|
‘The teenage years are the best years of one’s life.’ Would you agree with this view? (CAMBRIDGE NOV 1994)
To me, teenage years are the years from the start of secondary school onwards (age 13 years) until after finishing one’s tertiary education (age about 18~19).
My secondary school life is perhaps the best years so far of my 16 plus years of life. This is so due to me being surrounded by good friends as classmates, CCA-mates school mates etc. We play hard together in and outside school, and of course we work hard for the exams especially the O Levels together. Activities conducted in school also make the secondary school days of my teenage life memorable and interesting.
So, how exactly one’s teenage years are like? Being in education is a major part of a teenage life, especially in Singapore. We cannot escape having to go to school to do homework and juggle between our CCAs commitments and life. However, it is also in school and through schools that we get to know friends of our age groups and get to interact and know them. Friends are the ones that in fact, make our teenage years memorable. They would help one another to work hard, play hard and strive hard for their goals of doing well in academic and CCAs etc.
The teenage years are also the most stressful years of one life. It is the phase of growing up from a young child to an adult. The teen would also be going through puberty, leading to emotional, mental and physical changes. It can be stressful when one struggles to understand the world, and make the world accept you. Add that on to the academic expectations from school and home, peer pressure, CCAs commitments and the struggle to manage time and you get a lot of stress weighing down on the teen. That could lead to emotional breakdown if the teenager does not know how to manage them. However, more often than not, schools would have helped the students to learn to cope by conducting workshops, and counselors made available. If the teenager could manage the stress, he/she could make his/her teenage years as less stressful as possible and hence, as meaningful as possible.
In my conclusion, although the teenage years are perhaps the most stressful years of one’s life, it is also the stage where one learns the most, interacts with, make and maintain friendships the most. Hence, it is in deed the best years of one life.
Articles : The STI, March 25,2007 "Its tough being a teen" & March 19, 2007 " Parents, beware the emo kids"
|
