Adolescents

As much as I'm learning in my Psych 21A class, I'm just hoping whatever it being taught is valid for the majority of teenagers today. The stages and levels one supposedly goes through in their lifetime to have a better understanding of the world around them. Part of the theories seem too good to be true because everything is uniform and expected to happen in these age ranges. My professor quickly adds that those are estimates. Estimates that cannot work out for everyone and that we all work on different speeds. Let's just hope it works out in the end that we eventually become rational.

You're only 17, being 18 doesn't grant you magic powers. You'll think once the title of being legal is wonderful, but you can't really do much at that age. Just because you're ready to get out there and declare yourself independent, you're going to want to crawl back to Mommy and Daddy. No matter how tough you think you are.

You say you'll pay for college and get yourself two jobs. Wow, not just one job, but two jobs! Under your breath your murmur that it will be for over the summer and maybe part of the school year. Not even full time, but part time jobs will get you anything! Everything that a person needs you declare. The jobs are where, I ask you? You laugh and say it's easy to find jobs, if any mall job takes you, you'll do two of them. How naive you really are. Only 17 and you think you're the most clever person in the entire universe.

All that money you're making will definitely just go for the college funds. Each class is a unit, right? And maybe most of the stuff we need to read will be online? I should have enough to pay for rent, yeah definitely. You forgot the basic survival needs, food and water?

And living without parents will be a cinch, you yell, you're just going to live with a friend's grandmother. As if the world will bow to your needs and you don't need to reciprocate. All your belongings will be folded neatly into a small suitcase and that will be your closet for the rest of your life until you can afford to get a real one.

What about getting around, I challenge. Whatever, you scoff, if I work hard enough, I can get around on my own. It's funny because you've never driven in your life and you have no idea how to take the bus. The only thing you know how to do is dial with the phone that your boyfriend got you and call him to haul your ass to wherever you probably need to be. None of your other friends can drive, everyone else has permits but you. Not so independent when you need someone else to take you around, even if isn't Mommy or Daddy.

I have dreams, I have hopes! If I pray with all my heart and hope to be invincible, I will make it on my own. That you won't, my dear. That you won't. Screw Mom and Dad, I'm not quite fond of them anymore. I was probably heavily abused as a child because they don't really love me as much as my other siblings. They were never parents to me and certainly will not support me in anyway. They don't care, so I won't care. I'll just make it on my own without anyone's help. Not if you won't let anyone else in on your little secret mission, you won't get anywhere.