all sorts of gatherings of different people, like book clubs, or nursing homes. But do these people do this because that’s what they did as teens, in high school? Or is that just the way life is and has always been as an adult?
I wondered while reading which side of this argument I would support if i had to. I’ve decided that people will always judge others, and have preferences of who they spend the most time with. But high school must have something to do with it. Because of how the high school social structure is, teens gets comfortable being able to identify with a certain group of people, and eventually, when you leave high school, if you feel like you aren’t a part of something, you probably feel like you don’t belong anywhere. And that creates more social groups in the real world, because nobody wants to feel like they don't belong.
Eternal Shame
ReplyDeleteThe shame had been bottled up inside for almost half a century, carried around for most of his life. Many individuals amass tons of shame throughout their high school years. This shame then stays with them throughout the course of their whole life, making shame, eternal.
As I was reading the article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior, I came across an interesting piece of information; the shame that is felt during high school, will always be with you. I then realized that since the shame felt in high school never goes away, you truly never do, leave high school.
Why though, do so many people experience shame during their high school years? Well it’s because as Brené Brown says, high school is “the metaphor for shame,” (qtd. in Senior 7). Kids deal with shame everyday just walking down the halls. Shame can come from “unwanted identities and labels,” says Brené Brown (qtd. in Senior 7). From being shoved up against lockers, feeling unworthy of acceptance, or even feeling unlovable. Shame will then isolate people and lead them to run away, keep secrets, hide, please others, or even use shame and aggression to try and fight it.
Not only do the ones that got bullied feel shame, but it even extends to the bullies as well. The feeling of shame from the bullies comes from the horrible actions that they took when they were kids. They too have carried the weight of their shame. They have coped with it, but could never forget their “awful… misdeeds as boys” (Senior 8).
Even parents would often re-experience the shame they felt as high schoolers when their own kids get the same kind of rejection that they had. This rejection could be from not being allowed to sit at the cool table, not getting asked out, or even getting stood up.
I wondered how shame could be so strong that it would stay with someone their whole life? What was so special about shame that even as a grown up, the shame from their high school years would come back to haunt them?
I realized that throughout their whole lives, people have tried to endure and forget about their shame, but shame is everlasting, so it has stayed with them forever. Shame will always find a way to resurface and bring back the horrid memories of childhood.
Shame is a very deep emotion that takes root in our identity. As teenagers, we have realized what is socially acceptable or unacceptable. If someone does something socially unacceptable, they would feel shame and probably be shamed. That shame then becomes a part of us. Gnawing at us to not make the same mistake again. However, even if what was done was forgiven or forgotten by others, we would still know what happened, and the shame of that situation would never go away. Truly making shame, eternal.
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ReplyDeleteThe author of Why You Never Truly Leave High School brings up a very interesting topic. Jennifer Senior shares one of the most interesting things about teenage adolescence is the developing prefrontal cortex.
ReplyDeleteThe prefrontal cortex is not only a really long and hard word to say, but it is a very intricate part of the brain that starts to develop in early adolescence. It is this part of the brain (including a rush of dopamine) that gives young adolescence the ability to form a character, or as the author puts it, an identity. That is why teenagers are often known to exaggerate. However, teenagers don’t know that they’re exaggerating. That’s actually how they view the world. What is genuine for them may not be real for anyone else, and is more fierce than ever before.
Now, we all know those celebrities, or that one family member that always brings drama and gossip to the table. Adults have all grown past their adolescent stage, so their prefrontal cortex should have developed by then, correct? Did those “drama queen” adults just never develop correctly? Do they still feel very intense all of the time? Or maybe those adults just have a large amount of dopamine in the brain, so they’re still developing as a person. My aunt had two divorces in her life, and would literally pay people to gossip. If people like her have a lot of dopamine in their brains, then it would make sense that those people may also have relationship problems. Dopamine is one of the chemicals that produces the feeling of love, so it’s very possible people who don’t develop correctly are very aggressive when it comes to relationships. The author is very vague and general, and her research assumes everyone goes through this stage at the same time, but it may be different depending on the person.
Because of the growth you undergo in your adolescence, your memories and feelings are clearer than ever before. Jennifer Senior, the author of Why You Truly Never Leave High School, is very thorough, and explains some of the mysteries of humanity. High school is not easy, but it’s a truly unforgettable experience.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, Why You Truly Never Leave High School by Jennifer Senior, many points were expressed explaining that the decisions, positions and choices made in high school are destined to follow you for the rest of your life. I feel that there is some truth to these statements; however, some are more far fetched.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that it is highly likely that the music a person chooses to listen to in high school is the the type of music that they will be listening to their whole lives, as stated in the research of Steinberg. Many people develop their appreciation of music or even to begin to play in high school.
I would also agree young people of this century spend more time with each other than with adults. Children do not leave school to work the farm or work in factories. They spend 9 months of the year with adolescence. Because of this close proximity, high school students tend to categorize other students by appearance, clothing and athletic ability and develop a social class system. However I do not believe that older people have the same attitudes and personalities that they did in high school.
As people age they get wiser and less superficial about whom they choose as friends. People are also growing and changing all the time therefore it is very hard to believe that just because a female was not “pretty” in high school they are less likely to find a husband when they are older as suggested by Robert Crosnoe. The physical appearance that you have in high school can drastically change. “Based on a sample of thousands of white men in the U.S. and Britain, that it wasn’t adult height that seemed to affect their subjects’ wages; it was their height at 16.” This was a study that a group of economist in 2004 discovered about height in high school compared to the salary one makes when they are older, nonetheless the study was performed in a very discreet population of a relatively small number and can not be generally applied to people of different race and gender. It is very difficult to see a connection to the height of a high school male and the amount of money they will make later on in life when they have all matured, gone to separate colleges and taken different career paths.
Overall I feel it is important to recognize that who you are in high school does not define the person you will be for the rest of your life. We are all growing and changing with our experiences.
Jennifer Senior’s article “Why You Never Truly Leave High School” led me to think about the possible cause of high rates of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. Mental disorders are part genetic, but they’re also largely environmental. Often times the disorders go unnoticed because the blame is put on the person suffering rather than the life that surrounds them; the toxic atmosphere that builds up with competition within a high school society breaks down a person, and the person is the one who is “unfit for life.”
ReplyDeleteB. J. Casey, the neuroscientist that Senior quotes in her article, explains that an adolescent’s brain has more dopamine activity than at any other time in a lifespan, meaning that the brain experiences things more intensely. Brené Brown, another researcher that Senior talks about, explains how high school is the metaphor for shame. High school comes with many issues such as bullying, pressure on body image, academic and athletic pressure; some schools focus so much on quantitative data such as test scores and number of extracurriculars that it breeds this toxic air of what it means to be successful. By not living up to these “standards of success”, the person may feel shame. This “global, crippling sensation” (Senior, 7) isolates the person, unlike guilt, which might be didactic, and makes them “feel unworthy of acceptance and fellowship.” (Senior, 7)
By combining these two scientists’ findings, it is very possible that this shame and unworthiness may be amplified many times for the adolescent, due to adolescent brain chemistry, and plant that feeling into their brain’s memory. And when something that alludes back to a scarring or shameful event is mentioned to this person, it becomes a trigger that sends the person down into a mental breakdown, similarly illustrated by anxiety in mice when subject to the triggering neutral color in Casey’s study.
Quite ironically, the place that kids are sent to for education and real life preparedness end up scarring them for life and damage their mental health significantly, which aids only in creating social boundaries, trust issues, and make life much harder.
Forgot the title:
DeleteWhy High School in America is Toxic
Writing from the Standpoint of High School Clichés or perhaps Outdated Views
ReplyDelete+ Contradiction in Claims Concerning Self Esteem and Princesses/Brains
Though I found the article in large parts accurate and extremely interesting, the author does use the umbrella terms and categories for high school social divisions oftentimes found in social media, and cites several studies that are based in these very same divisions. Perhaps it is because Niskayuna is an inaccurate representation of the American high school, or because my own personal views are quite skewed, but I couldn't help but think that these categories (jock, princesses, brains, etc.) have lost some of their stigmatism and weight.
Of course, these labels are still easily recognizable in Niskayuna students. But there rarely exists a clique that does not in some way mesh with another group of individuals or friends, and many times the people forming these friendships do not occupy the same categories. The stigmatization of certain interests such as academic achievement and, as the article states, instrument playing, is also far less prevalent. Again, I may just not be observing things correctly.
Several teachers in the PC lab were discussing this last year during down time in class. One being a former student, and others simply having taught here over a long period of time, they all remarked that in past generations, the distinctions in jocks, populars, etc. were much more pronounced. The general consensus was that more and more, social groups and individuals were a bit more vague in classification, and social groups were definitely fluid. If this is truly the case, then much of what the article says about high school labels affecting later life could be slightly less accurate concerning later generations.
As for the contradiction: earlier in the article, the author states that people with high self esteem in adolescence tend to carry that self esteem into adulthood, relating it to various factors including body image and using the quote "The difference between you and me is that I knew in high school I was beautiful.". The article later states that the "princesses", or those who were beautiful and popular in high school, have lower self esteem than those girls who had possessed low self esteem due to their status as "brains" in adolescence.
The article does address the possible existence of personal self esteem due to academic achievement, but does in no way insinuate that this quiet "fuel" eclipsed the outright high self esteem of "princesses". Taken in a certain context, these two claims are contradictory.
Why High School May Not Be as Influential in the Future
ReplyDeleteIt used to be that high school was the main source of social interaction for adolescents. However, adolescents can now communicate with other people online, opening up another social situation where they can figure out their role in society.
Jennifer Senior’s article “Why You Never Truly Leave High School” states that before the Great Depression, most American adolescents did not go to high school. Instead, they worked alongside adults and along the way, learned how to interact and socialize with other people (Senior 5). Once it became the norm for adolescents to go to high school, they spent a crucial identity-forming period of their life surrounded by other unstable adolescents. The twisted high school social culture often had a lasting influence on the rest of their lives.
But now, in our increasingly interconnected world, I wonder if the ability to interact with other people online in a non-high school situation will change how much of an impact high school leaves on future generations.
Labels acquired during high school define and confine you, and are unfairly based upon superficial things like looks, clothes, and popularity (Senior 6). Speaking with people online gives adolescents the option to avoid being judged in this way. Instead, they can show their inner personality, the one that they may hide in real life. Because the internet provides a shield of anonymity, expressing yourself is not as intimidating. Being accepted based on their true personality, rather than an edited version, can give adolescents a confidence boost that they would not have had otherwise.
The article states that researcher Brené Brown says shame isolates people and makes them feel “unworthy of acceptance and fellowship” (Senior 7). I completely agree with this. However, I think that these feelings can be lessened. If an adolescent is able to express their inner personality and be liked for who they really are, they will feel accepted. The easiest place to do this is online.
I doubt high school will ever change, but I do believe that it will have a smaller influence on future generations. High school is no longer the only social sphere for adolescents. The internet provides a possible safe haven where adolescents can find the acceptance they so desperately seek. Gaining this acceptance earlier in life, instead of waiting for adulthood, may result in a post-adolescence life with less of a lasting impact left by high school.
High School, the Ultimate Stamp
ReplyDeleteJennifer Senior, the author of the very intriguing article, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School”, points out some very key ideas about human adolescence and the effects it has on one’s future. I believe the main idea of this article is how high school puts a “stamp” on everybody that follows them for the rest of their life.
During adolescence the brain contains the most dopamine activity which leads to a more intense feeling of everything a person does during these years. These years are occupied by something everybody hates and loves, school. School is either the most enjoyable adventure or the worst experience of a person’s life. Before the Great Depression, a vast number of adolescents didn’t graduate high school but instead they performed adult activities such as farming, helping run the home, or working in factories. While they did these tasks, they were alongside adults which allowed them to be molded by their elders instead of being isolated.
However, so much has changed since the Great Depression. Adolescents began graduating high school and college. The absence of an elderly role model caused the forming of groups and societies within the adolescent population. I believe this occurs because kids want to feel accepted and since their parents aren’t with them in school, they believe making friends substitutes this feeling.
Of course, not every single adolescent will be accepted by a group. The adolescents that are rejected by these groups are affected by an emotion that haunts them for the rest of their lives, shame. Shame is a crippling sensation that make those affected by it feel isolated. We all try to navigate this sensation everyday in school by developing ways to avoid it whether it be hiding it, trying to please people, or use shame to fight shame. How ever we try to avoid it carries on with us for life.
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ReplyDeleteWhy you never truly leave high school reply
ReplyDeleteMarcus Manzoni
The first point of the article that I would like to talk about is the statement made about how what we are exposed to socially during puberty can make such a lasting effect, to the point where it determines what your adult perception of people are and how you react around them. This leads into my second point, the statement about how our current high school system could be socially harmful to teens.
It is said on page seven that the part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex, controls our ability to reason, and controls our impulse to situations and during puberty it “undergoes a huge flurry of activity giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of self”. Later in the article it goes on to say that adolescent brains has more dopamine activity going on during that time than any other meaning that everything a teen experiences is a little more dramatic and that experiencing it at this age will carry into our adulthood lives (proved with mice test at bottom of pg 7). After reading this I felt a little upset, for the reason that some of the falsely, imagined social hierarchies and standards are being implanted into our minds and will be referenced to the rest of our lives. We as a society push to eliminate bullying, discrimination and racism but how are we every going to accomplish this goal if people's view on life is based of that of a teen version of their younger self. If something tragic happened to you during these years, that one event could possibly alter your true potential in life.
As for the second topic about this statement from the article- “Most american high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy place to send adolescents”. Personally after reading the previous part I have to totally agree with what there are saying. If teens are trying to find their identity in a place where many people try and act different than who they truly are it could be a confusing task to complete. Like in the beginning of the article about Kenji, and how it described, that in his school there were the stereotypical cool kids, in reality most of them are not truly cool at all, but they appear that way because of the teens social structure and this is what teens pick up on and believe in what I now know could possibly believe the rest of their lives. This leads me to saying should there be a change in the modern schooling system or in society in general. Could today's stereotypes and misconceptions be delaying our process to a happier, unified world? This has been shown in current parents as well and how they themselves have high school implanted into there head, and when they hear that their child had a social hardship in school this causes “secondary trauma” according to the article causing them to react in a way where instead of trying to make them feel better sometimes they say I told you so, and I don't think I'm speaking for myself when I say it's happened to everyone.
I believe from now on people should be more conscious of the important things in life and the better in people instead of only caring about self appearance and what they see on the outside of someone passing in the hall or on the street. However even with all the confusion and self insecurity that comes along with highschool I agree that growing up does change people a lot of the times for the better and it all started with high school.
Why the Randomness of High School May Harm and Help Us
ReplyDeleteThroughout Jennifer Senior's article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" several studies and points are brought up about how high school can leave more of an impression of our adult selves then we thought before. The aspect of how high school is divided up especially in it's total randomness left many questions for me.
Beginning on the sixth page of the article, Senior brings up the point that the National Home Eduction Network states on their home page that a good reason to homeschool children is the socialization issue. That a school setting is not an appropriate for acquiring key social skills. And the point is made up that school is a place where the social status hierarchy is first divided up depending on a whole bunch of different factors (sports, how you dress, other special abilities). And not on the main point of school which is the level of academic knowledge you have acquired. Both points bring up very interesting arguments that do make yourself think for a little bit.
The first point about the home schooling brings up a good point that at a home setting with less individuals, it is possible that less endangering experiences to our mindset will occur. However this does come with it's risks as high school is also a place where you really do sort yourself out in a different setting then home. Experiences such as dances, school sports, and clubs all help us find what our passion is and who and what we most fit in with.
The second argument being made is how like the home schooling website points out, school is really just a "large box without any clear, predetermined way of sorting out status". And is left up for the kids within to settle them out for their own. I do believe that as stated above, good experiences can be created within that can really help us out later and life but with this leaves some bad. This grouping of kids in special categories can leave some impacts negatively especially on kids who are bullied, left out, or looked down upon based on simple opinions in one persons view. It also leaves some kids feeling that they are more important than others.
Through all of these arguments however, I believe that their might be some bias from the author on their high school experiences when they were growing up. Niskayuna High School is a very adaptive place and I believe that rather than popularity people have formed their own friend groups and flourished their and then moved on to other groups and made new friends. Through my experiences so far here, I believe that these experiences will positively shape not only myself but others also attending this school.
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ReplyDeleteWhy Social Classes Influence us Everyday
ReplyDeleteIn High Schools all across America and the world, what defines us in the eyes of other students, is what social class we are a part of. As far as first impressions go, it’s among the first things people notice about you. Now, in no way am I saying that the only thing people care about is which social group you are a part of, but it’s what gives people an idea on who we are and what our personality is like. If you’re a Jock, that usually means you like playing sports. If your strength is intelligence, people assume that you’re a good student, and that your grades rarely dip below ninety. So, as the author says in the article, “Why You Never Truly Leave High School,” high school is famous for one thing: how easy it can be to be labeled by different groups and then, “stuck on a shelf.” Labels can potentially stick with someone for the rest of high school, no matter how hard they try to shake it. Only in rare cases, says the author, can a person peel off their label and don a new one. In high school, second chances are rare.
Even after high school, there are still places in the adult world that are governed by a harsh system of labels. The workplace is the most obvious. For example, in high school, if you don’t start off right in a new working environment, you can be stuck between a rock and a hard place for the rest of your career there. Often, the deciding factor in our social statuses for the rest of our lives can be narrowed down to a single moment. This is the moment where we link up with a group of kids and join a social class. It will forever be a part of us, and it will remain in our memories forever, even if we one day shed it. Some take longer to conform to a single group of kids. Others link right away. These are the moments where our persona and reputation is formed… and remains a part of how we navigate our lives.
In any case, it happens to everybody at one point or another; it’s a defining moment for all.
Studies show that kids in high school who are part of perceived “lesser,” social groups, have lower self-esteem and tend to stay within that general group type for the duration of their school years. Unfortunately, many, accept their status and labels, and never seek out new people and groups. Even though people join a group of people at the beginning of a given school year, that doesn’t mean they can’t leave it and join another group of kids. However, many people lack the confidence to talk to others, and that is the one action that condemns us for the rest of our social lives.
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ReplyDeleteImpressionability of the adolescent mind
ReplyDeleteOften times high school students are treated as adults when even though they may act mature the adolescent mind is much different from the adult mind. In some views treating teens as adults may prepare them for their upcoming journey through adulthood. However I feel it allows room for added stress to the already stressful teenage life.
In the article “ Why you truly never leave high school.” Jennifer Senior writes about just how impressionable the adolescent mind truly is. Throughout high school most students experience a great deal of fear and intimidation. Although high school may no longer be about cliches like who's the head of the cheerleading squad. There still is a long list of social standards most students feel the need to live up to. This pressure students often lay upon themselves which creates a constant fear of rejection from the giant social hierarchy of high school.
More and more we are seeing stories about the horrifyingly fast growing rate of teen suicides. And we wonder why….High School has evolved to so much more than what it used to be. Students have taken on new forms of bullying even crueler than before. It's true that nothing ever can be completely wiped from the internet, I believe this to be true for the adolescent mind as well. The trauma that can be caused from just a few comments can set in motion a ripple effect that will stick with the students throughout the rest of their lives. All people are susceptible to experiencing depression and in fact most people do but students are much more prone to it. This is due to the fact that in the years of adolescence the mind is naturally more sensitive causing every experience to be amplified.
High school isn't all bad though, many people may even describe it as the best 4 years of their lives. While others may prefer to try and erase it completely. So really do we ever really leave high school or will the chain of events taking place over those 4 short years mold who we become after graduating?
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhy there might be a very good reason for teenage recklessness
ReplyDeleteWhen reading this article, “Why you never truly leave high school”, I found very interesting the neuroscience parts of the article that talked about why our high school selves stay with us forever. One part specifically piqued my interest and got me moving some ideas around in my head (and here I have to give a nod to my father for helping me formulate these ideas, because discussing it with him helped me come up with these theories), and that was the part where the author says, “the prefrontal cortex hasn’t finished developing… this explains why adolescents are such poor models of self-regulation”. I found this interesting so interesting so I started thinking about, evolutionarily, why this might be the case. I thought about whether this poor self-regulation might serve an evolutionary purpose.
First, I came up with the idea that the fact that this reckless behavior is paired with the higher dopamine activity (which makes everything more intense and more heavily imprinted) might help us learn. If we have exhibit bad behavior while we are more imprintable, it might help us learn what behaviors are acceptable faster. Basically, it might have come about as a way to create a small period of time where we act out and then learn from it, which would allow us to get all of our learning about self control and our trial and error in relation to learning how to act in a society out of the way quickly.
Then, my father brought up the fact that adolescence is when children are supposed to leave the nest and find mates from other gene pools. Long story short, I came to this conclusion: we can’t mate with our sisters and cousins, so our brains become more willing to take risk and live recklessly because this will help us leave the clan to find a less genetically similar mate. To support this idea, it would make sense that this period of poor self-regulation would happen right when we reach sexual maturity were it a mechanism to help us reproduce, because, evolutionarily, we need to mate as much as possible to ensure the greatest chance of our genes surviving. Like many features of our psyche, it is a primitive instinct that was advantageous thousands of years ago but has since become obsolete.
Of all the institutions that our present society has conceived to foster the next generation to prowess, high school is certainly the least beneficial. According to the article by Jennifer Senior, “Why You Never Truly Leave High School,” this system has caused more harm than good in the upcoming generations, and has managed to subject adolescents to obscene amounts of mental pressure at the most vulnerable point in their development.
ReplyDeleteThe article points out that during the adolescent years, key parts of the brain are still under development. The areas of most importance would be the ones concerning identity, including the prefrontal cortex, which, “...governs the ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self-reflect.” There is an increase in activity in these areas of the brain, giving rise to the ability to create an identity for oneself during the teenage years. These impressions made during the developmental stages have a truly lasting impact, and become prime factors in the ways an individual will identify with themselves. At these critical periods of development, most adolescents are subjects to the intense fears and pressures associated with surviving high school. In a study done by B.J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Cornell University, it was found that adolescents have a limited ability to control certain emotions, particularly fear and shame. The study itself implies that since adolescents themselves create their own identities in a fear-inducing climate, they will almost certainly retain it into adulthood.
To get a clearer image of what most of these younger individuals face, it must be understood that they are up against inflexible, prominent social hierarchies that serve and supply aggression. The rewards in these hierarchies are based on the most superficial values, be it looks, clothing, or athletic ability. Additionally, the greater majority of adolescents who are constantly scrutinized by others in high school, are subject to constant shame. To cope with the constant displeasure with themselves, according to a study done by Brene Brown, there are three ways people cope with shame: hiding, people-pleasing, and becoming equally aggressive towards others.
In conclusion, when confronted by this knowledge regarding the development of an adolescent’s identity, I can draw plenty of parallels with my own experience. I don’t think the existing system is anywhere near the best we can give to the generation that will inherit the world. However, I cannot accept that this is what we as a society have amounted to, and I continue to hope the existing and upcoming generations take opportunities fix these faults wherever they can.
Why Do We Care so Much About Strangers?
ReplyDeleteTowards the end of this longer than anticipated reading I found myself intrigued toward a peculiar topic of "Why You Never Truly Leave High School" by Jennifer Senior. As the title proudly states, the question appeared in my mind after reading Robert Faris's idea. That question being why go through all the trouble of appearing nice, making a good impression, and simply caring so much about what strangers think.
Now for coworkers, classmates, and pretty much anyone you will see multiple times a day its nice to show some sort of appearance that show what kind of person you are. That way you can quickly allow a person to get the gist of who you are (although not always accurate) and then hopefully get some small chatter started. Eventually become friends because well, who would want to be stuck in a room for years with awkward silence sneaking overhead.
However for strangers, it doesn't make much sense. Of course, you would not want to act in such a way that is disrespectful or inconsiderate because that boils down to decency and manners. On the other hand overthinking and constantly being worried about your reputation or their thought on you is just plain, not smart. Think of it this way, you're in an elevator with a group of people you will only see once and then something "shameful" happens. Lets say in this case you end up farting in a elevator, you might fell embarrassed and for some down right shame but in reality you shouldn't. These are people that only will see you once and never again but to them your probably referred to as "the guy who farted in the elevator". You might be thinking thats terrible, and for a bit its embarrassing. Try thinking in this way, are you really gonna let a fart in a elevator define you? No, obviously if they had actually talked to you and really got to know you they knew your also another human being with thoughts and feeling about every single thing in the world. Not just some guy who goes around farting in elevators.
I guess in the end a reason why we end up continuing to live in high school is that many people live and continue to keep on labeling so quickly. If society just changed their thought a little and constantly realized that every other human beings share so many experience, emotions, and traumas that we can all let go of those small instances of shame.
Henry Park
Why High School is Still a Good Thing
ReplyDeleteBryan Zhou
The article “Why You Never Truly Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior argues that our experiences in high school stay with us for long after the four years we spend there. Senior then supports her claim using lots of scientific evidence from a neuroscientific standpoint. The studies referenced seem to show that there are a multitude of negative effects that high school has on students, and many of them are long-lasting.
Judging from the evidence provided, Senior makes it seem as though high schools is truly a terrible place, at one point even calling them “sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents” (Senior 5). However, what I feel Senior does not do an adequate job of representing is the positive long-lasting effects of high school, having only dedicated one short paragraph to it. Senior only talks about “losing control of the world around me” (2), and being “plunked into an environment where it’s treacherously easy to be labeled and stuck on a shelf” (6). But in reality, isn’t that really what life is? Even as an adult, you never truly have a grasp on the world around you. Time and space keep moving, no matter how hard you try and resist. You don’t always get to choose who you work or spend time with, and sometimes you may end up needing to deal with judgemental blockheads who you won’t ever be able to satisfy.
In addition to the social aspects, there is also a kind of generational cultural enlightenment that comes in high school. Especially with modern technology that many of us have access to, we have ways to communicate, find things to talk about, and create a bond. For example, over the summer one of my older brother’s friends (she’s ~25) asked me what “on fleek” means. If you ask people in high school right now, most all of them will have a decent idea of what the term means. However if you ask people who have graduated college several years ago what the term means, many will have no idea. Senior actually talks about this, but addresses it in a negative fashion, saying “they (high schoolers) start to generate a culture with independent values and priorities” (Senior 5). She discusses how it can sometimes lead to materialistic values, judging people based on what they wear and how they look. What she fails to take into account, is that we also have the opportunity to refine and correct the mistaken values of prior generations, such as racism and sexism.
I will admit, high school has it’s weak spots. The constant cycle of tests, extracurricular activities, and homework really takes a toll on adolescents. People don’t always feel at home, and can be very uncomfortable at times. But looking past all the short-term roadblocks, I challenge you to think about the person you were when you entered high school as a young naive freshman, and compare that to the confident knowledgeable senior you were leaving. Ask yourself, would I really be a better person without experiencing high school?
Why the high school experience is fueled by social anxiety
ReplyDeleteEmily Meade
When you talk about high school, someone's always gonna be called out or offended. High school is never easy to talk about or easy to understand. Putting testosterone and estrogen filled young men and women together every day to have to fight to become who they are is a recipe for disaster. The worst thing you can do to a blossoming teenager is put them in an environment filled with shame and judgement.
When I first read the article "why you never leave high school" I could immediately connect to the anxiety aspect of the studies that were mentioned. Every day students face a variety of types, both about school work and social situations. Social anxiety is put into high gear, as one test showed; When teenage mice heard a tone they were shocked and even even when the shock when away the tone still filled them with terror upon hearing it. This to me speaks to the fear of public speaking, a horrid (yet necessary) part of high school. When your surrounded by people endlessly judging you, sharing your thoughts and perspectives leaves a person vulnerable. Social anxiety is a seed planted in the mind that your not doing good enough or others won't like you and often makes us teenagers susceptible to suggestions in hopes that they help us to fit in or be cool. It changing the way we want to identify ourselves and only worsening our chances of leaving high school unscathed.
So what do you do when you want to go the party on Saturday and pass your classes. how do you balance school, social life and a gut fear following you around during all of it? When you lay it out, the brain is being strung much to thin on a daily basis, there's almost nothing we can do but increase our efforts and hope it pays off.
Molding Our Future
ReplyDeleteHigh School is a place for education, but when people graduate high school they leave with knowledge on how to deal with life as well. While reading the article by Jennifer Senior, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” she presents interesting ideas on how high school molds you and shapes your future.
High school prepares us for life, we are always connected back to our high school years. How we acted, who we interacted with, what group we identified with, how we saw ourselves. We will always “bear the stripes,” as Senior states. I agree with her because these feelings carry over into the career field and our personal life. As adults, we still interact with people from all different walks of life, who have different beliefs and interests, but we learn to adapt and accept, join or avoid, and collectively live an interconnected life with people who were once considered strangers, just like we had to in high school. We will still handle these situations the same as we did.
How we cope with life situations and how we are able to handle issues can be directly attributed to, as Senior says, certain situations experienced in high school. Even though high school will prepare you for future life situations, I think that high school is to blame for the way we react because you can get easily stuck in the mold. I find this interesting because unknowingly high school shapes your life and how you live, but it also can haunt you because of getting caught in behaving the same as an adolescent and never changing.
High school can be the best years of your life but can also frame your future if you let it. After walking across stage you may think you left high school, but inside, you truly never leave.
ReplyDeleteWhy High School Can Cause Permanent Pain
In the article, "Why You Never Truly Leave High School" by Jennifer Senior, talked about very interesting aspects on the behavior of adolescents in their high school years versus how they are in adulthood. Senior interviewed a woman named Brené Brown who is a researcher at the University of Houston. She focused on how in high school, people can develop unwanted identities or labels that stick with them forever. As an adolescent, your feelings are more prominent, which makes them harder to deal with. One emotion that is very common among high schoolers is shame. Shame makes you feel that you don't deserve anyone's love or companionship, so you're usually isolated. For as long as I've been in high school, I can see some people have a talent for putting a mask on their faces, but others are not as good at hiding how they feel. You can see their pain, and sometimes even feel it. Shame is such a horrible thing to experience because it can prevent you from being yourself and does not allow you to feel free. On page 7 in the article, Brown says there are three different strategies to cope with this pain: "We move away from it, by secret- keeping, by hiding; we move toward it, by people- pleasing; or we move against it, by using shame and aggression to fight shame and aggression." Any strategy we choose, the pain will always still be there and will never leave because we train ourselves to become that way.
Not all emotions are painful because we learn from them. In the article, it said that emotions can be constructive, such as guilt. You learn from guilt because you are in shock of what you’ve done and you tell yourself you are never going to do that again. Everyone in high school has done something they feel guilty about, but they learn from that experience and never repeat the same mistake twice. Adolescents are not the only ones who have felt these deep emotions. People of all ages experience shame and guilt and sadness, it is just more intense in the high school years because your environment and surroundings. This article mentioned very interesting information on the emotions of adolescents, and I believe everyone should be aware of this.
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ReplyDeleteHigh School: A Never Ending Story
ReplyDeleteWhen reading this article I couldn’t help but notice how high school problems never really ended, but just changed into a different “form” in the adult world. Some things acquired in high school never left adults, they lingered and affected how they saw themselves and their interactions with others. One example of how things gained and experienced in high school affected others was shame from bullying. One victim of bullying said that he felt the pain for almost half a century, and only ever forgot once he and his bullies were much older and were able to talk about it.
High school problems may seem like very trivial things, but can actually be very serious ones and/or important for our transition to adulthood. One problem acquired from high school was the development of disorders such as panic and anxiety. Studies have shown that these disorders could be carried into adulthood if no proper techniques or ways were learned in time to prevent them. One study done by Pattwell and Lee showed that most people with fear-based disorders can link the origin of the disorder in adolescence. Problems from high school can be caused by how people see us and our characteristic. Research done by scientists show that how tall we were or how much we weight affected can affect jobs, mental health, and the likelihood of marrying. Because of problems caused in high school some people may have developed shame and a specific way to cope with it. The ways they coped with shame affected how adults dealt with that shame also.
It was interesting to see how the things we experienced in high school affected how we might we be as adults. I never really noticed how some problems that adults in my life have could have been caused by experiences in high school.
Throughout the article “Why you never truly leave high school” by Jennifer Senior, I found that the time spent in high school is not only used to learn about school subjects such as English, Math and Science, but is also used to learn how to cope and deal with all sorts of emotions and situations such as embarrassment, rejection, maintaining friendships, and finding who you are as a person. Throughout your time as a teenager, it is better to go through the possible pain that can come from some of these situations then, so that when you go into the “real world”, chances are you will know how to deal with the situation. However, the author brought up an interesting point. Although learning how to deal with emotions is very important, it is also important to learn how to communicate with those around you. Students nowadays do not interact with a very wide range of ages. In fact most “teenagers today spend just 16 hours per week interacting with adults and 60 with their coherent” (Senior 5). In high school, the ages often times range from around fourteen to eighteen or nineteen years of age, where as in the “real world” the ages range from zero to one hundred plus years. It is important to be able to communicate with all the age groups because when you are at a work place in the future, you will have to interact with a boss or with people who are younger and older than you. There are different ways you should communicate with each of the age groups and it is important you have practice using a variety of techniques. I found that throughout this writing, Jennifer was trying to show the audience that the high school years are not only used for learning about school subjects but are also for learning about coping with emotions and learning how to communicate with those around you.
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ReplyDeleteHow we let others create our self image
ReplyDeleteIn Jennifer Senior’s article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School", one topic was brought up that intrigued me very much. The idea that your self image from your high school years is very adhesive.
It may be called “self” image, but in reality it is not. It’s just a form of how we get labeled, and this can cause us to feel inferior to others . On page 6 in the last paragraph, Stone said, “They have the least control; at the time they’re most sensitive to the impressions of others, they’re plunked into an environment where it’s treacherously easy to be labeled and stuck on a shelf.” During our high school experience, we value the opinions of others because we use them to find a spot for us in the so called “stranger box”. We let others label us, and we shouldn’t, because eventually we will just identify ourselves with those undesired labels. On page 8 in the third paragraph, Stone mentions a survey in which high school students were asked what category they mostly identified themselves in. Kids who were identified as druggies, normals, and jocks for example, tended to see themselves the same way.
Self image is very important in high school because the one we create during those 4 years, most likely we will carry out for the rest of our lives or it will end up being the basis for it. On page 11, Stone talks about a paper which discussed how male jocks still had the highest self-esteem after high school. It also discussed how princesses were still relying on luck and looks and public opinion to carry them through, just as they had at 16. They’d learned passivity, and it’d stuck.
Ultimately, self image from high school is adhesive and most of the time it’s not good. It limits our abilities and makes us feel incapable or unworthy. It’s something we depend on later in life. We rely on it to find our capability. It’s what we view ourselves as out of high school and after all the shame and pain related to its experiences. It’s something we create from others image of us and it sticks. As we get older and the opinion of others seem to matter less and less, we can fix it. View ourselves as what we would have viewed, without the opinion of our peers. Considering, those opinions are brought to us at an age we tend to remember things from, some of those opinions will always affect us and our image. So, I guess, in a way, we never truly do leave high school.
Fear: Permanent?
ReplyDelete“Why You Truly Never Leave High School” by Jennifer Senior was an extremely captivating article with many intriguing concepts, however I found one area of the article to be far more interesting than the rest. Although it may not have been the main point of the article, but the section in which Jennifer senior went into detail about the extent to which our personality, identity, and feelings are affected by high school.
I had never really thought too in depth about how my actions now affect my future, well past grades that is, which isn’t uncommon among high schoolers as most of us are focused on going to a good college. However, what i’m referring to is the section about fear and paired association. As was stated in the article, the time when you’re in high school is the exact time when an identity for yourself is being built and your mind is very susceptible to influence due to the high intensity of all of your feelings. The one that had me most interested was fear. The article stated an experiment involving adolescent mice and adult, child, and adolescent humans. They found that when pairing something such as a color with something that induced some kind of fear such as a bad sound, and then showing the color again, the adults and children were able to disassociate the two, however the adolescents were not. So no big deal, eventually people get over fear. but what i found to be the really scary part was the results the experiment yielded when the mice got older (adult). The mice had the exact same reaction as they did when the experiment was performed. They were just as afraid. What I had thought of was, does it work the same with humans. Are we more susceptible to fear and trauma as adolescents. Could a bad association be implanted in our brains for the rest of our lives? are we more susceptible to emotional scars during adolescence? The experiment suggests to say, so but there's limited research and I definitely think that researching more about this topic would be interesting.
Now this is where my train of thought got to be far fetched. Theoretically, assuming that the research and experiment were accurate adolescents could be brainwashed. They could be forced to do someone's bidding with ease, whether that be a dictator or the army or anything similar. Adolescents could be conditioned for life. its pretty scary that this might be possible, however until someone insane enough to actually utilize this to their advantage we are all safe and free to focus on positive associations during our adolescence.
As weird as this topic and writing style was, that's the freedom of a blog, and I have to say I thought it was a nice change of pace from “suit and tie” essays with no personal pronouns. I really hope that we get more blog assignments in the future. I actually had a lot of fun with this one.
Adolescence- Stage Five of the Lifelong Crisis
ReplyDeleteAs humans, we spend every hour of every day of our lives constantly developing our
personalities. According to the eight-stage model outlined by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, we start our lives as infants (year one) dealing with the issue of trust versus mistrust; the third stage, preschool (3-6 years), deals with competence versus inferiority; the fourth stage is elementary school (years 6-puberty), where we combat competence versus inferiority, and when we reach the teen years and into our twenties, we struggle with identity versus role confusion.
In Jennifer Senior's article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School," on page six, she talks about how "though adolescents may want nothing more than to be able to define themselves, ... high school is one of the hardest places to do it." Although I may not agree with her perspective throughout the article, I assent to this statement. Identity is defined by a person's sense of self. When a person is in their adolescent years, they are in one of the most volatile periods in their life in terms of the development their personality. By being in an environment that is so quick to label a person or a group of people, no matter how accurate the label, the person's or people's ability to have a solid idea of their identity is hugely compromised. By labeling people so cursorily and shallowly, we group people together by what we see them as versus what they see themselves as, making them envision and act as who they are supposed to be in order to please others. These "groups" all have certain stigmas and hallmarks, and even though someone might not want to be a part of a specific group, they would rather be picked on and called something they're not than to be alone and without the security of belonging to a group.
This pressure that people our age feel to conform to other people's ideals conflicts with our need to stand out as individuals with distinct identities different to the outward identities that we are inadvertently given by our peers. I feel that while this practice may not be healthy for our social well-beings now or in the future, it is unavoidable and inevitable in any situation, regardless of what aged people we interact with on a daily basis, and where we do so.
Why the High School Structure is Still Useful
ReplyDeleteWhile I do believe that Jennifer Senior’s article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School” is an interesting and engaging article, I also believe that it paints high school in too much of a negative light. The high school “structure” (having random individuals come together) helps us prepare for future stages of life, and lets us know what to expect when we become adults.
When we do eventually graduate from school, we will still have the same system surrounding us. Let’s say that somebody enters a typical workplace. It is the same environment as the one from high school, except illustrated a bit more clearly. In school, everyone there is an unknown person that is grouped in one place for a purpose, which is to gain an education. Eventually, there is a type of unspoken hierarchy, in which people like “Jocks” or “Brains” are at the top, and that people like “Weirdoes” are considered lower. In the workplace, people are gathered in the same place sharing a goal, which is to earn money. The hierarchy is more clearly shown, as there will officially be people “above you”, who hold more power than you, and therefore higher in the hierarchy than you. Most likely, you will make friends and enemies there, just like in school. This structure can be applied to most life situations as well.
If one cannot learn to live with this system, then they are put at a disadvantage in this world. Let’s use the workplace example again: if you never learned how to integrate yourself within the structure, you are almost automatically put in a low position of power, and would likely not be successful at this job. The article mentions that there are a few characteristics which are beneficial to have, when Senior mentions that aggression would likely be rewarded in a high school-like situation (Senior 6). Without learning this in high school, you are already at a disadvantage compared to others that could learn it.
With the current way high school is, it closely (but not completely) emulates many situations we will face when we become adults. Those that can thrive in a high school environment could most likely thrive at most other situations in this world as well. Therefore, I believe that this structure helps prepare us for what we will experience in the future, which in turn will help us succeed later in life.
ReplyDeleteWhy high school may never end... (Tyler Barhydt)
While reading Jennifer Senior's article "Why You Truly Never Leave High School", I was intrigued right from the start. The article started off with the usage of slang commonly heard throughout stereotypical high schools all around the country. In high school, the main thing that is on almost everyone’s minds is their social ranking in the school. Everyone is put into their own particular social group and from there is given a rank from least to most popular. Typically, if you are a someone who is overly obsessive with school work and has little to no interest in spending time with friends inside or or out of school, you are put into the “nerd” or “geek” category. If you are someone who cares less for school work and more so for the enhancement of their own social rank or popularity throughout the school, you could be categorized as a “jock” or the “in crowd”. However the highest social rank that you can achieve in high school really doesn’t have a name. This ranking describes a person as smart or intelligent, dedicated to their studies, while maintaining this high educational status, can also maintain a thriving social life. Not a social life with one group, but throughout all groups because this person can get along with almost everybody that they encounter. In high school, these social rankings seem to describe a person in every way and people tend to think that their status will stick with them forever. However, that may not be the case.
In high school, Kenji would be considered a nerd. While every person has their own personal view of the school's population, Kenji could almost unanimously be labeled as a nerd throughout the high school. He is the text-book definition of a stereotypical nerd. People that are in sports such as football would never dream of ever associating with people like Kenji because they would be afraid that it would “hurt their social status”. Keep in mind that this is all completely relative and in no way is this a generalization for people on the football team or anyone else in high school, it is merely a way to prove a point. The article bluntly takes into account the awkward tension between the football players at the party and Kenji due to the extreme difference in their past social rankings. After twenty five years, one may assume that these social rankings have completely dissipated because everyone at that point would be an adult and could be mature with people no matter their past. However, it was clearly represented that there was tension between the football player and Kenji. The only difference however, was that at this point, Kenji had become a successful, handsome man who had grown confidence and social skills. Kenji insisted on going to the party so that he could see what all the fuss has always been about. After the party, Kenji came to the conclusion that there wasn’t really anything special about the parties with the popular people and that they were completely over hyped purely due to the attendees social rankings.
High school is a place where people are silently judged and most people don’t make an effort to change what people think about them. People at a lower social ranking, they feel powerless and can’t imagine the possibility of people having a positive notion of them. While people at higher social rankings find it useless to change the opinions of the people with a lower status because they have already achieved “greatness”. The truth is, as people grow older, the tension between people with different social statuses will most likely stay the same. However, they also learn that these “rankings” give the person no real power in the long run and that everyone is really part of one big rank together. The rank of mortality. High school may never leave, but as you grow older, it will change.
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