A most valuable passage this week was difficult to find, because I usually like to choose a more emotionally-based quotation that also manages to sum up the quintessential argument of the papers. Much of the articles this week simply presented independent bits of information in sequential order, and it was hard to choose which information was important than others. Still, I was able to locate a passage in the conclusion of Insights on Adolescence from a Life Course Perspective by Johnson, Crosnoe, and Elder:

“In the coming decade, research on adolescence would benefit from a more concerted effort to view adolescence within the context of the full life course, by theorizing about and then empirically studying transactions among childhood, adolescence, and adulthood….As we have argued here, taking a longer view of adolescence allows adolescence scholars to better see the complex mutual selection of person and context that occurs through the interplay of environment and biology and also through the agentic strivings of adolescents. It enables us to better identify the mechanisms of continuity and discontinuity, and it makes visible when transitions in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood work in conjunction with one another.” (Johnson, Crosnoe & Elder 278.)

I felt this passage summed up one of the most important arguments made in any of the articles –that adolescence is not a unique phenomenon that occurs independently of all other life phases, and it is impossible to study occurrences in adolescence without looking at numerous life factors that occur before and after. This article talked about how telling adolescent statistics can be in predicting future success or failure, and how it’s often a critical juncture that exacerbates existing tensions or allows people to build on previous successes. Seeing adolescence with in the broader context of a person’s entire life is the best way to address it as a course of study.