By Saktisri Gowrishankar, Staff Reporter
As a kid, I always thought being a teenager would be a lot of driving with the windows down at night, sneaking out and loud laughter. Coming-of-age movies taught me to see it as an end-all, be-all. Entering high school, I thought, “This is when everything clicks.”
Those movies have always made me pine for something. The idea of finding a place to belong and self discovery speaks to everyone. I’m still waiting for my moment. I’m 17 now, and I don’t feel like it. There’s a part of me that wants to be a kid again, and there’s a part of me that wants to get this all over with and grow up already. It’s an awkward liminal space — on the cusp of something new but still digging your heels into the softness of before.
We’ve all been fed this narrative that adolescence is a one-of-a kind experience, one that you’ll miss for a lifetime. Movies like “The Breakfast Club” and “High School Musical” tell you that by 17, you should have already discovered the secrets of the universe and the terrifying truth of who you are. There should be a tight-knit group of friends, parties, late nights and adventures you’ll fondly reminisce about to your future children.
When I think of my adolescence, I think of long hours cooped up in my room and a blur of faces I don’t think I’ll recognize in a few years. There’s good stuff, too, the kind of stuff that makes my stomach hurt if I think about leaving it behind. But it’s not the vibrant Technicolor I imagined it to be.
We all want to live out that quintessential teenage dream, but in reality, it’s not attainable for a lot of us — and that’s okay. Coming of age manifests in different ways for everyone. High school has been more of a bad experience than a good one for me, and the same is true for many others. Researchers from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child Study Center found that high schoolers report negative feelings about school 60% of the time.
What teenagers should focus on is making the best of what they have. Going to that hangout. Eating that piece of cake. Taking a fun trip. Doing what they can to make high school as not-bad as they can. Practicing patience. They might discover themselves along the way, but they also might not. Coming of age is really all about the waiting.
They should try not to get caught up in the beauty of college and moving away either. Coming of age might happen years down the line, at 30 and working. That’s the beauty of coming of age. It is a deeply personal experience that strikes when one least expects it.
I don’t blame movies for marketing an idealized version of teenagehood to people. There’s something very enchanting about realizing yourself on a random Tuesday in your senior year of high school. What we shouldn’t do is overromanticize these unrealistic visions of adolescence and lose sight of the valuable experiences right in front of us. You don’t need to be cool, popular and spontaneous to have a good time. You can have an enjoyable high school experience from the comfort of your own home if it really comes down to it.
Maybe you never thought high school would be like the movies and no expectations were fallen short of. Great. The sentiment still stands. Don’t just accept mediocrity. You might not have a life-altering moment of self-realization, but you can still have fun and make memories that you’ll always cherish. Keep that in the back of your mind as you navigate the rest of your time at Conestoga.
Saktisri Gowrishankar can be reached at [email protected].
