The Teenage Years

My Spanish teacher was talking about the "teen years" today in class. We read an article in our textbooks that was about children beginning at ages eight to ten, working to fill their families needs. My teacher told us about how the "teenage years" are really, just fictional. They don't exist. In wealthy countries, like America, kids have some made up time between being a child and an adult, to transition at their own pace. He began to end his lecture with "as a high school teacher, and seeing all the different types of teenagers..." he doesn't know how to treat you guys. Does he treat us like kids? Or does he treat us an adult? "It's up to you, you guys have to choose." He concluded. 

But is it up to us? Do we really get the choice, or are we constantly told what to choose? Coming back from winter break this year, the first couple of days back in school I felt like I was being incredulously treated as a child, especially when compared to during winter break when I felt an extreme sense of independence. Naturally, as the days passed in school, I assimilated my feelings of independence back into the robotic following of rules in school. But, all it took was one three day weekend of being young and dumb to feel that independence again. Turning the train back to the original tracks of this thought, the teenage years suck. You don't belong to a cookie cutter group, people tell you what to do like your a child, yet hold you to adult expectations. Life isn't supposed to be about winning or losing, but if it was, you would lose. There's no winning when you're in the teenager years. All you can really do is act however you deem for for yourself, and say your "still a kid" or "nearly an adult" whenever it benefits your argument to get some leverage in the world.