“Certainly social pressures are part of adolescent vulnerability, but perhaps more important is that the teenage brain lends itself to highly motivated exploration of the world in order to learn how to be an adult. This is the time to take risks! Apparently the stage of brain construction during adolescence makes the brain more vulnerable to addiction than at any other time of life.”

I thought this was interesting because it looks at adolescent addiction from a fresh angle – it’s just part of the quest to grow up. I remember something that Fabienne said during class once – that our students are simply “trying on different outfits” and seeing if anything interesting fits. All of a sudden, an entirely new world of possibilities has opened up to adolescents, and for the first time, they can can feel like adults doing adult things. I remember how adult drinking coffee for the first time made me feel, and I wanted to chase that feeling. Drug addiction is in some ways an addiction to that feeling – that you’re doing something that adults, and not children, do. I also find it interesting that this quotation says that the brain participating in motivated exploration is more important than social pressures, which the article claimed earlier were one of the most important factors in addiction. I think seeing drug addiction in adolescents through this lens opens up a fascinating and not often explored view.

“Similarly, some young women complain that their mentors seem out of touch with their experiences and problems. This problem sometimes stems from the social distance that exists between middle-class volunteers and urban adolescent girls. [ . . . ] Adults who live or work in urban communities, and who are familiar with the circumstances confronting youth, are likely to be better able to give advice that is consistent with the cultural norms, options, and constraints of a given setting.”

– Rhodes, Davis, Spencer, & Prescott, “Caring Connections:
Mentoring Relationships in the Lives of Urban Girls” (p. 151)

This is a quote that applies not only to mentoring, but also to teaching in general. This passage stuck out to me because it captured my own experience as a full-time tutor and, later, a teacher. As a tutor, I developed a close relationship with one of my students, an 8th grade girl. One problem from the very beginning was my struggle to understand exactly what she was going through. There were times when she would complain about something, get in fights with other students, or fight with teachers and get kicked out of class. It was incredibly hard for me to get on her level and understand why she was doing these things since they behaviors that I never even got close to doing when I was her age.  It was difficult for me to act as a mentor to her when all I wanted to do was tell her to grow up and knock it off (but I was wise enough not to say that). Continue reading Mentoring Between Race and Class Barriers →

I remember the first time I realized how screwed our generation’s priorities were, in regards to treating our minds as disposable tools to attain a more important academic end, when I entered my undergraduate college bookstore in the fall of my sophomore year to pick up textbooks, and was given free “Study Buddy” pills marketed to enhance my attention and “crack down” on my books. I was disgusted by this capitalistic venture for a plethora of reasons: 1. As an institution of higher education, this college should have known better than attempt to “sell” knowledge or studying enhancement in the form of a pill, which is just degrading to the integrity of our education, as well as our health; 2. The entire idea of chemically ingested knowledge is horrendously unhealthy…Adderall is illegal and chastised on campus, yet they are willingly bequeathing these smiley-faced “Studdy Buddy” pills upon us? Come on…; 3. Even if these pills were to be effective, they would completely negate the integrity of our academic ventures, so why are you gifting them to us, with the idea that we should essentially take the easy way out and swallow a pill to gain attention rather than focus the good old fashioned way? Continue reading Study Steroids: The Epidemic Affecting our Generation →

“Consumers will have to consider what level of discomfort or risk they’re willing to accept in exchange for sharper recall or enhanced powers of concentration (Healy, 2004).”

My sister was addicted to cocaine when I was younger, and because of this I grew up believing that the only drugs we should be afraid of were the illegal drugs that you couldn’t get from a doctor or a pharmacy. When I got to college I became aware of an entire world of drugs that can be prescribed to people and then distributed for all types of reasons. The people that were using these drugs didn’t look like “drug users” that I had seen on television, they were just college students that wanted to take the edge off or needed to focus on a test. Continue reading The Lesser of Two Evils! →