Running Head: ADOLESCENCE

A Day in the Life of an Adolescent Me

Social Work 3510
11/14/2013
Heather Workman

ADOLESCENCE

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Abstract

We all remember those adolescent years. For some of us, they were the best time of our
lives, but for others they were the worse time of our lives. No matter the case, those years are
still a part of our past and whether we like it our not, those years had played a significant role on
the person we are today. For this paper, I am going to take you down memory lane to my
adolescent years. Those years were not the best years, but to better understand the person I have
become, it is essential to examine those years a bit more closely. During this trip down memory
lane, I will introduce you to some life events that had happened through those years and how
they may have a impact on my life, today.

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As adults, we can all now say I have been there, done that. The that in this case are
those horrid teenage years, or as some would refer to them as the adolescent years. Our
adolescent years give us the first, true taste of life altering changes and experiences. Unlike the
changes and experiences we had experience before our adolescent years, these changes and
experiences have proven to provide an extensive impact on our years to come. Some of the
things we do today in our adult years are due to events that have happened during those troubling
teen years. These events and changes are different to each and every one of us.
If I was given the chance to relive my adolescent years over again, I would do it for the
sheer fact to change every single moment of those years. In my opinion, I was a very socially
awkward adolescent. Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory explains that Observational
leaning occurs when people observe role models and learn new behavior as a result of those
observations (p. 101). I would not call them role models, but I used to watch my fellow
classmates for a sign of what was socially accepted. There was, however, one problem with that.
What may have worked for them, certainly did not work out for me. The jokes, the games, the
rowdy horse play did not suit the person I was and when I attempted to do just that, I was seen as
nothing more than a socially awkward teenager. Social awkwardness was something I learn to
live with early on in my adolescent years. I had given up trying to fit in with others and I had
retreated into social isolation early on. I had a few good friends, but I was always the odd one
out. Looking back on those years, I can see how I became the quiet, sheltered adult I am today. I
have lost all contact with my few friends from high school and to be quite frank, I never been in
a more-than-friends relationship with anyone. I am still very much shy and I tend to be quiet in
groups while I prefer to do the work myself.

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Social awkwardness had start early on for me in life. I remember a troubling time when I
was around ten, a very young adolescent at the time. At this time in my life, I remember that I as
somewhat of a bully to other students, especially to one boy in particular. To this day, I can not
remember the reasoning behind the bullying, but I remember, clear as day, the reason I gave to
the boy that day. I had confessed to him that I had a crush on him. Whether or not this was true at
the time, word had gotten around and was treated as the truth. I was the bully that became the
victim in a day's time. Feeling vulnerable and embarrassed, I retreated inside myself, avoiding
any possible more humiliating events that would cause me further embarrassment. I became
sheltered, shy and every attempt at breaking my trend of shyness, I retreated further inside which
lead to the sheltered adult that I am today.
Social awkwardness had the most impact on my life during my adolescent years. I do,
however, had to thank that awkwardness, slightly, because as I began to retreat inside myself, I
began ti realize more about myself. For instance, sexuality was not such a huge deal when I was
a teenager. That was mostly due to the fact that it was never talked about and the sheer idea of
queers was forbidden in my household. My family and I decided to join the Catholic family
when I was at mere age of seven. As the years continue, my family became the strong Catholic
family. If it was wrong in the eyes of God, it was wrong in the eyes of my mother. The Catholic
Church taught us that queers were wrong and they destroyed the sanctity of marriage. I still can
not figure out to this day, if it was what the Catholic Church and my mother taught me, or it is
the fact that I was born this way, but I am a straight individual who to this day opposes those
very same teachings. It does cause for some quite interesting debates with my mother, but it is
just who I am, right?

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That is exactly right, I am who I am, with a few instances along the way to form the
person I am today. There is one thing that not very many people know about me and it is
something I am not willing to openly admit to people. I was always taught Say no to Drugs. I
believe in that philosophy wholeheartedly and I can never see myself using any drugs. What the
funny thing is, is the fact that both my mother and father were the primary teachers of these
lessons. Here comes the one thing I will not openly admit to: In my late adolescent years, I
learned that both my parents were heavy drug users and to this day, they still are. My mother
openly admitted to me that she had tried every single drug that was available in her time. You
would think that an adolescent learning that information about their parents would give them
every excuse in the book to try drugs. When it came to me, that was not the case. If fact, I think
that information actually gave me the power, today, to take a strong stand against drugs and why
I will never try a single one, even through peer pressure.
You have to realized that peer pressure was a great weakness of mine throughout my
teens years. No, no one ever peer pressured me to do drugs, smoke, have sex, commit any
felonies. Now that I think about it, I was peer pressured into doing some pretty idiotic stuff. I
remember this extremely embarrassing moment when I was peer pressured into reciting this
stupid poem I created for a talent show. The poem was horrible and I received a couple of laughs
after reciting the poem. Let us cue the social awkwardness right now. As peer pressure was a
huge weakness for me, I began to develop a tendency to always say yes. Saying no to some
one is now a very difficult thing to do for me. People have said that I need to make a stand for
myself or put my foot down. Just recently I had to put in a nine hour shift at my job on a day that
I was scheduled to have off. I was pressured into taking the shift by two managers and because of

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my tendency to always say yes, I reluctantly agreed. I blame the peer pressure that I was so
easily able to fall for.
The one thing that I refused to be peer pressured into, was being someone I was not. I had
found my own style a long time ago that fit the way I look. I will admit, I am not a pretty thin
woman, like I would be. I am stuck with the body I am in and I have to make the best of it. I hate
the way I look, I honestly do, but in a way I love it to a point to where I can tolerate it. Because
of my body, I have developed a style to where I wear comfortable clothes. I try to to squeeze my
body into clothes that are too tight for me. It is true, they look much better on me, but my body is
not made for tight clothes and I much rather prefer to be comfortable than squeezed into a pair of
jeans. That is the body image that I have taken on for myself in my adolescent years and it has
now stuck with me through adulthood, but with a few changes here and there.
Everything I have mention thus far, involves around my social awkwardness as an
adolescent and how it all began. Looking further back, I can honestly say that my family
diversity was much at fault with my social awkwardness. I knew since I started socializing with
others, I was different than them. My family choose God later in life, but when they finally
choose that path, they were strict to follow the word to the t. While most children were allowed
to get away with certain things, I was at home, writing the word blasted' a few hundred times
for the sheer reason of using it in a derogatory way. So essentially, I grew up to believe in what
was right, according to what my mother taught, and to not deviate from that path. I did just that,
until I became and who did eventually deviate from that path. In essence the Structural Theories
of Moral Behavior states, We should expect the behavior of a person with a moral disposition to
be unchanged by situational influences such as the presence of forms of social influence (p.

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105). This theory most likely explains why that being raised in a strict Catholic family, I was a
person that never question what I was taught, no matter how ridiculous it sounded. This theory,
however, does not explain that after being raised in a family, such as mine, that I was able to be
socially influence to the point where I do not consider myself a part of the Catholic Church any
further.
I had decided to no longer be a part of the Catholic Church for my own beliefs, but I did
learn one thing from the Church while I was still attending as an adolescent. I learned to love
people no matter who they were. For my entire life, I have grown up in the Southwest part of
Detroit. Growing up in this area of Detroit, gave me great opportunities with diversity. I know
many people or many diverse backgrounds, so I tended to look past their skin color and their race
from time to time, but they were just people to me. I believe that being in tune with these diverse
groups, made me the adult I am today. An open-minded adult that tries, but not always succeeds,
at looking past the color of someone's skin or their race.
As an adolescent there is a time that we must mature into the next stage of young
adulthood. For some this stage happens early and for others, it happens later. While certain
events in my adolescent years made me the person I am today, there will always be one event
that made me take that final step in my adolescent years and develop into an adult. In the year
2009, I was only eighteen years of age. At this point of time I was in my late adolescent years. I
finished high school, I was accepted at Wayne State and life was going well for me. In July of
that year, disaster struck. I lost my grandmother at the age if eighty-one. My grandmother was a
second mother to me who took on the responsibilities of both mother and father when my parents
could not. My father was never around and my mother was always working. My grandmother

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practically raised, so seeing the one person who was always there for you, suddenly gone, was
heartbreaking. It was at this time that I had finally became an adult and took on responsibilities I
would never sought for years. James Marcia explains how this works by extending Erickson's
idea on identity, .....adolescents have undergone and resolved their crisis by making strong
commitments to things such as an occupation, a sexual orientation, or a religious ideology.
(p.435). Due to the fact that I have gone through a crisis, I had matured into and adult and I was
making decisions that would impact me for life.
Adolescence is a time for change and experiences. Some of those experiences will come
change that will stick with us long into our adulthood. For me, my adolescent years had played a
huge impact on the adult I am today. To the clothes I wear, to the shy, sheltered personality, I
have my adolescent years to thank for that. Though, I can't say that I enjoyed those years as an
adolescent, I am thankful for those years for helping me become who I am today. I wish to go
back to change those years to live a better live, but I want to keep the person I became because of
those years.

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References

Ashford, Jose, B. & Lecroy. Craig Winston. (2013). Human Behavior in the Social
Environment A Multidimensional Perspective. (101, 104, 435).