“‘We’re so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period’” (Dobbs, citing Casey, 3).

“But anthropologists have found that virtually all the world’s cultures recognize adolescence as a distinct period in which adolescents prefer novelty, excitement, and peers. This near-universal recognition sinks the notion that it’s a cultural construct. Culture clearly shapes adolescence. It influences its expression and possibly its length…Yet culture does not create adolescence. The period’s uniqueness rises from genes and developmental processes that have been selected for over thousands of generations because they play an amplified role during this key transitional period: producing a creature optimally primed to leave a safe home and move into unfamiliar territory” (Dobbs, 5).

This week’s articles brought me new perspective on adolescents. Not only did I enjoy revisiting neuroscience terms and diagrams, which took me back to high school science courses, but I really connected to the “Beautiful Brains” article by David Dobbs. It made me fearful of one day being the mother of a teenager, but it helped me to understand them (and myself) a bit better, now knowing that their brains are partially to blame for their obnoxious behavior and risky decision-making. Although I’m not sure why, I found comfort learning that all the world’s cultures acknowledge the presence of adolescence as a life phase. Perhaps because it denies the notion that adolescence is a monstrous Western creation: even the strictest societies deal with teenagers. I laugh thinking back to all of my girlfriends of Indian descent during high school and college, dating and drinking while keeping it all a big secret from their parents. Despite our parents’ expectations, aspirations, and warnings, we are all sensation-seeking adolescents at some point, placing the rewards higher than the risks. Neuroscience research shows that, as an adolescent’s brain develops from back to front, the flexibility decreases as the speed increases; in other words, it’s half-baked. In this light, it’s scary to think that some countries, like France, still ask students to choose, in high school, the professional track for the rest of their lives. This week in my student teaching placement, I vow to regard my adolescent students in a new light: one that acknowledges them as “possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around” (Dobbs 5).