ADOLECENT PAPER 1

Adolescent Paper Ryan Monette Wayne State University

ADOLECENT PAPER 2

Introduction

Adolescence is a point in a persons life starting around age 10-12 and ending around the age of 21. During the period of adolescence, a person can go through many changes. These changes can be pleasant, unpleasant and everywhere in between. The purpose of this paper is to discuss significant issues and life events that I experienced during adolescence. This paper will take a look at my adolescence through three different dimensions: the biological dimension, the psychological dimension and the social dimension.

The Biological Dimension

During my adolescence I was never faced with a lot of challenges that normal teenagers had to face. I had started puberty right around the same time as most of my other friends, but was not faced with the some of the same challenges. Acne occurs in more than 80% of adolescents (J.J. Russell, 2000). Yet, all throughout each stage of adolescence, I never developed bad acne like many of my friends did. I could remember

talking to them about it and how it affected their level of self confidence. In 2007, Science Daily found acne to be more prevalent in adolescents with higher amounts of ADOLECENT PAPER 3

stress. This could be part of the reason for me not having bad acne. As a teenager I was never face with much stress around the house and in school. One of the issues that I did have in my biological development was that I was a little behind in my growth of height and weight. I would consider myself to of been a late bloomer. Throughout middle school I had tried to keep up with my peers and play on some of the sports teams through our school. But no matter how hard I would try there were always kids who were bigger and stronger than I was. This same problem continued with me through the middle and some of the late stages of my adolescence. It was not until I was 21 that I caught up to my friends as far as my physical growth. I think that not being as good at sports as many of my peers set me apart from them a little bit and that made it harder for me to bond with them.

Psychological Dimension

All throughout your childhood you brain is developing new cognitive abilities. This is also true during adolescence. During you adolescence you develop hypothetical-deductive reasoning. According to Piaget, this is when you begin to understand abstract types of ideas and try to logically reason about them. During my

early years of adolescence I had trouble fitting in with my peers. As I discussed before I was smaller than most of the guys my age. This made it harder for me to get along which left me with a very poor self-image of myself. While having such a poor self-concept I decided that I ADOLECENT PAPER 4

wouldnt want to fit in with all of the kids who were shutting me out of their lives, so I started to change the way I behaved to fit in with another group. Although it started in the early years of my adolescence, this was challenging for me throughout all of the stages of my adolescence. Once I got into high school things were a little easier but most of the same people from middle school were there which meant problem with identity status still existed. According to James Marcia, the stage of identity status I was in at the time was stage of identity moratorium. He describes it as the status in which the adolescent is actively exploring values, ideologies and beliefs. Because there were a larger variety of people in high school I was able to find friends who liked me for who I was and I was able to make it through that problem. The low self-esteem; however, did not go away. Having such a poor self-concept led me to pursue less fulfilling things and affected my schoolwork. I think that this still has an effect on me today. Every one and a while I find myself with a poor self-image. Because of my past experience I find myself pulling away from potential new acquaintances and friends. This does not occur as much as it did back during my adolescence, but it still occasionally happens.

The Social Dimension

In my adolescent experience, I think that the social dimension of it was very tied in with the biological and the psychological dimensions. The part of the social dimension I think that I had the biggest problem with was my relationship with my parents. Between ADOLECENT PAPER 5

me and my parents there was always a constant struggle of control versus autonomy. Conflicts between parent and adolescent arise about two times weekly-- twice as often as for a typical married couple (Montemayer, 1983). My problems were worse than the twice a week average. It seemed that every day me and my parents had something to butt heads over. Not only did this cause some stress in my life but it put a lot of stress on the family as a whole and set us back as a family. With new groups of friends came other challenges. In high school I fell victim to a lot of peer pressure. I would find myself doing participating in deviant behaviors I knew I wouldnt have been doing if I had been on my own or with different people at the time. One of the deviant behaviors I participated in was smoking marijuana. With my parents telling me I should stay away from it and my friends telling me to try it I decided I wanted to try it out. I thought that at the time I had nothing to lose if people were going to accept me for it. The biggest problem in the social dimension that I encountered during my adolescence was bullying. Throughout the majority of my early adolescence I was the target of a lot of bullying. I remember feeling so bad about myself that I would just go

home after school and not want to do anything. By the ninth grade I was able to push away most of the bullying that was directed my way, but it still existed in different ways at the high school level. I think that this has a big effect on my today. If I were to see or hear of someone being bullied I would make it known that that is unacceptable behavior and I would really be able to relate to the child being bullied in that situation. ADOLECENT PAPER 6

Summation and Conclusion

Adolescence is a period in a persons life that usually starts around age 10-12 and ends somewhere around the age of 21. During the period of adolescence, a person can go through many changes. These changes can be pleasant, unpleasant and everywhere in between. These changes can have a great effect on how one deal with his day to day life and even future events. Taking a look at the biological, the psychological, and the social dimensions of my adolescence I am able to see it in a whole different light than I was able to see while I was living it.

ADOLECENT PAPER 7

Bibliography:

Ashford, J. B., & LeCroy, C. W. (2010). Human behavior in the social environment: A multidimensional perspective . (5th ed.). Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning.