Introspection In The Mister By Walter Dean Myers

It is important to choose the right friends, good friends can take you wherever you want to go in life, and the wrong friends can be a disastrous decision. A quote from The Pact sums this up nicely, “Friendship can lift you up, strengthen and empower you, or break you down, weaken and defeat you.” (32) This is why it is so important to surround yourself with positive people, and

Friendship is an essential part of life to everyone. To me, I interact with my friends closely everyday, we chat, we play around, and we work together on homework. For teenagers like us, we like to interact with friends, with people at our age. Without friends, we won’t be able to do anything. We take care of each other, we tell each other everything, and sometimes they are more important than our parents.

Peer pressure is the influence a peer group has on its members to fit into a particular way of thinking and behaving. When children are very young the major influences in their lives are their family and caregivers. Behaviour, attitudes and expectations in young children are learned from the modelling of others. This is the way we all learn, first from caregivers and then we include our peers when we start school and attend any activity away from family. Our Peers have a considerable influence on our behaviour and outlook on life as we all learn together. Youth spend large amounts of time with Peers, who are learning about themselves as they grow up.

In “What are friends for?” by Marion Winik, She explains the type of friends that you may encounter throughout your lifetime. Winik explains the benefits of each friend and the impact that they have on your life. There are eight types of friends which are your Buddies, Relative friends, Work friends, Faraway friends, Former friends, Friends you love to hate, Hero friends, and New friend. They all play a role in your life. They make your life exciting. They are the reason why you don’t go totally insane. Friends are there to help you out.

Without friends life is lonely and isolated. Friends are important to share enjoyable activities with, companions with whom to share worries, people to rescue you in difficulty and to be comforted at times of stress. Additionally friendships have enormous developmental implications (Murray 2009). It helps the socialising process. Also, it promotes the natural move towards “greater independence” in adolescence (Murray 2009). It does this because when you depend on someone for so long you start to branch off on our own and stop depending on others like you used to. Adolescent friendships also provide a connection to others who are at the same stage (Murray 2009).

    This summer I was a counselor at a social justice camp at Wheaton, during my time there we made sure to set time for introspection so that delegates could explore their own  feelings and thoughts, and reflect on what they have learned.

More than ever in this society as children find the need to belong or fit in to the popular crowd in school for acceptance they often tend to mimic their friends behaviors. This is often a result of the individual child trying to find him or herself. The results however, are not always negative. In fact, there are some positive results that may occur as a result of copying their peers. Simply stated, “When teens surround themselves with people who make good decisions and who are involved with positive activities and choices, it makes the adolescent child want to be better” (Stock, 2010 pg.2). Positive peers influence adolescents and can drive the child toward improved confidence, and improved grades in school. Inversely, the same can be said for the adolescent child who decides that he or she wants to be like his or her friends who have a negative influence. Children who fall into this category are those that are of the bandwagon philosophy. Those negatively impacted by peers often show signs of lower grades in school, increased distance from family. In fact, “peer pressure can lead to experimentation with drugs and alcohol, and various high risks behaviors” (Fact Sheets, 2009 pg.1). The changes in the adolescent child can have lasting effects depending on which type of peer influences that child may be surrounded by. The negative impact of peer pressure can be strong; however there are also positive influences.

Question 1: According to Erickson people want to belong (Oswalt, 2010, p.1). In my interview my interviewee pointed out that a lot of people only fall for peer pressure because they want a sense of belonging, no one likes to feel left out. If no one else will provide these individuals with attention, then who else are they to turn to? They turn to bad for their answer rather than waiting for someone to show love and compassion. Erickson also points out that there is a crisis or a task at each stage in life (Oswalt, 2010, p.1). As Angela Oswald points out in her article “…youth must determine how to develop and to maintain close friendships outside the family…” (Oswalt, 2010, p.1). What she is talking about is part of Erickson’s second stage

Your friends impact your emotions and your laughter, they make jokes and laugh with you building context on your personality and making a base connection with you. Friends to me are the support beams in a bridge, when I have no one to look to I always know that their right there helping me up. Friends have impacted the way I think and what sports and activities that I do. Their similar to you in ways and extremely different in others, they help shape and form the way your view life as a

Introspection is defined as a examination or observation of one's own mental or emotional processes. This process is more psychological perspective. For example, a guidance counselor would constantly ask their patients their state they

The desire to fit in with peers can be a very strong influence on teens.

Peer pressure has always been present and will also always be present. It is not a disease or a crime, it is an influence; either a negative or a positive one. Negative peer pressure is an influence put on a person to do something wrong, or something the person doesn’t want to do. This may be stealing, taking drugs, or other dangerous actions. If someone influences you into doing something like this it is considered a negative peer pressure. This is a major problem in most schools all around the world. Teenagers usually feel peer pressure when they feel unpopular between their friends, or when they want to be accepted in a group of other teenagers. The group is a place where one feels accepted, where he can feel good about himself, where he feels secure. It increases his self esteem, and it also enhances his self-image. Unfortunately, teenagers who want to be part of these groups, need to follow certain unpleasant routines, such as stealing, smoking, taking drugs, or drinking alcohol. Many times they do things that they would never have imagined themselves doing before meeting a new group of people. Some teens try to make the "right" decision so others will admire them. Having parents or other responsible adults they can turn to for help or advice is crucial at this point in a teen's life.

On the other hand, Dazed and Confused portrays many instrumental relationships (most related to hazing) that encourage status relations in the high school setting. In the opening scenes, next year’s group of seniors are preparing for the annual hazing of incoming freshmen. “When classes dismiss, the incoming freshmen boys are hazed by paddling, and the incoming freshmen girls are hazed by being covered in condiments, flour, and raw eggs” (Linklater, 1993). These hazing incidents reveal the basic status hierarchy in the high school which is largely based on graduation class. According to a 2002 study, “Students are pulled toward hazing for the promise it brings: a sense of belonging. It’s better to be degraded than to be on the outs” (Oliff, 2002). This initial sense of belonging to a certain group is what coerces many upcoming high schoolers to endure the pain and embarrassment of hazing rituals. The relationships between the perpetrators and the victims of hazing, however, are purely instrumental. Exposing younger students to such degrading initiation instills a sense of fear in them that causes an overestimation of the power possessed by upperclassmen. Not only does hazing create “fake” relationships, it also makes the incoming freshmen more likely to haze younger students when they eventually become upperclassmen. The status hierarchy in high schools is enforced by the negative effects of hazing that unrealistically portray upperclassmen as all-powerful. In addition, the

In society today, people tend to make decisions based on the actions and choices of others. Peer pressure is a very real issue that affects most of the teenagers of the world today. it is a dangerous form of persuasion. It causes teenagers to easily succumb to unethical activities under the influence and pressure of their friends. people see the effects of

Growing up as a teenager (between the ages of 13-19), you are exposed to many forms of peer pressure. Some of these forms causes us to think “is this really worth trying/doing?”, or “will my popularity