Of the readings this week, I found the TIME article quite interesting and useful. Why, I am rather unsure. It is full of science terms, and other stuff that usually cannot hold my attention. But it was quite interesting to learn the biological reasons why teenagers act as they do. I have previously heard of the undeveloped prefrontal cortex (this came up rather often in my first MAT class), but this article shows that there are numerous biological reasons teenagers seem to lack common sense. The “pruning” was perhaps most striking. Who knew that part of the brain needed to shrink to develop such skills?

And of course hormones, which were rather tragically limited to only a couple paragraphs in the article. Hormones cause teens to do all sorts of stupid things, like try to impress girls in dumb ways, or have sex with them without thinking of the consequences. Perhaps this article interested me so much because in a decade I will be dealing with these issues outside my classroom, times two. Hopefully science will provide more answers into what makes teens tick, and psychologists or someone else can come up with some ways to successfully deal with such issues.

The class exercise was very insightful into my own teenage years. Or, rather, insight into how little I really remember about so much of those years. I know I did some stupid things, but the only ones I recall are the ones I did several times, like drive way too fast and hang out with people doing drugs (I abstained). I don't remember being obsessively self-conscious about my appearance, but I did have a year or so where I actually tried to let my hair grow (which looked terrible). I do recall the constant battles with my parents over practicing my trombone. I was really good, and my parents seemed to think I could become a professional trombone player or something, and they pushed hard enough to remove most of the enjoyment from band. I did play my trombone in a hardcore metal band for a few years. That was fun. I also clearly remember the answer to the teacher question. My band teacher and I clashed constantly, because he was ridiculously serious about marching band, which I hated. I slacked off a lot. I think, despite clashing with him, I may have gotten away with some stuff because I was really good. Important life lesson.